第 11 页

My aunt, as you may guess, is acquainted with my uncle's famous plan for the future, and knows Anna Campbell, the Pasha's god-daughter. You should hear her chaff him anent this god-fathership, on the strength of which she claims that the captain has returned to the bosom of the Church without knowing it. She tells me that Anna is a charming girl. Thus petted and entertained, I live in other respects very much as I like, and sometimes pass the whole day in the library. I should add that my aunt, who is as sharp as a weasel, makes her own comments upon my frequent absences from the château.

"André," she asked me the other day with a smile, "is your 'Botany' dark or fair—"

"Fair, my dear aunt," I answered, laughing as she did.

In the midst of all this the Pasha, still emulating one of the Olympian gods, proceeds on his course with that tranquillity of spirit which never forsakes him. Two days ago, who should come down upon us but Rabassu, his lieutenant, the Rabassu whom my uncle has always called his "murderer." He has brought home "La Belle Virginie" from Zanzibar with a cargo of cinnamon; for, as you are aware, we (or rather I) still trade in spices. Being now the head of the firm, I have to sell off the last consignments. Rabassu heard of the resurrection of Barbassou-Pasha directly he arrived at Toulon. He hurried off to us quite crestfallen, and when he met the captain literally trembled at the thought of the hurricane he would now have to face. But everything passed off very satisfactorily. My uncle interrupted his first mutterings of apology with a gentle growl, and contented himself with chaffing him for his infantine credulity.

However, this incident has revived the vexed question of the camels. "Where are they—" asks the captain. Having promised to send them to the Zoological Gardens at Marseilles, he feels his honour is at stake; they must be found. I support him in this view; my inherited property is of course incomplete without them. Urgent letters on the subject have just been despatched to his friend Picklock, and to the officer in command at Aden. If necessary, a claim will be lodged against England; she is undoubtedly responsible for them.

In my next letter I will tell you all the news relating to El-Nouzha from the time when I last interrupted this interesting part of my narrative. My houris are making progress, and their education is improving. We are going on swimmingly.

CHAPTER V.

The Turks are calumniated, my friend, there's no doubt about it. It is not enough for us to say and to believe, with the vulgar herd, that these turbaned people are wallowing in materialism and are not civilised; we must do more than this, and convict them of their errors. We, fortified with a singular infatuation in our ideas, our habits, and our personal associations, venture to settle by our sovereign decrees the loftiest questions of sentiment. The rules to be observed by the perfect lover in the courtship and treatment of his lady-love, have been settled at tournaments, by the Courts of Love of Isaure, and by the College of the Gay Science. Our pretensions to troubadourism have never been abandoned. The affectations of "L'Astrée" have been erected into a code of Love, and we have succeeded in establishing the French cavalier as the paragon of excellence in love matters, and the perfect type of gallantry. The saying "to die for one's lady-love" rises so naturally to our lips that the most insignificant cornet might warble it to his Célimène without causing her to smile.

You will nevertheless admit, I hope, that we ought to discard a few of these absurd expressions. That we know how to make love is not much to boast about, after all. The only important point for us as philosophers is to know whether our ideal is really the higher ideal—whether our treatment of woman is really more worthy both of her and of ourselves than the pagan treatment which prevails among the Eastern nations— Here at once crops up the elementary dispute between the votaries of polygamy and monogamy. Both these institutions are based upon divine and human laws, both are written down and defined in moral codes, and in sacred books. One takes its origin in the Bible, and remains faithful to its traditions; the other has developed at some period, from the simple conventions of a new social order. We must not conclude that we alone possess the knowledge of absolute truth, merely because our conceit postulates for us the superiority of our time-honoured civilisation. All wisdom proceeds from God alone, and truth is for us only relative to place, time, and habit. Was not Jacob, when he married at the same time Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, nearer than we are now to the primitive sentiment of the laws of nature and of revelation— Do you presume to blame him, insignificant being that you are, because yielding to the supplication of his beloved Rachel he espoused—somewhat superfluously it may be—her handmaid Bala, with the simple object of having a son by her— In presence of this idyl of the patriarchal age, what becomes of all our theories, our ideas, and our prejudices, the fruits after all of a hollow and worthless education—

You will not, I trust, do me the wrong of believing that I, wavering in my faith, intend forthwith to abandon the principles in which I was brought up. But a subject so serious as the one I have been devoting myself to, demands the most frank and honest examination. I will not deliver a judgment; I will merely state the facts. Now it is an established fact that the people who permit by their laws a plurality of wives are, even at the present time, far more numerous than the monogamists. Statistics prove that out of the thousand million inhabitants of this globe, Christianity with all its sects, and Judaism thrown in, does not number more than two hundred and sixty millions according to Balbi, or two hundred and forty millions according to the London Bible Society.

