THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE

 SECOND PART

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 MEANS OF DEFENCE, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR. 

 "To be or not to be, That is the question. " --Shakspeare, _Hamlet_. 

 MEDITATION X. 

 A TREATISE ON MARITAL POLICY. 

When a man reaches the position in which the first part of this booksets him, we suppose that the idea of his wife being possessed byanother makes his heart beat, and rekindles his passion, either by anappeal to his _amour propre_, his egotism, or his self-interest, forunless he is still on his wife's side, he must be one of the lowest ofmen and deserves his fate. 

In this trying moment it is very difficult for a husband to avoidmaking mistakes; for, with regard to most men, the art of ruling awife is even less known than that of judiciously choosing one. However, marital policy consists chiefly in the practical applicationof three principles which should be the soul of your conduct. Thefirst is never to believe what a woman says; the second, always tolook for the spirit without dwelling too much upon the letter of heractions; and the third, not to forget that a woman is never sogarrulous as when she holds her tongue, and is never working with moreenergy than when she keeps quiet. 

From the moment that your suspicions are aroused, you ought to be likea man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of thebeast, in fear of being thrown from the saddle. 

But art consists not so much in the knowledge of principles, as in themanner of applying them; to reveal them to ignorant people is to put arazor in the hand of a monkey. Moreover, the first and most vital ofyour duties consists in perpetual dissimulation, an accomplishment inwhich most husbands are sadly lacking. In detecting the symptoms ofminotaurism a little too plainly marked in the conduct of their wives, most men at once indulge in the most insulting suspicions. Their mindscontract a tinge of bitterness which manifests itself in theirconversation, and in their manners; and the alarm which fills theirheart, like the gas flame in a glass globe, lights up theircountenances so plainly, that it accounts for their conduct. 

Now a woman, who has twelve hours more than you have each day toreflect and to study you, reads the suspicion written upon your faceat the very moment that it arises. She will never forget thisgratuitous insult. Nothing can ever remedy that. All is now said anddone, and the very next day, if she has opportunity, she will join theranks of inconsistent women. 

You ought then to begin under these circumstances to affect towardsyour wife the same boundless confidence that you have hitherto had inher. If you begin to lull her anxieties by honeyed words, you arelost, she will not believe you; for she has her policy as you haveyours. Now there is as much need for tact as for kindliness in yourbehavior, in order to inculcate in her, without her knowing it, afeeling of security, which will lead her to lay back her ears, andprevent you from using rein or spur at the wrong moment. 

But how can we compare a horse, the frankest of all animals, to abeing, the flashes of whose thought, and the movements of whoseimpulses render her at moments more prudent than the ServiteFra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had;more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profoundthan Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; aspliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in thewhole wide world but you?

Moreover, to this dissimulation, by means of which the springs thatmove your conduct ought to be made as invisible as those that move theworld, must be added absolute self-control. That diplomaticimperturbability, so boasted of by Talleyrand, must be the least ofyour qualities; his exquisite politeness and the grace of his mannersmust distinguish your conversation. The professor here expresslyforbids you to use your whip, if you would obtain complete controlover your gentle Andalusian steed. 

 LXI. If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he strike his wife it is suicide!

How can we think of a government without police, an action withoutforce, a power without weapons?--Now this is exactly the problem whichwe shall try to solve in our future meditations. But first we mustsubmit two preliminary observations. They will furnish us with twoother theories concerning the application of all the mechanical meanswhich we propose you should employ. An instance from life will refreshthese arid and dry dissertations: the hearing of such a story will belike laying down a book, to work in the field. 

In the year 1822, on a fine morning in the month of February, I wastraversing the boulevards of Paris, from the quiet circles of theMarais to the fashionable quarters of the Chaussee-d'Antin, and Iobserved for the first time, not without a certain philosophic joy, the diversity of physiognomy and the varieties of costume which, fromthe Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule even to the Madeleine, made each portion ofthe boulevard a world of itself, and this whole zone of Paris, a grandpanorama of manners. Having at that time no idea of what the worldwas, and little thinking that one day I should have the audacity toset myself up as a legislator on marriage, I was going to take lunchat the house of a college friend, who was perhaps too early in lifeafflicted with a wife and two children. My former professor ofmathematics lived at a short distance from the house of my collegefriend, and I promised myself the pleasure of a visit to this worthymathematician before indulging my appetite for the dainties offriendship. I accordingly made my way to the heart of a study, whereeverything was covered with a dust which bore witness to the loftyabstraction of the scholar. But a surprise was in store for me there. I perceived a pretty woman seated on the arm of an easy chair, as ifmounted on an English horse; her face took on the look of conventionalsurprise worn by mistresses of the house towards those they do notknow, but she did not disguise the expression of annoyance which, atmy appearance, clouded her countenance with the thought that I wasaware how ill-timed was my presence. My master, doubtless absorbed inan equation, had not yet raised his head; I therefore waved my righthand towards the young lady, like a fish moving his fin, and on tiptoeI retired with a mysterious smile which might be translated "I willnot be the one to prevent him committing an act of infidelity toUrania. " She nodded her head with one of those sudden gestures whosegraceful vivacity is not to be translated into words. 

"My good friend, don't go away, " cried the geometrician. "This is mywife!"

I bowed for the second time!--Oh, Coulon! Why wert thou not present toapplaud the only one of thy pupils who understood from that moment theexpression, "anacreontic, " as applied to a bow?--The effect must havebeen very overwhelming; for Madame the Professoress, as the Germanssay, rose hurriedly as if to go, making me a slight bow which seemedto say: "Adorable!----" Her husband stopped her, saying:

"Don't go, my child, this is one of my pupils. "

The young woman bent her head towards the scholar as a bird perched ona bough stretches its neck to pick up a seed. 

"It is not possible, " said the husband, heaving a sigh, "and I amgoing to prove it to you by A plus B. "

"Let us drop that, sir, I beg you, " she answered, pointing with a winkto me. 

If it had been a problem in algebra, my master would have understoodthis look, but it was Chinese to him, and so he went on. 

"Look here, child, I constitute you judge in the matter; our income isten thousand francs. "

At these words I retired to the door, as if I were seized with a wilddesire to examine the framed drawings which had attracted myattention. My discretion was rewarded by an eloquent glance. Alas! shedid not know that in Fortunio I could have played the part ofSharp-Ears, who heard the truffles growing. 

"In accordance with the principles of general economy, " said mymaster, "no one ought to spend in rent and servant's wages more thantwo-tenths of his income; now our apartment and our attendance costaltogether a hundred louis. I give you twelve hundred francs to dresswith" [in saying this he emphasized every syllable]. "Your food, " hewent on, takes up four thousand francs, our children demand at lesttwenty-five louis; I take for myself only eight hundred francs;washing, fuel and light mount up to about a thousand francs; so thatthere does not remain, as you see, more than six hundred francs forunforeseen expenses. In order to buy the cross of diamonds, we mustdraw a thousand crowns from our capital, and if once we take thatcourse, my little darling, there is no reason why we should not leaveParis which you love so much, and at once take up our residence in thecountry, in order to retrench. Children and household expenses willincrease fast enough! Come, try to be reasonable!"

"I suppose I must, " she said, "but you will be the only husband inParis who has not given a New Year's gift to his wife. "

And she stole away like a school-boy who goes to finish an imposedduty. My master made a gesture of relief. When he saw the door closehe rubbed his hands, he talked of the war in Spain; and I went my wayto the Rue de Provence, little knowing that I had received the firstinstallment of a great lesson in marriage, any more than I dreamt ofthe conquest of Constantinople by General Diebitsch. I arrived at myhost's house at the very moment they were sitting down to luncheon, after having waited for me the half hour demanded by usage. It was, Ibelieve, as she opened a _pate de foie gras_ that my pretty hostesssaid to her husband, with a determined air:

"Alexander, if you were really nice you would give me that pair ofear-rings that we saw at Fossin's. "

"You shall have them, " cheerfully replied my friend, drawing from hispocketbook three notes of a thousand francs, the sight of which madehis wife's eyes sparkle. "I can no more resist the pleasure ofoffering them to you, " he added, "than you can that of accepting them. This is the anniversary of the day I first saw you, and the diamondswill perhaps make you remember it!----"

"You bad man!" said she, with a winning smile. 

She poked two fingers into her bodice, and pulling out a bouquet ofviolets she threw them with childlike contempt into the face of myfriend. Alexander gave her the price of the jewels, crying out:

"I had seen the flowers!"

