

E-text prepared by Al Haines



HOW WOMEN LOVE

(Soul Analysis.)

Translated from the German of

MAX NORDAU,

Author of "Degeneration," "The Malady of the Century,"
"The Comedy of Sentiment," Etc., Etc







Copyright, 1898, by F. T. Neely.
Copyright, 1901, by Hurst & Co.
New York
Hurst & Company
Publishers





CONTENTS


   Justice or Revenge

   Prince and Peasant

   The Art of Growing Old

   How Women Love

   A Midsummer Night's Dream




JUSTICE OR REVENGE.


CHAPTER I.

A more unequally matched couple than the cartwright Molnar and his wife
can seldom be seen.  When, on Sunday, the pair went to church through
the main street of Kisfalu, an insignificant village in the Pesth
county, every one looked after them, though every child, nay, every cur
in the hamlet, knew them and, during the five years since their
marriage, might have become accustomed to the spectacle.  But it seemed
as though it produced an ever new and surprising effect upon the by no
means sensitive inhabitants of Kisfalu, who imposed no constraint upon
themselves to conceal the emotions awakened by the sight of the Molnar
pair.  They never called the husband by any other name than "Csunya
Pista," ugly Stephen.  And he well merited the epithet.  He was
one-eyed, had a broken, shapeless nose, and an ugly scar, on which no
hair grew, upon his upper lip, so that his moustache looked as if it
had been shaven off there; to complete the picture, one of his upper
eye-teeth and incisors were missing, and he had the unpleasant habit of
putting his tongue into these gaps in his upper row of teeth, which
rendered his countenance still more repulsive.

The wife, on the contrary, was a very beautiful woman, a magnificent
type of the Magyar race.  She was tall, powerful, only perhaps a trifle
too broad-shouldered.  Her intensely dark hair and sparkling black eyes
suited the warm bronze hue of her plump face, which, with its little
mouth filled with magnificent teeth, its fresh full lips, the
transparent, enamel like crimson of the firm, round cheeks, and the
somewhat low, but beautifully formed brow, suggested a newly-ripe
peach.  This unusually healthy countenance, overspread with a light
down, involuntarily produced in the spectator the impression that it
must exhale a warm, intoxicating, spicy fragrance; it looked so
tempting that one would fain have bitten it.

This had been much the feeling of the Uhlan officers who, with part of
a company of men, were stationed in Kisfalu.  From the first day that
the three gentlemen had entered their village garrison the beautiful
woman had attracted their attention, and they had seen in the husband's
ugliness a pleasant encouragement to make gallant advances.  The
captain, a Bohemian gentleman, was the first to introduce himself to
the fair wife.  The morning of the second day after his arrival in the
hamlet, taking advantage of the absence of the master of the house, he
stole into the miserable clay hut tenanted by the ill-assorted pair,
but remained inside only a few minutes, after which he came out with a
deeply-flushed face and somewhat hasty steps, cast stealthy glances
around him to the right and left, and then hurried away.  In the
afternoon of the same day, the young lieutenant tried his luck, but he
too left the cartwright's hut more quickly than he had entered, and not
exactly with the air of a conqueror.  In the evening the three
gentlemen met in the spare room of the tavern where they took their
meals, and were remarkably taciturn and ill-tempered.  On the third day
the slender, handsome first lieutenant called on the cartwright's wife.
He was a far-famed conqueror of women's hearts, which he was accustomed
to win with as little trouble as a child gathers strawberries in the
woods, and was envied by the whole regiment for his numberless
successes, which he did not treat with too much reticence.  This time
the adventure lasted somewhat longer; those who were passing heard loud
outcries and uproar for a short time, as if a wrestling match were
going on in the hut, and the letter-carrier, an old woman, who was just
going by, even stood still in surprise and curiosity.  The curiosity
was satisfied, for she soon saw the handsome Uhlan officer rush out,
pressing his hand to his cheek as if he had a violent toothache.  He
looked very much dishevelled and made off with noticeable haste.  He
did not appear in the tavern at noon, so in the afternoon his two
comrades sent their orderlies to him to enquire about his health; in
the evening he joined them at table and showed his astonished friends a
broad strip of black court-plaster on his right cheek.

"What does that mean?" asked the captain.

"It seems to be a bad cut," observed the lieutenant.

"Razor? sword-stroke? cat's claw?" continued the captain, pursuing his
enquiries.

"Woman's nails!" burst forth the Don Juan of the regiment, and now the
game of hide-and-seek between the trio ended, and they bewailed to one
another, with comic despair, the ill-luck they had all encountered.