Since the remainder, consisting of Mahometans, Buddhists, Fire-worshippers, and Idolaters, all practise polygamy more or less, it follows that on this globe of ours, the monogamists constitute one-fourth only of the whole population. Such is the naked, unadorned truth!

Are we wrong— Are they right— It is not my business to decide this point. Philosophers and theologians far more patient than I am, have given it up as a bad job. Voltaire, with his subtle genius, settled the question in his own characteristic fashion, by supposing that an imaginary God had from the beginning decreed an inequality in this matter, regulated by geographical situation, in these words:—

"I shall draw a line from Mount Caucasus to Egypt, and from Egypt to Mount Atlas; all men dwelling to the east of this line shall be permitted to marry several wives, while those to the west of it shall have one only."

And, as a matter of fact, it is so.

But having disposed of this important point, there remains a loftier question for us to elucidate—one consisting entirely of sentiment. The treatment of woman being our only objective, our present business is to decide on which side of the line its character is the most respectful, the most worthy and the most flattering towards her. Certainly our doctrine is purer, our law more divine. Nevertheless, as sincere judges, we ought, perhaps, to examine and see whether we do not transgress against our absolute principles. And I must confess that I cannot now approach this delicate question without some misgiving. In the judgment of every tribunal, the case of polygamy is a hopelessly bad one. That I am ready to admit; but might it not be urged against the other side that in practice the court knows very well that the law is not observed— What judge can be found, however austere, who has never offended against it— To sum the matter up briefly (whispering low our confessions, if you like), what man is there among us—I am not talking of Don Juans, who catalogue their amours, nor of Lovelaces, but of ordinary men of say thirty years old—who can remember how many mistresses he has had— What, is this the monogamy we have been making such a flourish about—

Perhaps you will say that we need not see in these irregularities anything more than a sort of licensed depravity, tolerated for the sake of maintaining a virtuous ideal. But consider the fatal consequences of this hypocrisy. What becomes of our aspirations of the age of twenty, of our dreams and poetic fancies, after we have plunged into these wretched connections, these degrading, promiscuous attachments which form the current of our present habits, and from which we emerge at the age of thirty, sceptics, and with hearts and souls tarnished— What do we reap from these frenzies of unhealthy passion, but contempt for woman, and disbelief in anything virtuous—

For the Turk there is no such thing as illegitimate love, and woman is the object of absolute respect. Never having more than one master, she cannot fall in his esteem. Having been bought as a slave, she becomes a wife directly she sets foot in the harem; her rights are sacred, and she cannot any more be abandoned. The laws protect her; she has a recognised position, a title; her children are legitimate, and if by chance—

I suspend this philosophical digression, in order to inform you of a momentous occurrence. El-Nouzha has just been the scene of a sanguinary drama. A rebellion has broken out among my sultanas.

My harem is on strike.

You will ask me how this storm came to break upon me just as I was settling down into the most innocent and tranquil frame of mind— It can only be explained by a retrospective survey of certain domestic circumstances, which the changes that have been going on at Férouzat had caused me to overlook.

You will not have forgotten the terrible commotion caused in my harem by the news of my uncle's resurrection. My poor houris, dreading some fatal drama of the usual Turkish character, had indeed passed through a cruel time of distress and anguish. When their alarms were dissipated, a revival of animation soon manifested itself in their spirits; but, as ill-luck would have it, and as I have told you, one little detail of this day's proceedings, unimportant as it appeared at the time, was destined to disturb their harmony, so perfect hitherto, and to arouse their jealousies. Kondjé-Gul had been to the château, and a silly ambition to attempt the same freak had got into the heads of Nazli and Zouhra. I at once expressed a decided opposition to this childish scheme; but, of course, from the moment it met with opposition, it developed into a fixed purpose.