I shall never forget the lively gesture and the eager joy with which, like a cat which lays its spotted paw upon a mouse, the little womanseized the three bank notes; she rolled them up blushing withpleasure, and put them in the place of the violets which before hadperfumed her bosom. I could not help thinking about my oldmathematical master. I did not then see any difference between him andhis pupil, than that which exists between a frugal man and a prodigal, little thinking that he of the two who seemed to calculate the better, actually calculated the worse. The luncheon went off merrily. Verysoon, seated in a little drawing-room newly decorated, before acheerful fire which gave warmth and made our hearts expand as in springtime, I felt compelled to make this loving couple a guest'scompliments on the furnishing of their little bower. 

"It is a pity that all this costs so dear, " said my friend, "but it isright that the nest be worthy of the bird; but why the devil do youcompliment me upon curtains which are not paid for?--You make meremember, just at the time I am digesting lunch, that I still owe twothousand francs to a Turk of an upholsterer. "

At these words the mistress of the house made a mental inventory ofthe pretty room with her eyes, and the radiancy of her face changed tothoughtfulness. Alexander took me by the hand and led me to the recessof a bay window. 

"Do you happen, " he said in a low voice, "to have a thousand crowns tolend me? I have only twelve thousand francs income, and this year--"

"Alexander, " cried the dear creature, interrupting her husband, while, rushing up, she offered him the three banknotes, "I see now that it isa piece of folly--"

"What do you mean?" answered he, "keep your money. "

"But, my love, I am ruining you! I ought to know that you love me somuch, that I ought not to tell you all that I wish for. "

"Keep it, my darling, it is your lawful property--nonsense, I shallgamble this winter and get all that back again!"

"Gamble!" cried she, with an expression of horror. "Alexander, takeback these notes! Come, sir, I wish you to do so. "

"No, no, " replied my friend, repulsing the white and delicious littlehand. "Are you not going on Thursday to a ball of Madame de B-----?"

"I will think about what you asked of me, " said I to my comrade. 

I went away bowing to his wife, but I saw plainly after that scenethat my anacreontic salutation did not produce much effect upon her. 

"He must be mad, " thought I as I went away, "to talk of a thousandcrowns to a law student. "

Five days later I found myself at the house of Madame de B-----, whoseballs were becoming fashionable. In the midst of the quadrilles I sawthe wife of my friend and that of the mathematician. Madame Alexanderwore a charming dress; some flowers and white muslin were all thatcomposed it. She wore a little cross _a la Jeannette_, hanging by ablack velvet ribbon which set off the whiteness of her scented skin;long pears of gold decorated her ears. On the neck of Madame theProfessoress sparkled a superb cross of diamonds. 

"How funny that is, " said I to a personage who had not yet studied theworld's ledger, nor deciphered the heart of a single woman. 

That personage was myself. If I had then the desire to dance withthose fair women, it was simply because I knew a secret whichemboldened my timidity. 

"So after all, madame, you have your cross?" I said to her first. 

"Well, I fairly won it!" she replied, with a smile hard to describe. 

"How is this! no ear-rings?" I remarked to the wife of my friend. 

"Ah!" she replied, "I have enjoyed possession of them during a wholeluncheon time, but you see that I have ended by converting Alexander. "

"He allowed himself to be easily convinced?"

She answered with a look of triumph. 

Eight years afterwards, this scene suddenly rose to my memory, thoughI had long since forgotten it, and in the light of the candles Idistinctly discerned the moral of it. Yes, a woman has a horror ofbeing convinced of anything; when you try to persuade her sheimmediately submits to being led astray and continues to play the rolewhich nature gave her. In her view, to allow herself to be won over isto grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound her; inorder to guide her you must employ the power which she herself sofrequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It istherefore in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find theinstruments of his despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must thewoman be made to tyrannize over herself. To know how to offer theear-rings in such a way that they will be returned, is a secret whoseapplication embraces the slightest details of life. And now let uspass to the second observation. 

"He who can manage property of one toman, can manage one of an hundredthousand, " says an Indian proverb; and I, for my part, will enlargeupon this Asiatic adage and declare, that he who can govern one womancan govern a nation, and indeed there is very much similarity betweenthese two governments. Must not the policy of husbands be very nearlythe same as the policy of kings? Do not we see kings trying to amusethe people in order to deprive them of their liberty; throwing food attheir heads for one day, in order to make them forget the misery of awhole year; preaching to them not to steal and at the same timestripping them of everything; and saying to them: "It seems to me thatif I were the people I should be virtuous"? It is from England that weobtain the precedent which husbands should adopt in their houses. Those who have eyes ought to see that when the government is runningsmoothly the Whigs are rarely in power. A long Tory ministry hasalways succeeded an ephemeral Liberal cabinet. The orators of anational party resemble the rats which wear their teeth away ingnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smellthe nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman isthe Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in which we haveleft her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of more than oneprivilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to waste herstrength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when she is onthe point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the ground, quite gently and with infinite grace, saying to her: "Bravo!" andleaving her to expect success in the hereafter. The craftiness of thismanoeuvre will prove a fine support to you in the employment of anymeans which it may please you to choose from your arsenal, for theobject of subduing your wife. 

Such are the general principles which a husband should put intopractice, if he wishes to escape mistakes in ruling his littlekingdom. Nevertheless, in spite of what was decided by the minority atthe council of Macon (Montesquieu, who had perhaps foreseen the comingof constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part ofhis writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found onthe side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a body, and we commence by investigating the means to gain control of hermoral nature. The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, ismore noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedenceto science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene. 

 MEDITATION XI. 

 INSTRUCTION IN THE HOME. 

Whether wives should or should not be put under instruction--such isthe question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this isthe only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise. Knowledge and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of thisproblem. Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIIIreckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and theunhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw, which he knew so well how to balance by his own weight, hecontemplates at one end of it the fanatic ignorance of a lay brother, the apathy of a serf, the shining armor on the horses of a banneret;he thinks he hears the cry, "France and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!" But heturns round, he smiles as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer, who is captain in the national guard; the elegant carriage of a stockbroker; the simple costume of a peer of France turned journalist andsending his son to the Polytechnique; then he notices the costlystuffs, the newspapers, the steam engines; and he drinks his coffeefrom a cup of Sevres, at the bottom of which still glitters the "N"surmounted by a crown. 

"Away with civilization! Away with thought!"--That is your cry. Youought to hold in horror the education of women for the reason so wellrealized in Spain, that it is easier to govern a nation of idiots thana nation of scholars. A nation degraded is happy: if she has not thesentiment of liberty, neither has she the storms and disturbanceswhich it begets; she lives as polyps live; she can be cut up into twoor three pieces and each piece is still a nation, complete and living, and ready to be governed by the first blind man who arms himself withthe pastoral staff. 

What is it that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity?Ignorance; ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives ondarkness and silence. Now happiness in the domestic establishment asin a political state is a negative happiness. The affection of apeople for a king, in an absolute monarchy, is perhaps less contraryto nature than the fidelity of a wife towards her husband, when lovebetween them no longer exists. Now we know that, in your house, loveat this moment has one foot on the window-sill. It is necessary foryou, therefore, to put into practice that salutary rigor by which M. De Metternich prolongs his _statu quo_; but we would advise you to doso with more tact and with still more tenderness; for your wife ismore crafty than all the Germans put together, and as voluptuous asthe Italians. 

You should, therefore, try to put off as long as possible the fatalmoment when your wife asks you for a book. This will be easy. You willfirst of all pronounce in a tone of disdain the phrase "Bluestocking;" and, on her request being repeated, you will tell her whatridicule attaches, among the neighbors, to pedantic women. 

You will then repeat to her, very frequently, that the most lovableand the wittiest women in the world are found at Paris, where womennever read;

That women are like people of quality who, according to Mascarillo, know everything without having learned anything; that a woman whileshe is dancing, or while she is playing cards, without even having theappearance of listening, ought to know how to pick up from theconversation of talented men the ready-made phrases out of which foolsmanufacture their wit at Paris;

That in this country decisive judgments on men and affairs are passedround from hand to hand; and that the little cutting phrase with whicha woman criticises an author, demolishes a work, or heaps contempt ona picture, has more power in the world than a court decision;

That women are beautiful mirrors, which naturally reflect the mostbrilliant ideas;

That natural wit is everything, and the best education is gainedrather from what we learn in the world than by what we read in books;

That, above all, reading ends in making the eyes dull, etc. 

