Note 86 — Appendix (To Chapter 41)

As I was correcting the proofs of this, I came upon a French newspaper with an extremely characteristic incident in it. Near Paris a student had a liaison with a girl, which was discovered. The girl’s father went to the student and on his knees besought him, with tears, to vindicate his daughter’s honour and marry her; the student refused with contumely. The kneeling father gave him a slap in the face, the student challenged him, they shot at each other; during the duel the old man had a paralytic stroke. The student was disconcerted, and ‘decided to marry,’ and the girl was grieved, and also decided to marry. The newspaper adds that this happy dénouement will no doubt do much to promote the old father’s recovery. Can this have happened outside a madhouse? Can China or India, at whose grotesque absurdities we mock so much, furnish anything uglier or sillier than this story? I will not say more immoral. This Parisian romance is a hundredfold more wicked than the burning of a widow or the burying of a vestal virgin. In those cases there was religious faith, removing all personal responsibility, but in this case there is nothing but conventional, shadowy ideas of external honour, of external reputation.... Is it not clear from this story what the student was like? Why should the girl’s life be bound to his à perpétuité? Why was she ruined to save her reputation? Oh, Bedlam! (1866.)—(Author’s Note.)