She had courteously asked the captain to what she owed the honour of
his visit, and when, instead of answering, he pinched her plump cheek
and put his arm around her waist, she flew into a passion and pointed
to the door with the voice and gesture of an insulted queen.  The
lieutenant had found her far more ungracious; she did not ask what he
desired, but angrily thundered, almost before he crossed the threshold,
an order to march which permitted neither remonstrance nor refusal;
finally, at the appearance of the first lieutenant, she had passed from
the position of defence to that of assault, shrieked at him with a
crimson face and flashing eyes to be off at once, if he valued the
smooth skin of his cheeks; and when, somewhat bewildered, yet not
wholly intimidated, he had ventured, notwithstanding this by no means
encouraging reception, to attempt to seize and embrace her, as he was
accustomed to do with the colonel's wife's maid, when, making eyes at
him in the ante-room, she whispered under her breath: "Let me go, or
I'll scream!" she rushed upon him literally like a wild-cat, and, in an
instant, so mauled him that he could neither hear nor see, and
considered himself fortunate to find his way out quickly.  And when all
three heroes had finished their tragi-comic general confession, they
unanimously exclaimed: "The woman has the very devil in her!"

They would have learned this truth without being obliged to pass
through all sorts of experiences, if, instead of indulging in
self-complacent speculations concerning the possible combination of
circumstances which had united the beautiful woman to so ugly a man,
they had enquired about the cause of this remarkable phenomenon.  They
would then have heard a strange tale which might have deterred them
from finding in Molnar's hideousness encouragement to pursue his wife
with gallantries.




CHAPTER II.

Yes, Molnar's wife had the devil in her, and it was her family
heritage.  Her father, a poor cottager and day labourer, had been in
his youth one of the most notorious and boldest brawlers in the
neighborhood; even now, when prematurely aged and half-broken down by
want and hard work, people willingly avoided him and did not sit at the
same table in the tavern if it could be helped.  In former years he had
been a frequent inmate of the county prison, where the bruises and cuts
received in the brawl on whose account he was incarcerated had time to
heal; two years before he had been in jail three months because he had
used a manure-fork to prevent a tax-collector from seizing his bed, and
the beautiful Panna had then gone to the capital once or twice a week
to carry him cheese, wine, bread, and underclothing, and otherwise make
his situation easier, so far as she could.

The family vice of sudden fits of passion had increased to a tragedy in
the destiny of the only son.  He was a handsome fellow, slender as a
pine-tree, the image of his sister, whom he loved with a tenderness
very unusual among peasants; he early became the supporter and
companion of his father in his Sunday brawls, and the village was not
at all displeased when he was drafted into the army.  It would have
been an easy matter, as he was an only son, to release him from
military service, but he was obliged to go because two fathers of
soldiers could not be found in the village to give the testimony
necessary for his liberation.  He became a conscript in 1865, and, a
year after, the double war between Prussia and Italy broke out.  The
young fellow's regiment was stationed in the Venetian provinces.  One
night he was assigned to outpost duty in the field; the enemy was not
near, it was mid-summer, a sultry night, and the poor wretch fell
asleep.  Unfortunately, the commander of the guard, a young lieutenant
full of over-zeal for the service, was inspecting the outposts and
discovered the sleeper, to whom he angrily gave a kick to recall him to
consciousness of his duty.  The lad started up, and without hesitation
or reflection, dealt his assailant a furious blow in the face.  There
was a great uproar, soldiers rushed forward, and had the utmost
difficulty in mastering the enraged young fellow; he was taken to
headquarters in irons, and, after a short trial by court-martial, shot
on the same day.  The family did not learn the terrible news until
weeks later, from a dry official letter of the regimental commander.
How terrible was the grief of the father and sister!  The man aged ten
years in a week, and the girl, at that time a child twelve years old,
became so pale and thin from sorrow that the neighbors thought she
would not survive it.  Not survive it?  What do we not outlive!  She
conquered the anguish and developed into the most beautiful maiden in
the village.

There was an austere charm, an unintentional, unconscious attraction in
her, which won every one.  Her notorious origin was not visited upon
her, and even the rich girls in the village gladly made her their
friend.  While at work in the fields she sang in a ringing voice; in
the spinning-room, in winter, she was full of jests and merry tales, as
gay and gracious as beseemed her age.  Probably on account of her
vivacious temperament and the feeling of vigour which robust health
bestows, she was extremely fond of dancing, and never failed on Sundays
to appear in the large courtyard of the tavern when, in the afternoon,
the whirling and stamping began.  Her beauty would doubtless have made
her the most popular partner among the girls, had not the lads felt a
certain fear of her.  A purring kitten among her girl companions, ready
to give and take practical jokes, she was all claws and teeth against
men, and many a bold youth who, after the dance, attempted to take the
usual liberties, met with so severe a rebuff that he bore for a week a
memento in the shape of a scratch across his whole face.  Therefore she
did not have a superabundance of partners, and thus escaped the
jealousy which, otherwise, her charms would certainly have roused in
the other girls.

A dispensation of Providence rendered her irritability the means of
deciding the whole course of her life.