To think of leaving a woman at liberty to read the books which hercharacter of mind may prompt her to choose! This is to drop a spark ina powder magazine; it is worse than that, it is to teach your wife toseparate herself from you; to live in an imaginary world, in aParadise. For what do women read? Works of passion, the _Confessions_of Rousseau, romances, and all those compositions which work mostpowerfully on their sensibility. They like neither argument nor theripe fruits of knowledge. Now have you ever considered the resultswhich follow these poetical readings?

Romances, and indeed all works of imagination, paint sentiments andevents with colors of a very different brilliancy from those presentedby nature. The fascination of such works springs less from the desirewhich each author feels to show his skill in putting forth choice anddelicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the humanintellect. It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everythingthat he lays up in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces, what monuments of the dead are not made more beautiful than actualnature in the artistic representation? The soul of the reader assistsin this conspiracy against the truth, either by means of the profoundsilence which it enjoys in reading or by the fire of mental conceptionwith which it is agitated or by the clearness with which imagery isreflected in the mirror of the understanding. Who has not seen onreading the _Confessions_ of Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens isdescribed as much prettier than she ever was in actual life? It mightalmost be said that our souls dwell with delight upon the figureswhich they had met in a former existence, under fairer skies; thatthey accept the creations of another soul only as wings on which theymay soar into space; features the most delicate they bring toperfection by making them their own; and the most poetic expressionwhich appears in the imagery of an author brings forth still moreethereal imagery in the mind of a reader. To read is to join with thewriter in a creative act. The mystery of the transubstantiation ofideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive consciousness that wehave of a vocation loftier than our present destiny. Or, is it basedon the lost tradition of a former life? What must that life have been, if this slight residuum of memory offers us such volumes of delight?

Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much moresusceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most violenttransport. She creates for herself an ideal existence beside which allreality grows pale; she at once attempts to realize this voluptuouslife, to take to herself the magic which she sees in it. And, withoutknowing it, she passes from spirit to letter and from soul to sense. 

And would you be simple enough to believe that the manners, thesentiments of a man like you, who usually dress and undress beforeyour wife, can counterbalance the influence of these books andoutshine the glory of their fictitious lovers, in whose garments thefair reader sees neither hole nor stain?--Poor fool! too late, alas!for her happiness and for yours, your wife will find out that the_heroes_ of poetry are as rare in real life as the _Apollos_ ofsculpture!

Very many husbands will find themselves embarrassed in trying toprevent their wives from reading, yet there are certain people whoallege that reading has this advantage, that men know what their wivesare about when they have a book in hand. In the first place you willsee, in the next Meditation, what a tendency the sedentary life has tomake a woman quarrelsome; but have you never met those beings withoutpoetry, who succeed in petrifying their unhappy companions by reducinglife to its most mechanical elements? Study great men in theirconversation and learn by heart the admirable arguments by which theycondemn poetry and the pleasures of imagination. 

But if, after all your efforts, your wife persists in wishing to read, put at her disposal at once all possible books from the A B C of herlittle boy to _Rene_, a book more dangerous to you when in her handsthan _Therese Philosophe_. You might create in her an utter disgustfor reading by giving her tedious books; and plunge her into utteridiocy with _Marie Alacoque_, _The Brosse de Penitence_, or with thechansons which were so fashionable in the time of Louis XV; but lateron you will find, in the present volume, the means of so thoroughlyemploying your wife's time, that any kind of reading will be quite outof the question. 

And first of all, consider the immense resources which the educationof women has prepared for you in your efforts to turn your wife fromher fleeting taste for science. Just see with what admirable stupiditygirls lend themselves to reap the benefit of the education which isimposed upon them in France; we give them in charge to nursery maids, to companions, to governesses who teach them twenty tricks of coquetryand false modesty, for every single noble and true idea which theyimpart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed tothe idea that they are sent into the world to imitate theirgrandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water littleBengal rose-bushes, to fill in worsted work, or to put on collars. Moreover, if a little girl in her tenth year has more refinement thana boy of twenty, she is timid and awkward. She is frightened at aspider, chatters nonsense, thinks of dress, talks about the fashionsand has not the courage to be either a watchful mother or a chastewife. 

Notice what progress she had made; she has been shown how to paintroses, and to embroider ties in such a way as to earn eight sous aday. She has learned the history of France in _Ragois_ and chronologyin the _Tables du Citoyen Chantreau_, and her young imagination hasbeen set free in the realm of geography; all without any aim, excepting that of keeping away all that might be dangerous to herheart; but at the same time her mother and her teachers repeat withunwearied voice the lesson, that the whole science of a woman lies inknowing how to arrange the fig leaf which our Mother Eve wore. "Shedoes not hear for fifteen years, " says Diderot, "anything else but 'mydaughter, your fig leaf is on badly; my daughter, your fig leaf is onwell; my daughter, would it not look better so?'"

Keep your wife then within this fine and noble circle of knowledge. Ifby chance your wife wishes to have a library, buy for her Florian, Malte-Brun, _The Cabinet des Fees_, _The Arabian Nights_, Redoute's_Roses_, _The Customs of China_, _The Pigeons_, by Madame Knip, thegreat work on Egypt, etc. Carry out, in short, the clever suggestionof that princess who, when she was told of a riot occasioned by thedearness of bread, said, "Why don't they eat cake?"

Perhaps, one evening, your wife will reproach you for being sullen andnot speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous, when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slightannoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matterto you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant ofabsurdities, and that your marital obscurantism has brought a doll toyour arms? As you have not sufficient courage to undertake a fairertask, would it not be better to lead your wife along the beaten trackof married life in safety, than to run the risk of making her scalethe steep precipices of love? She is likely to be a mother: you mustnot exactly expect to have Gracchi for sons, but to be really _paterquem nuptiae demonstrant_; now, in order to aid you in reaching thisconsummation, we must make this book an arsenal from which each one, in accordance with his wife's character and his own, may chooseweapons fit to employ against the terrible genius of evil, which isalways ready to rise up in the soul of a wife; and since it may fairlybe considered that the ignorant are the most cruel opponents offeminine education, this Meditation will serve as a breviary for themajority of husbands. 

If a woman has received a man's education, she possesses in very truththe most brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both toherself and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare ashappiness itself; and if you do not possess her for your wife, yourbest course is to confine the one you do possess, for the sake of yourcommon felicity, to the region of ideas she was born in, for you mustnot forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy you, bysetting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted toabuse her power. 

After all, by following the system prescribed in this Meditation, aman of superiority will be relieved from the necessity of putting histhoughts into small change, when he wishes to be understood by hiswife, if indeed this man of superiority has been guilty of the follyof marrying one of those poor creatures who cannot understand him, instead of choosing for his wife a young girl whose mind and heart hehas tested and studied for a considerable time. 

Our aim in this last matrimonial observation has not been to adviseall men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do notwish each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame deStael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a unionbetween herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been veryunhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplishedin a very different sense from this virago of the nineteenth century. 

And, indeed, when we praise those undiscoverable girls so happilyeducated by chance, so well endowed by nature, whose delicate soulsendure so well the rude contact of the great soul of him we call _aman_, we mean to speak of those rare and noble creatures of whomGoethe has given us a model in his Claire of _Egmont_; we are thinkingof those women who seek no other glory than that of playing their partwell; who adapt themselves with amazing pliancy to the will andpleasure of those whom nature has given them for masters; soaring atone time into the boundless sphere of their thought and in turnstooping to the simple task of amusing them as if they were children;understanding well the inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls, understanding also their slightest word, their most puzzling looks;happy in silence, happy also in the midst of loquacity; and well awarethat the pleasures, the ideas and the moral instincts of a Lord Byroncannot be those of a bonnet-maker. But we must stop; this fair picturehas led us too far from our subject; we are treating of marriage andnot of love. 

 MEDITATION XII. 

 THE HYGIENE OF MARRIAGE. 

The aim of this Meditation is to call to your attention a new methodof defence, by which you may reduce the will of your new wife to acondition of utter and abject submission. This is brought about by thereaction upon her moral nature of physical changes, and the wiselowering of her physical condition by a diet skillfully controlled. 