Within the limited circle of ideas in which they move, their imaginations had been excited—curiosity, the attractions of forbidden fruit. The long and the short of it was that, at the sight of their genuine disappointment—a disappointment aggravated by continual and jealous suspicions of a preference on my part for Kondjé-Gul—I had almost made up my mind to yield for one occasion, when my aunt arrived, which at once put an end to any thought of such good-natured but weak concessions.

I imagined myself to be armed now with an overwhelming reason for refusing their request, but it turned out quite otherwise. When they heard that my uncle's wife was at the château, they asked to be allowed to make her acquaintance. They said that they were really bound as cadines, according to Turkish custom, to pay their respects to my uncle's wife, "whom her position as legitimate spouse places hierarchically above us." I got over this difficulty by telling them that my aunt, being a Christian, was forbidden by her creed to have any intercourse with Mussulmans.

What especially distinguishes the Turkish woman, my dear Louis, from the woman whose character has been fashioned by our own remarkable civilisation, is the instinctive, inborn respect which she always preserves and observes towards man. Man is the master and the lord, she is his servant, and she would never dream of setting herself up as his equal. The Koran on this point has hardly at all modified the biblical traditions. Unfortunately for me, I must confess that in my household I have disregarded the law of Islam. Inspired by a higher ideal, you will understand, without my mentioning it, that my first object has been to abolish slavery from my harem, by inculcating into the minds of my houris principles more in conformity with the Christianity which I profess. I wished, like a modern Prometheus, to kindle the divine spark in these young and beautiful barbarians, whose minds are still wrapped up in their oriental superstitions. I wished to elevate their souls, to cultivate their minds, and in short, to make them my free companions and no longer my helots.

I may assert with pride that I have been partially successful in my task. Three months of this treatment had hardly elapsed before all traces of servile subordination had disappeared. With this faculty for metamorphosis existing in them, which all women possess, but which is for ever denied to us men, and thanks above all to the revelations of our customs and habits contained in novels of my selection, which Kondjé-Gul read to them during my hours of absence, and to which they listened with admiration (for they were eager to know all about this world of ours, which was as yet unknown to them), I soon obtained a charming combination. Their strange exotic mixture of oriental graces, blending happily with efforts to imitate the refinements of our civilisation, their artless tokens of ignorance, their coquettish and feline instincts, their voluptuous bearing in process of attempted transformation into bashful reserve, all these phenomena afforded me the most delightful subject for study ever entered on by a philosopher.

Nevertheless, I must admit that the education of their intellects did not keep pace with the cultivation of their ideas, but rendered them still liable to commit a number of solecisms. I had an interest, moreover, in keeping them in a certain degree of ignorance of the actual laws of our own world. Imbued with their native ideas, their credulity accepted without hesitation, everything which I chose to tell them about "the customs of the harems of France," and they conformed to them without making any pretence to further knowledge of them. None the less, there began to grow up in their minds ideas of independence and self-will, the natural consequences of the elevation effected in their sentiments. The notion of a truer and more tender love was used by them henceforth as a weapon against my absolute authority. Only too happy to be treated as a lover rather than a master, I did not feel any loss in this respect: love is kept alive by these numberless little stratagems of a woman, who loves and desires—yet desires not—and so forth. And then, you must remember, I had four wives.

They on their part, having no aims, no ambitions, but to please me, the sole object of their common love, each tried to effect my conquest in order to obtain the advantage over her rivals—an emulation of which I experienced all the charms. Notwithstanding the fact that I distributed my affections with a rare impartiality, I could not always prevent the occurrence of jealous quarrels among them. Afterwards ensued regrets tender reproaches, and clouds of sadness melting into tears. Peace was restored amid foolish outbursts of mirth. But you cannot realise what a task it has been for me to preserve the harmony of a well-regulated household among creatures with their impulsive imaginations, which have ripened under the heat of their native oriental sun. They have mixed up their superstitions with those higher principles of which I have endeavoured to inculcate a notion into their minds, and which they often interpret in quite a different sense. All this has been the occasion for the display of charming eccentricities. My little animals have grown into women, and along with the development of a more intelligent love, I have seen manifestations of a coquettish mutinous spirit, upon the slightest evidence of partiality on my part, which they have thought to detect in me.