One Sunday, late in the summer, soon after the reaping and threshing
were over--she was then twenty--she again stood in the bright warm
afternoon sunshine in the spacious courtyard of the village tavern,
among a gay group of giggling lasses, waiting with joyful impatience
for the dancing to begin.  The two village gipsies who made bricks
during the week and played on Sundays, were already there, leaning
against one of the wooden pillars of the porch in front of the house,
and tuning their fiddles.  The lads crowded together, shouting jesting
remarks to the group of girls, who answered them promptly and to the
point.  One after another the young men left their companions and took
from the laughing bevy of maidens a partner, who, as village custom
required, at first resisted, but finally yielded to the gentle
force--not without some pleasantly exciting struggling and pulling--and
was soon whirling around with her cavalier amid shouting and stamping,
till the dust rose in clouds.

The beautiful Panna, for reasons already known to us, was not the first
person invited to dance.  But at last her turn came also, and she could
jump with a neighbour's son, till she was out of breath, to her heart's
content.  After spending more than fifteen minutes in vigourous, rapid
motion, she finally sank, in happy exhaustion, upon a pile of bricks
near a coach-house which was being built, and with flaming cheeks and
panting bosom struggled for breath.  Pista, the cartwright, profited by
the moment to approach, and with gay cries and gestures invite her to
dance again.  Pista was a handsome fellow, but had the unfortunate
propensity of drinking on Sundays, and this time was evidently
intoxicated.  The vinous suitor was not to Panna's taste, besides, she
was already tired, and she did not answer his first speech.  But as he
did not desist, but seized her arm to drag her up and away by force,
she tartly answered that she would not dance now.  This only made him
still more persistent.

"Why, why, you fierce little darling, do you suppose you can't be
mastered?" he cried, trying with both hands to seize her beautiful
black head to press a smack upon her lips.  She thrust him back once,
twice, with a more and more violent shove, but he returned to the
attack, becoming ruder and more vehement.  Then she lost her
self-control, and the choleric family blood suddenly seethed in her
veins.  Bending down to the heap of bricks on which she had just sat,
she grasped a fragment and, with the speed of lightning, dealt her
persecutor a furious blow.  Misfortune guided her hand, and she struck
him full in the face.  Pista shrieked and staggered to the neighbouring
wall, against which he leaned half-fainting, while between the fingers
of the hands which he had raised to the wounded spot, the red blood
gushed in a horribly abundant stream.

All this had been the work of a moment, and the young people who filled
the courtyard did not notice the outrageous act until the mischief was
done.  Shrieks, running hither and thither, and confusion followed.
The fiddlers stopped and stretched their necks, but prudently kept
aloof, as they had learned to do during frequent brawls; the girls
screamed and wrung their hands, the youths shouted hasty questions,
crowding around their bleeding companion.  Water was quickly procured,
cold bandages were applied to the swollen, shapeless face, and other
efforts were made to relieve him, while at the same time he was
besieged with questions about the event.

After dealing the fatal blow Panna had stood for a moment deadly pale,
as if paralyzed, and then darted off as though pursued by fiends.
Perhaps this was fortunate, for she would have fared badly if the
enraged lads had had her in their power, when all, amid the confused
medley of outcries, had learned the truth.  There was no time to pursue
her, for Pista seemed to be constantly growing worse; the cold water
and fomentations did not stop the bleeding; he soon lost consciousness
and lay on the ground amid the terrified, helpless group, an inert
mass, until some one made the sensible proposal to carry him home to
his mother, a poor widow, which, with their united strength, was
instantly done.

Meanwhile, Panna had rushed to her own home, locked herself in, and sat
on the bench by the stove, an image of grief and despair.  She was
incapable of coherent thought, nothing but the spectacle of the
bleeding Pista staggering against the wall, stood distinctly before her
mind.  But she could not give herself up to her desolate brooding long:
at the end of fifteen minutes the bolted door shook violently.  She
started up and listened; it was her father, and she reluctantly went to
the door and opened it.  The old man entered, shot the bolt behind him,
and asked in a trembling voice:

"For God's sake, child, what have you done?'"

Panna burst into a flood of tears; they were the first she had shed
since the incident described.

"He pressed upon me too boldly.  And I didn't mean to do it.  I only
wanted to keep him off."

"You were possessed.  The devil is in us.  To kill a man by a blow!"

The girl shrieked aloud.  "Kill, do you say?"

"Sol was just told.  They say he is dead."

"That is impossible, it's a lie," Panna murmured in a hollow tone,
while her face looked corpse-like.  She seemed to cower into herself
and to grow smaller, as if the earth was swallowing her by inches.  But
this condition lasted only a few minutes, then she roused herself and
hurried out, ere her father could detain her.  She entered a narrow
path which ran behind the houses and was usually deserted, and raced as
fast as her feet would carry her to the hut occupied by Frau Molnar,
which was close at hand.  Springing across the narrow ditch which
bordered the back of the yard, she hurried through the kitchen-garden
behind the house and in an instant was in the only room it contained
except the kitchen.  On the bed lay a human form from which came a
groan, and beside it sat old Frau Molnar