This great and philosophical question of conjugal medicine willdoubtless be regarded favorably by all who are gouty, are impotent, orsuffer from catarrh; and by that legion of old men whose dullness wehave quickened by our article on the predestined. But it principallyconcerns those husbands who have courage enough to enter into thosepaths of machiavelism, such as would not have been unworthy of thatgreat king of France who endeavored to secure the happiness of thenation at the expense of certain noble heads. Here, the subject is thesame. The amputation or the weakening of certain members is always tothe advantage of the whole body. 

Do you think seriously that a celibate who has been subject to a dietconsisting of the herb hanea, of cucumbers, of purslane and theapplications of leeches to his ears, as recommended by Sterne, wouldbe able to carry by storm the honor of your wife? Suppose that adiplomat had been clever enough to affix a permanent linen plaster tothe head of Napoleon, or to purge him every morning: Do you think thatNapoleon, Napoleon the Great, would ever have conquered Italy? WasNapoleon, during his campaign in Russia, a prey to the most horriblepangs of dysuria, or was he not? That is one of the questions whichhas weighed upon the minds of the whole world. Is it not certain thatcooling applications, douches, baths, etc. , produce great changes inmore or less acute affections of the brain? In the middle of the heatof July when each one of your pores slowly filters out and returns tothe devouring atmosphere the glasses of iced lemonade which you havedrunk at a single draught, have you ever felt the flame of courage, the vigor of thought, the complete energy which rendered existencelight and sweet to you some months before?

No, no; the iron most closely cemented into the hardest stone willraise and throw apart the most durable monument, by reason of thesecret influence exercised by the slow and invisible variations ofheat and cold, which vex the atmosphere. In the first place, let us besure that if atmospheric mediums have an influence over man, there isstill a stronger reason for believing that man, in turn, influencesthe imagination of his kind, by the more or less vigor with which heprojects his will and thus produces a veritable atmosphere around him. 

It is in this fact that the power of the actor's talent lies, as wellas that of poetry and of fanaticism; for the former is the eloquenceof words, as the latter is the eloquence of actions; and in this liesthe foundation of a science, so far in its infancy. 

This will, so potent in one man against another, this nervous andfluid force, eminently mobile and transmittable, is itself subject tothe changing condition of our organization, and there are manycircumstances which make this frail organism of ours to vary. At thispoint, our metaphysical observation shall stop and we will enter intoan analysis of the circumstances which develop the will of man andimpart to it a grater degree of strength or weakness. 

Do not believe, however, that it is our aim to induce you to putcataplasms on the honor of your wife, to lock her up in a sweatinghouse, or to seal her up like a letter; no. We will not even attemptto teach you the magnetic theory which would give you the power tomake your will triumph in the soul of your wife; there is not a singlehusband who would accept the happiness of an eternal love at the priceof this perpetual strain laid upon his animal forces. But we shallattempt to expound a powerful system of hygiene, which will enable youto put out the flame when your chimney takes fire. The elegant womenof Paris and the provinces (and these elegant women form a verydistinguished class among the honest women) have plenty of means ofattaining the object which we propose, without rummaging in thearsenal of medicine for the four cold specifics, the water-lily andthe thousand inventions worthy only of witches. We will leave toAelian his herb hanea and to Sterne the purslane and cucumber whichindicate too plainly his antiphlogistic purpose. 

You should let your wife recline all day long on soft armchairs, inwhich she sinks into a veritable bath of eiderdown or feathers; youshould encourage in every way that does no violence to yourconscience, the inclination which women have to breathe no other airbut the scented atmosphere of a chamber seldom opened, where daylightcan scarcely enter through the soft, transparent curtains. 

You will obtain marvelous results from this system, after havingpreviously experienced the shock of her excitement; but if you arestrong enough to support this momentary transport of your wife youwill soon see her artificial energy die away. In general, women loveto live fast, but, after their tempest of passion, return to thatcondition of tranquillity which insures the happiness of a husband. 

Jean-Jacques, through the instrumentality of his enchanting Julie, must have proved to your wife that it was infinitely becoming torefrain from affronting her delicate stomach and her refined palate bymaking chyle out of coarse lumps of beef, and enormous collops ofmutton. Is there anything purer in the world than those interestingvegetables, always fresh and scentless, those tinted fruits, thatcoffee, that fragrant chocolate, those oranges, the golden apples ofAtalanta, the dates of Arabia and the biscuits of Brussels, awholesome and elegant food which produces satisfactory results, at thesame time that it imparts to a woman an air of mysterious originality?By the regimen which she chooses she becomes quite celebrated in herimmediate circle, just as she would be by a singular toilet, abenevolent action or a _bon mot_. Pythagoras must needs have cast hisspell over her, and become as much petted by her as a poodle or anape. 

Never commit the imprudence of certain men who, for the sake ofputting on the appearance of wit, controvert the feminine dictum, _that the figure is preserved by meagre diet_. Women on such a dietnever grow fat, that is clear and positive; do you stick to that. 

Praise the skill with which some women, renowned for their beauty, have been able to preserve it by bathing themselves in milk, severaltimes a day, or in water compounded of substances likely to render theskin softer and to lower the nervous tension. 

Advise her above all things to refrain from washing herself in coldwater; because water warm or tepid is the proper thing for all kindsof ablutions. 

Let Broussais be your idol. At the least indisposition of your wife, and on the slightest pretext, order the application of leeches; do noteven shrink from applying from time to time a few dozen on yourself, in order to establish the system of that celebrated doctor in yourhousehold. You will constantly be called upon from your position ashusband to discover that your wife is too ruddy; try even sometimes tobring the blood to her head, in order to have the right to introduceinto the house at certain intervals a squad of leeches. 

Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wineagreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; everyother kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drinkwater alone; if you do, you are lost. 

"Impetuous fluid! As soon as you press against the floodgates of thebrain, how quickly do they yield to your power! Then Curiosity comesswimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plungeinto the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She followsthe torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw andreed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformationtaken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn upeven to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession ofit. O ye drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic spring thatyou have so often turned and turned again the world at your will, throwing beneath your feet the weak, trampling on his neck, andsometimes changing even the form and aspect of nature!"

If by this system of inaction, in combination with our system of diet, you fail to obtain satisfactory results, throw yourself with might andmain into another system, which we will explain to you. 

Man has a certain degree of energy given to him. Such and such a manor woman stands to another as ten is to thirty, as one to five; andthere is a certain degree of energy which no one of us ever exceeds. The quantity of energy, or willpower, which each of us possessesdiffuses itself like sound; it is sometimes weak, sometimes strong; itmodifies itself according to the octaves to which it mounts. Thisforce is unique, and although it may be dissipated in desire, inpassion, in toils of intellect or in bodily exertion, it turns towardsthe object to which man directs it. A boxer expends it in blows of thefist, the baker in kneading his bread, the poet in the enthusiasmwhich consumes and demands an enormous quantity of it; it passes tothe feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, andmay I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon mybed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost allmen spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions, this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowedthem; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and thestruggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. If, inthe case of your wife, this energy has not been subdued by theprescribed dietary regimen, subject her to some form of activity whichwill constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sumof force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by someoccupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without settingyour wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways oftiring her out under the load of constant work. 

In leaving it to you to find means for carrying out our design--andthese means vary with circumstances--we would point out that dancingis one of the very best abysses in which love may bury itself. Thispoint having been very well treated by a contemporary, we will givehim here an opportunity of speaking his mind:

 "The poor victim who is the admiration of an enchanted audience pays dear for her success. What result can possibly follow on exertions so ill-proportioned to the resources of the delicate sex? The muscles of the body, disproportionately wearied, are forced to their full power of exertion. The nervous forces, intended to feed the fire of passions, and the labor of the brain, are diverted from their course. The failure of desire, the wish for rest, the exclusive craving for substantial food, all point to a nature impoverished, more anxious to recruit than to enjoy. Moreover, a denizen of the side scenes said to me one day, 'Whoever has lived with dancers has lived with sheep; for in their exhaustion they can think of nothing but strong food. ' Believe me, then, the love which a ballet girl inspires is very delusive; in her we find, under an appearance of an artificial springtime, a soil which is cold as well as greedy, and senses which are utterly dulled. The Calabrian doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for the hysteric affections which are common among the women of their country; and the Arabs use a somewhat similar recipe for the highbred mares, whose too lively temperament hinders their fecundity. 'Dull as a dancer' is a familiar proverb at the theatre. In fact, the best brains of Europe are convinced that dancing brings with it a result eminently cooling. 

