

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.