When my fortune came, she remarked, “I am glad I am not free.  If
I were, you would want to marry me, and that would be fatal.”

The divine, sound sense of the dear woman!  Honour would compel the offer.  Its acceptance would bring disaster.

Marriage has two aspects.  The one, a social contract, a quid of protection, maintenance, position and what not, for a quo of the various services that may be conveniently epitomized in the phrase de mensa et thoro.  The other, the only possible existence for two beings whose passionate, mutual attraction demands the perfect fusion of their two existences into a common life.  Now to this passionate attraction I have never become, and, having no temperament (thank Heaven!), shall never become, a party.  Before the turbulence therein involved I stand affrighted as I do before London or the deep sea.  I once read an epitaph in a German churchyard:  “I will awake, O Christ, when thou callest me; but let me sleep awhile, for I am very weary.”  Has the human soul ever so poignantly expressed its craving for quietude?  I fancy I should have been a heart’s friend of that dead man, who, like myself, loved the cool and quiet shadow, and was not allowed to enjoy it in this world.  I may not get the calm I desire, but at any rate my existence shall not be turned upside down by mad passion for a woman.  As for the social-contract aspect of marriage, I want no better housekeeper than Antoinette; and my dining-table having no guests does not need a lady to grace its foot; I have no a priori craving to add to the population.  “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone,” says Schopenhauer, “would the human race continue to exist?  Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?” By bringing children into the world by means of a marriage of convenience I should be imposing the burden of existence upon them in cold blood.  I agree with Schopenhauer.

And the dreadful bond of such a marriage!  To have in the closest physical and moral propinquity for one hundred and eighty-six hours out of the week, each hour surcharged with an obligatory exchange of responsibilities, interests, sacrifices of every kind, a being who is not the utter brother of my thoughts and sister of my dreams—­no, never! Au grand non, au grand jamais!

Judith is an incomparable woman, but she is not the utter brother of my thoughts and the sister of my dreams; nor am I of hers.

But the comradeship she gives me is as food and drink, and my affection fulfils a need in her nature.  The delicate adjustment of reciprocals is our sanction.  Marriage, were it possible, would indeed be fatal.  Our pleasant, free relations, unruffled by storm, are ideal for us both.

Why, I wonder, did she think her proposal to go away for a change would vex me?