 "In support of this it may be necessary to add other observations. The life of shepherds gives birth to irregular loves. The morals of weavers were horribly decried in Greece. The Italians have given birth to a proverb concerning the lubricity of lame women. The Spanish, in whose veins are found many mixtures of African incontinence, have expressed their sentiments in a maxim which is familiar with them: _Muger y gallina pierna quebrantada_ [it is good that a woman and a hen have one broken leg]. The profound sagacity of the Orientals in the art of pleasure is altogether expressed by this ordinance of the caliph Hakim, founder of the Druses, who forbade, under pain of death, the making in his kingdom of any shoes for women. It seems that over the whole globe the tempests of the heart wait only to break out after the limbs are at rest!"

What an admirable manoeuvre it would be to make a wife dance, and tofeed her on vegetables!

Do not believe that these observations, which are as true as they arewittily stated, contradict in any way the system which we havepreviously prescribed; by the latter, as by the former, we succeed inproducing in a woman that needed listlessness, which is the pledge ofrepose and tranquility. By the latter you leave a door open, that theenemy may flee; by the former, you slay him. 

Now at this point it seems to us that we hear timorous people andthose of narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in thename of morality and sentiment. 

"Is not woman endowed with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have?What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or herrequirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which aworkman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because thepoor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claimsthe power to torture them, merely at the dictate of his own fancies, which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening or heatingsystem of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, youcause frightful and cruel sickness, if you bring to the tomb a womanwho is dear to you; if, if, --"

This is our answer:

Have you never noticed into how many different shapes harlequin andcolumbine change their little white hats? They turn and twist them sowell that they become, one after another, a spinning-top, a boat, awine-glass, a half-moon, a cap, a basket, a fish, a whip, a dagger, ababy, and a man's head. 

This is an exact image of the despotism with which you ought to shapeand reshape your wife. 

The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part ofyour furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, thewoman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man;therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is inevery sense yours. Take no notice at all of her murmurs, of her cries, of her sufferings; nature has ordained her for your use, that she maybear everything--children, griefs, blows and pains from man. 

Don't accuse yourself of harshness. In the codes of all the nationswhich are called civilized, man has written the laws which govern thedestiny of women in these cruel terms: _Vae victis!_ Woe to theconquered!

Finally, think upon this last observation, the most weighty, perhaps, of all that we have made up to this time: if you, her husband, do notbreak under the scourge of your will this weak and charming reed, there will be a celibate, capricious and despotic, ready to bring herunder a yoke more cruel still; and she will have to endure twotyrannies instead of one. Under all considerations, therefore, humanity demands that you should follow the system of our hygiene. 

 MEDITATION XIII. 

 OF PERSONAL MEASURES. 

Perhaps the preceding Meditations will prove more likely to developgeneral principles of conduct, than to repel force by force. Theyfurnish, however, the pharmacopoeia of medicine and not the practiceof medicine. Now consider the personal means which nature has put intoyour hands for self-defence; for Providence has forgotten no one; ifto the sepia (that fish of the Adriatic) has been given the black dyeby which he produces a cloud in which he disappears from his enemy, you should believe that a husband has not been left without a weapon;and now the time has come for you to draw yours. 

You ought to have stipulated before you married that your wife shouldnurse her own children; in this case, as long as she is occupied inbearing children or in nursing them you will avoid the danger from oneor two quarters. The wife who is engaged in bringing into the worldand nursing a baby has not really the time to bother with a lover, notto speak of the fact that before and after her confinement she cannotshow herself in the world. In short, how can the most bold of thedistinguished women who are the subject of this work show herselfunder these circumstances in public? O Lord Byron, thou didst not wishto see women even eat!

Six months after her confinement, and when the child is on the eve ofbeing weaned, a woman just begins to feel that she can enjoy herrestoration and her liberty. 

If your wife has not nursed her first child, you have too much sensenot to notice this circumstance, and not to make her desire to nurseher next one. You will read to her the _Emile_ of Jean-Jacques; youwill fill her imagination with a sense of motherly duties; you willexcite her moral feelings, etc. : in a word, you are either a fool or aman of sense; and in the first case, even after reading this book, youwill always be minotaurized; while in the second, you will understandhow to take a hint. 

This first expedient is in reality your own personal business. It willgive you a great advantage in carrying out all the other methods. 

Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to doa service to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, aswell as an Ouvrard contract affair, such as was then attracting thenotice of the Athenians, there is not a single minister who has notendeavored to cut the ears of some dog or other. 

So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point ofthe system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point, by means of blisters, scarifications and cupping. 

Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with amental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion inyour favor. 

A man of considerable mental resources had made his honeymoon last forabout four years; the moon began to wane, and he saw appearing thefatal hollow in its circle. His wife was exactly in that state of mindwhich we attributed at the close of our first part to every honestwoman; she had taken a fancy to a worthless fellow who was bothinsignificant in appearance and ugly; the only thing in his favor was, he was not her own husband. At this juncture, her husband meditatedthe cutting of some dog's tail, in order to renew, if possible, hislease of happiness. His wife had conducted herself with such tact, that it would have been very embarrassing to forbid her lover thehouse, for she had discovered some slight tie of relationship betweenthem. The danger became, day by day, more imminent. The scent of theMinotaur was all around. One evening the husband felt himself plungedinto a mood of deep vexation so acute as to be apparent to his wife. His wife had begun to show him more kindness than she had everexhibited, even during the honeymoon; and hence question afterquestion racked his mind. On her part a dead silence reigned. Theanxious questionings of his mind were redoubled; his suspicions burstforth, and he was seized with forebodings of future calamity! Now, onthis occasion, he deftly applied a Japanese blister, which burned asfiercely as an _auto-da-fe_ of the year 1600. At first his wifeemployed a thousand stratagems to discover whether the annoyance ofher husband was caused by the presence of her lover; it was her firstintrigue and she displayed a thousand artifices in it. Her imaginationwas aroused; it was no longer taken up with her lover; had she notbetter, first of all, probe her husband's secret?

One evening the husband, moved by the desire to confide in his lovinghelpmeet all his troubles, informed her that their whole fortune waslost. They would have to give up their carriage, their box at thetheatre, balls, parties, even Paris itself; perhaps, by living ontheir estate in the country a year or two, they might retrieve all!Appealing to the imagination of his wife, he told her how he pitiedher for her attachment to a man who was indeed deeply in love withher, but was now without fortune; he tore his hair, and his wife wascompelled in honor to be deeply moved; then in this first excitementof their conjugal disturbance he took her off to his estate. Thenfollowed scarifications, mustard plaster upon mustard plaster, and thetails of fresh dogs were cut: he caused a Gothic wing to be built tothe chateau; madame altered the park ten time over in order to havefountains and lakes and variations in the grounds; finally, thehusband in the midst of her labors did not forget his own, whichconsisted in providing her with interesting reading, and launchingupon her delicate attentions, etc. Notice, he never informed his wifeof the trick he had played on her; and if his fortune was recuperated, it was directly after the building of the wing, and the expenditure ofenormous sums in making water-courses; but he assured her that thelake provided a water-power by which mills might be run, etc. 

Now, there was a conjugal blister well conceived, for this husbandneither neglected to rear his family nor to invite to his houseneighbors who were tiresome, stupid or old; and if he spent the winterin Paris, he flung his wife into the vortex of balls and races, sothat she had not a minute to give to lovers, who are usually the fruitof a vacant life. 

Journeys to Italy, Switzerland or Greece, sudden complaints whichrequire a visit to the waters, and the most distant waters, are prettygood blisters. In fact, a man of sense should know how to manufacturea thousand of them. 

Let us continue our examination of such personal methods. 

And here we would have you observe that we are reasoning upon ahypothesis, without which this book will be unintelligible to you;namely, we suppose that your honeymoon has lasted for a respectabletime and that the lady that you married was not a widow, but a maid;on the opposite supposition, it is at least in accordance with Frenchmanners to think that your wife married you merely for the purpose ofbecoming inconsistent. 

From the moment when the struggle between virtue and inconsistencybegins in your home, the whole question rests upon the constant andinvoluntary comparison which your wife is instituting between you andher lover. 

And here you may find still another mode of defence, entirelypersonal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority willnot fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without lettingyour wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring itabout so that she will say to herself some evening while she isputting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband is superior to him. "

In order to succeed, and you ought to be able to succeed, since youhave the immense advantage over the lover in knowing the character ofyour wife, and how she is most easily wounded, you should, with allthe tact of a diplomat, lead this lover to do silly things and causehim to annoy her, without his being aware of it. 

In the first place, this lover, as usual, will seek your friendship, or you will have friends in common; then, either through theinstrumentality of these friends or by insinuations adroitly buttreacherously made, you will lead him astray on essential points; and, with a little cleverness, you will succeed in finding your wife readyto deny herself to her lover when he calls, without either she or hebeing able to tell the reason. Thus you will have created in the bosomof your home a comedy in five acts, in which you play, to your profit, the brilliant role of Figaro or Almaviva; and for some months you willamuse yourself so much the more, because your _amour-propre_, yourvanity, your all, were at stake. 

I had the good fortune in my youth to win the confidence of an old_emigre_ who gave me those rudiments of education which are generallyobtained by young people from women. This friend, whose memory willalways be dear to me, taught me by his example to put into practicethose diplomatic stratagems which require tact as well as grace. 

The Comte de Noce had returned from Coblenz at a time when it wasdangerous for the nobility to be found in France. No one had suchcourage and such kindness, such craft and such recklessness as thisaristocrat. Although he was sixty years old he had married a woman oftwenty-five, being compelled to this act of folly by soft-heartedness;for he thus delivered this poor child from the despotism of acapricious mother. "Would you like to be my widow?" this amiable oldgentleman had said to Mademoiselle de Pontivy, but his heart was tooaffectionate not to become more attached to his wife than a sensibleman ought to be. As in his youth he had been under the influence ofseveral among the cleverest women in the court of Louis XV, he thoughthe would have no difficulty in keeping his wife from any entanglement. What man excepting him have I ever seen, who could put into successfulpractice the teachings which I am endeavoring to give to husbands!What charm could he impart to life by his delightful manners andfascinating conversation!--His wife never knew until after his deathwhat she then learned from me, namely, that he had the gout. He hadwisely retired to a home in the hollow of a valley, close to a forest. God only knows what rambles he used to take with his wife!--His goodstar decreed that Mademoiselle de Pontivy should possess an excellentheart and should manifest in a high degree that exquisite refinement, that sensitive modesty which renders beautiful the plainest girl inthe world. All of a sudden, one of his nephews, a good-lookingmilitary man, who had escaped from the disasters of Moscow, returnedto his uncle's house, as much for the sake of learning how far he hadto fear his cousins, as heirs, as in the hope of laying siege to hisaunt. His black hair, his moustache, the easy small-talk of the staffofficer, a certain freedom which was elegant as well as trifling, hisbright eyes, contrasted favorably with the faded graces of his uncle. I arrived at the precise moment when the young countess was teachingher newly found relation to play backgammon. The proverb says that"women never learn this game excepting from their lovers, and viceversa. " Now, during a certain game, M. De Noce had surprised his wifeand the viscount in the act of exchanging one of those looks which arefull of mingled innocence, fear, and desire. In the evening heproposed to us a hunting-party, and we agreed. I never saw him so gayand so eager as he appeared on the following morning, in spite of thetwinges of gout which heralded an approaching attack. The devilhimself could not have been better able to keep up a conversation ontrifling subjects than he was. He had formerly been a musketeer in theGrays and had known Sophie Arnoud. This explains all. The conversationafter a time became so exceedingly free among us three, that I hopeGod may forgive me for it!

"I would never have believed that my uncle was such a dashing blade?"said the nephew. 

We made a halt, and while we were sitting on the edge of a greenforest clearing, the count led us on to discourse about women just asBrantome and Aloysia might have done. 

"You fellows are very happy under the present government!--the womenof the time are well mannered" (in order to appreciate the exclamationof the old gentleman, the reader should have heard the atrociousstories which the captain had been relating). "And this, " he went on, "is one of the advantages resulting from the Revolution. The presentsystem gives very much more charm and mystery to passion. In formertimes women were easy; ah! indeed, you would not believe what skill itrequired, what daring, to wake up those worn-out hearts; we werealways on the _qui vive_. But yet in those days a man becamecelebrated for a broad joke, well put, or for a lucky piece ofinsolence. That is what women love, and it will always be the bestmethod of succeeding with them!"

These last words were uttered in a tone of profound contempt; hestopped, and began to play with the hammer of his gun as if todisguise his deep feeling. 

"But nonsense, " he went on, "my day is over! A man ought to have thebody as well as the imagination young. Why did I marry? What is mosttreacherous in girls educated by mothers who lived in that brilliantera of gallantry, is that they put on an air of frankness, of reserve;they look as if butter would not melt in their mouths, and those whoknow them well feel that they would swallow anything!"

He rose, lifted his gun with a gesture of rage, and dashing it to theground thrust it far up the butt in the moist sod. 

"It would seem as if my dear aunt were fond of a little fun, " said theofficer to me in a low voice. 

"Or of denouements that do not come off!" I added. 

The nephew tightened his cravat, adjusted his collar and gave a jumplike a Calabrian goat. We returned to the chateau at about two in theafternoon. The count kept me with him until dinner-time, under thepretext of looking for some medals, of which he had spoken during ourreturn home. The dinner was dull. The countess treated her nephew withstiff and cold politeness. When we entered the drawing-room the countsaid to his wife:

"Are you going to play backgammon?--We will leave you. "

The young countess made no reply. She gazed at the fire, as if she hadnot heard. Her husband took some steps towards the door, inviting meby the wave of his hand to follow him. At the sound of his footsteps, his wife quickly turned her head. 

"Why do you leave us?" said she, "you will have all tomorrow to showyour friend the reverse of the medals. "

The count remained. Without paying any attention to the awkwardnesswhich had succeeded the former military aplomb of his nephew, thecount exercised during the whole evening his full powers as a charmingconversationalist. I had never before seen him so brilliant or sogracious. We spoke a great deal about women. The witticisms of ourhost were marked by the most exquisite refinement. He made me forgetthat his hair was white, for he showed the brilliancy which belongedto a youthful heart, a gaiety which effaces the wrinkles from thecheek and melts the snow of wintry age. 

The next day the nephew went away. Even after the death of M. De Noce, I tried to profit by the intimacy of those familiar conversations inwhich women are sometimes caught off their guard to sound her, but Icould never learn what impertinence the viscount had exhibited towardshis aunt. His insolence must have been excessive, for since that timeMadame de Noce has refused to see her nephew, and up to the presentmoment never hears him named without a slight movement of hereyebrows. I did not at once guess the end at which the Comte de Noceaimed, in inviting us to go shooting; but I discovered later that hehad played a pretty bold game. 

Nevertheless, if you happen at last, like M. De Noce, to carry off adecisive victory, do not forget to put into practice at once thesystem of blisters; and do not for a moment imagine that such _toursde force_ are to be repeated with safety. If that is the way you useyour talents, you will end by losing caste in your wife's estimation;for she will demand of you, reasonably enough, double what you wouldgive her, and the time will come when you declare bankruptcy. Thehuman soul in its desires follows a sort of arithmetical progression, the end and origin of which are equally unknown. Just as theopium-eater must constantly increase his doses in order to obtain thesame result, so our mind, imperious as it is weak, desires thatfeeling, ideas and objects should go on ever increasing in size and inintensity. Hence the necessity of cleverly distributing the interestin a dramatic work, and of graduating doses in medicine. Thus you see, if you always resort to the employment of means like these, that youmust accommodate such daring measures to many circumstances, andsuccess will always depend upon the motives to which you appeal. 

And finally, have you influence, powerful friends, an important post?The last means I shall suggest cuts to the root of the evil. Would youhave the power to send your wife's lover off by securing hispromotion, or his change of residence by an exchange, if he is amilitary man? You cut off by this means all communication betweenthem; later on we will show you how to do it; for _sublata causatollitur effectus_, --Latin words which may be freely translated "thereis no effect without a cause. "

Nevertheless, you feel that your wife may easily choose another lover;but in addition to these preliminary expedients, you will always havea blister ready, in order to gain time, and calculate how you maybring the affair to an end by fresh devices. 

Study how to combine the system of blisters with the mimic wiles ofCarlin, the immortal Carlin of the _Comedie-Italienne_ who always heldand amused an audience for whole hours, by uttering the same words, varied only by the art of pantomime and pronounced with a thousandinflections of different tone, --"The queen said to the king!" ImitateCarlin, discover some method of always keeping your wife in check, soas not to be checkmated yourself. Take a degree among constitutionalministers, a degree in the art of making promises. Habituate yourselfto show at seasonable times the punchinello which makes children runafter you without knowing the distance they run. We are all children, and women are all inclined through their curiosity to spend their timein pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp. The flame is brilliant and quicklyvanishes, but is not the imagination at hand to act as your ally?Finally, study the happy art of being near her and yet not being nearher; of seizing the opportunity which will yield you pre-eminence inher mind without ever crushing her with a sense of your superiority, or even of her own happiness. If the ignorance in which you have kepther does not altogether destroy her intellect, you must remain in suchrelations with her that each of you will still desire the company ofthe other. 

 MEDITATION XIV. 

 OF APARTMENTS. 

The preceding methods and systems are in a way purely moral; theyshare the nobility of the soul, there is nothing repulsive in them;but now we must proceed to consider precautions _a la Bartholo_. Donot give way to timidity. There is a marital courage, as there is acivil and military courage, as there is the courage of the NationalGuard. 

What is the first course of a young girl after having purchased aparrot? Is it not to fasten it up in a pretty cage, from which itcannot get out without permission?

You may learn your duty from this child. 

Everything that pertains to the arrangement of your house and of yourapartments should be planned so as not to give your wife anyadvantage, in case she has decided to deliver you to the Minotaur;half of all actual mischances are brought about by the deplorablefacilities which the apartments furnish. 

Before everything else determine to have for your porter a _singleman_ entirely devoted to your person. This is a treasure easily to befound. What husband is there throughout the world who has not either afoster-father or some old servant, upon whose knees he has beendandled! There ought to exist by means of your management, a hatredlike that of Artreus and Thyestes between your wife and this Nestor--guardian of your gate. This gate is the Alpha and Omega of anintrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these words--entering and leaving?

Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between acourt and a garden, and so constructed as to be detached from allother buildings. You must abolish all recesses in your apartments. Acupboard, if it contain but six pots of preserves, should be walledin. You are preparing yourself for war, and the first thought of ageneral is to cut his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all the wallsmust be smooth, in order to present to the eye lines which may betaken in at a glance, and permit the immediate recognition of theleast strange object. If you consult the remains of antique monumentsyou will see that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprangprincipally from the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of theirwalls and scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled inpity, if they had seen the gaps which our closets make in ourdrawing-rooms. 

This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in activeoperation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bedin such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; beinexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamberbe at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glancethose who come and go. 

_The Marriage of Figaro_ will no doubt have taught you to put yourwife's chamber at a great height from the ground. All celibates areCherubins. 

Your means, doubtless, will permit your wife to have a dressing-room, a bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne, and never commit the fault of arranging this little room below that ofmadame's, but place it always above, and do not shrink fromdisfiguring your mansion by hideous divisions in the windows. 

If, by ill luck, you see that this dangerous apartment communicateswith that of your wife by a back staircase, earnestly consult yourarchitect; let his genius exhaust itself in rendering this dangerousstaircase as innocent as the primitive garret ladder; we conjure youlet not this staircase have appended to it any treacherouslurking-place; its stiff and angular steps must not be arranged withthat tempting curve which Faublas and Justine found so useful whenthey waited for the exit of the Marquis de B-----. Architects nowadaysmake such staircases as are absolutely preferable to ottomans. Restorerather the virtuous garret steps of our ancestors. 

Concerning the chimneys in the apartment of madame, you must take careto place in the flue, five feet from the ground, an iron grill, eventhough it be necessary to put up a fresh one every time the chimney isswept. If your wife laughs at this precaution, suggest to her thenumber of murders that have been committed by means of chimneys. Almost all women are afraid of robbers. The bed is one of thoseimportant pieces of furniture whose structure will demand longconsideration. Everything concerning it is of vital importance. Thefollowing is the result of long experience in the construction ofbeds. Give to this piece of furniture a form so original that it maybe looked upon without disgust, in the midst of changes of fashionwhich succeed so rapidly in rendering antiquated the creations offormer decorators, for it is essential that your wife be unable tochange, at pleasure, this theatre of married happiness. The baseshould be plain and massive and admit of no treacherous intervalbetween it and the floor; and bear in mind always that the Donna Juliaof Byron hid Don Juan under her pillow. But it would be ridiculous totreat lightly so delicate a subject. 

 LXII. The bed is the whole of marriage. 

Moreover, we must not delay to direct your attention to this wonderfulcreation of human genius, an invention which claims our recognitionmuch more than ships, firearms, matches, wheeled carriages, steamengines of all kinds, more than even barrels and bottles. In the firstplace, a little thought will convince us that this is all true of thebed; but when we begin to think that it is our second father, that themost tranquil and most agitated half of our existence is spent underits protecting canopy, words fail in eulogizing it. (See MeditationXVII, entitled "Theory of the Bed. ")

When the war, of which we shall speak in our third part, breaks outbetween you and madame, you will always have plenty of ingeniousexcuses for rummaging in the drawers and escritoires; for if your wifeis trying to hide from you some statue of her adoration, it is yourinterest to know where she has hidden it. A gyneceum, constructed onthe method described, will enable you to calculate at a glance, whether there is present in it two pounds of silk more than usual. Should a single closet be constructed there, you are a lost man! Aboveall, accustom your wife, during the honeymoon, to bestow especialpains in the neatness of her apartment; let nothing put off that. Ifyou do not habituate her to be minutely particular in this respect, ifthe same objects are not always found in the same places, she willallow things to become so untidy, that you will not be able to seethat there are two pounds of silk more or less in her room. 

The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quitetransparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings ofwalking outside so that madame may see you come right up to the windowjust out of absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, letthe sills be so narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up onthem. 

If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, youwill be in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there tocontain all the saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening, with the assistance of your porter, to strike the balance between theentrances and exits of visitors; and, in order to obtain accurateresults, there is nothing to prevent your teaching him to keep a bookof visitors, in double entry. 

If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep atlarge one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; youwill thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustomyour four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from thehand of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not succeed inpoisoning him. 

But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so thatthey may not arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as toneglect precautions from the moment they are married, they ought atonce to sell their house and buy another one, or, under the pretext ofrepairs, alter their present house in the way prescribed. 

You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas, ottomans, lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, thisis the kind of furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where theyare universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they areessentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them withoutalarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself islurking with his horns and cloven foot. 

After all, nothing is so dangerous as a chair, and it is extremelyunfortunate that women cannot be shut up within the four walls of abare room! What husband is there, who on sitting down on a ricketychair is not always forced to believe that this chair has receivedsome of the lessons taught by the _Sofa_ of Crebillion junior? Buthappily we have arranged your apartment on such a system of preventionthat nothing so fatal can happen, or, at any rate, not without yourcontributory negligence. 

One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct, will consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make youexamine unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contentsof all dressing-cases and work-baskets. You must proceed to thisdomiciliary visit in a humorous mood, and gracefully, so that eachtime you will obtain pardon by exciting the amusement of your wife. 

You must always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing anypiece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointedapartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantagesof the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whetherthere be not some underhand motive in the transaction. 

This is by no means all. You have too much sense to forget that yourpretty parrot will remain in her cage only so long as that cage isbeautiful. The least accessory of her apartment ought, therefore, tobreathe elegance and taste. The general appearance should alwayspresent a simple, at the same time a charming picture. You mustconstantly renew the hangings and muslin curtains. The freshness ofthe decorations is too essential to permit of economy on this point. It is the fresh chickweed each morning carefully put into the cage oftheir birds, that makes their pets believe it is the verdure of themeadows. An apartment of this character is then the _ultima ratio_ ofhusbands; a wife has nothing to say when everything is lavished onher. 

Husbands who are condemned to live in rented apartments findthemselves in the most terrible situation possible. What happy or whatfatal influence cannot the porter exercise upon their lot?

Is not their home flanked on either side by other houses? It is truethat by placing the apartment of their wives on one side of the housethe danger is lessened by one-half; but are they not obliged to learnby heart and to ponder the age, the condition, the fortune, thecharacter, the habits of the tenants of the next house and even toknow their friends and relations?

A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor. 

Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionarymethods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus thetenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment, which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded. 

 MEDITATION XV. 

 OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 

"But no, madame, no--"

"Yes, for there is such inconvenience in the arrangement. "

"Do you think, madame, that we wish, as at the frontier, to watch thevisits of persons who cross the threshold of your apartments, orfurtively leave them, in order to see whether they bring to youarticles of contraband? That would not be proper; and there is nothingodious in our proceeding, any more than there is anything of a fiscalcharacter; do not be alarmed. "

The Custom House of the marriage state is, of all the expedientsprescribed in this second part, that which perhaps demands the mosttact and the most skill as well as the most knowledge acquired _apriori_, that is to say before marriage. In order to carry it out, ahusband ought to have made a profound study of Lavater's book, and tobe imbued with all his principles; to have accustomed his eye to judgeand to apprehend with the most astonishing promptitude, the slightestphysical expressions by which a man reveals his thoughts. 

Lavater's _Physiognomy_ originated a veritable science, which has wona place in human investigation. If at first some doubts, some jokesgreeted the appearance of this book, since then the celebrated DoctorGall is come with his noble theory of the skull and has completed thesystem of the Swiss savant, and given stability to his fine andluminous observations. People of talent, diplomats, women, all thosewho are numbered among the choice and fervent disciples of these twocelebrated men, have often had occasion to recognize many otherevident signs, by which the course of human thought is indicated. Thehabits of the body, the handwriting, the sound of the voice, haveoften betrayed the woman who is in love, the diplomat who isattempting to deceive, the clever administrator, or the sovereign whois compelled to distinguish at a glance love, treason or merithitherto unknown. The man whose soul operates with energy is like apoor glowworm, which without knowing it irradiates light from everypore. He moves in a brilliant sphere where each effort makes a burninglight and outlines his actions with long streamers of fire. 

These, then, are all the elements of knowledge which you shouldpossess, for the conjugal custom house insists simply in being able bya rapid but searching examination to know the moral and physicalcondition of all who enter or leave your house--all, that is, who haveseen or intend to see your wife. A husband is, like a spider, set atthe centre of an invisible net, and receives a shock from the leastfool of a fly who touches it, and from a distance, hears, judges andsees what is either his prey or his enemy. 

Thus you must obtain means to examine the celibate who rings at yourdoor under two circumstances which are quite distinct, namely, when heis about to enter and when he is inside. 

At the moment of entering how many things does he utter without evenopening his mouth!

It may be by a slight wave of his hand, or by his plunging his fingersmany times into his hair, he sticks up or smoothes down hischaracteristic bang. 

Or he hums a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice whichmay be either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone. 

Perhaps he takes care to see that the ends of his necktie are properlyadjusted. 

Or he smoothes down the ruffles or front of his shirt orevening-dress. 

Or he tries to find out by a questioning and furtive glance whetherhis wig, blonde or brown, curled or plain, is in its natural position. 

Perhaps he looks at his nails to see whether they are clean and dulycut. 

Perhaps with a hand which is either white or untidy, well-gloved orotherwise, he twirls his moustache, or his whiskers, or picks histeeth with a little tortoise-shell toothpick. 

Or by slow and repeated movements he tries to place his chin exactlyover the centre of his necktie. 

Or perhaps he crosses one foot over the other, putting his hands inhis pockets. 

Or perhaps he gives a twist to his shoe, and looks at it as if hethought, "Now, there's a foot that is not badly formed. "

Or according as he has come on foot or in a carriage, he rubs off orhe does not rub off the slight patches of mud which soil his shoes. 

Or perhaps he remains as motionless as a Dutchman smoking his pipe. 

Or perhaps he fixes his eyes on the door and looks like a soul escapedfrom Purgatory and waiting for Saint Peter with the keys. 

Perhaps he hesitates to pull the bell; perhaps he seizes itnegligently, precipitately, familiarly, or like a man who is quitesure of himself. 

Perhaps he pulls it timidly, producing a faint tinkle which is lost inthe silence of the apartments, as the first bell of matins inwinter-time, in a convent of Minims; or perhaps after having rung withenergy, he rings again impatient that the footman has not heard him. 

Perhaps he exhales a delicate scent, as he chews a pastille. 

Perhaps with a solemn air he takes a pinch of snuff, brushing off withcare the grains that might mar the whiteness of his linen. 

Perhaps he looks around like a man estimating the value of thestaircase lamp, the balustrade, the carpet, as if he were a furnituredealer or a contractor. 

Perhaps this celibate seems a young or an old man, is cold or hot, arrives slowly, with an expression of sadness or merriment, etc. 

You see that here, at the very foot of your staircase, you are met byan astonishing mass of things to observe. 

The light pencil-strokes, with which we have tried to outline thisfigure, will suggest to you what is in reality a moral kaleidoscopewith millions of variations. And yet we have not even attempted tobring any woman on to the threshold which reveals so much; for in thatcase our remarks, already considerable in number, would have beencountless and light as the grains of sand on the seashore. 

For as a matter of fact, when he stands before the shut door, a manbelieves that he is quite alone; and he would have no hesitation inbeginning a silent monologue, a dreamy soliloquy, in which he revealedhis desires, his intentions, his personal qualities, his faults, hisvirtues, etc. ; for undoubtedly a man on a stoop is exactly like ayoung girl of fifteen at confession, the evening before her firstcommunion. 

Do you want any proof of this? Notice the sudden change of face andmanner in this celibate from the very moment he steps within thehouse. No machinist in the Opera, no change in the temperature in theclouds or in the sun can more suddenly transform the appearance of atheatre, the effect of the atmosphere, or the scenery of the heavens. 

On reaching the first plank of your antechamber, instead of betrayingwith so much innocence the myriad thoughts which were suggested to youon the steps, the celibate has not a single glance to which you couldattach any significance. The mask of social convention wraps with itsthick veil his whole bearing; but a clever husband must already havedivined at a single look the object of his visit, and he reads thesoul of the new arrival as if it were a printed book. 

The manner in which he approaches your wife, in which he addressesher, looks at her, greets her and retires--there are volumes ofobservations, more or less trifling, to be made on these subjects. 

The tone of his voice, his bearing, his awkwardness, it may be hissmile, even his gloom, his avoidance of your eye, --all aresignificant, all ought to be studied, but without apparent attention. You ought to conceal the most disagreeable discovery you may make byan easy manner and remarks such as are ready at hand to a man ofsociety. As we are unable to detail the minutiae of this subject weleave them entirely to the sagacity of the reader, who must by thistime have perceived the drift of our investigation, as well as theextent of this science which begins at the analysis of glances andends in the direction of such movements as contempt may inspire in agreat toe hidden under the satin of a lady's slipper or the leather ofa man's boot. 

But the exit!--for we must allow for occasions where you have omittedyour rigid scrutiny at the threshold of the doorway, and in that casethe exit becomes of vital importance, and all the more so because thisfresh study of the celibate ought to be made on the same lines, butfrom an opposite point of view, from that which we have alreadyoutlined. 

In the exit the situation assumes a special gravity; for then is themoment in which the enemy has crossed all the intrenchments withinwhich he was subject to our examination and has escaped into thestreet! At this point a man of understanding when he sees a visitorpassing under the _porte-cochere_ should be able to divine the importof the whole visit. The indications are indeed fewer in number, buthow distinct is their character! The denouement has arrived and theman instantly betrays the importance of it by the frankest expressionof happiness, pain or joy. 

These revelations are therefore easy to apprehend; they appear in theglance cast either at the building or at the windows of the apartment;in a slow or loitering gait, in the rubbing of hands, on the part of afool, in the bounding gait of a coxcomb, or the involuntary arrest ofhis footsteps, which marks the man who is deeply moved; in a word, yousee upon the stoop certain questions as clearly proposed to you as ifa provincial academy had offered a hundred crowns for an essay; but inthe exit you behold the solution of these questions clearly andprecisely given to you. Our task would be far above the power of humanintelligence if it consisted in enumerating the different ways bywhich men betray their feelings, the discernment of such things ispurely a matter of tact and sentiment. 

If strangers are the subject of these principles of observation, youhave a still stronger reason for submitting your wife to the formalsafeguards which we have outlined. 

A married man should make a profound study of his wife's countenance. Such a study is easy, it is even involuntary and continuous. For himthe pretty face of his wife must needs contain no mysteries, he knowshow her feelings are depicted there and with what expression she shunsthe fire of his glance. 

The slightest movement of the lips, the faintest contraction of thenostrils, scarcely perceptible changes in the expression of the eye, an altered voice, and those indescribable shades of feeling which passover her features, or the light which sometimes bursts forth fromthem, are intelligible language to you. 

The whole woman nature stands before you; all look at her, but nonecan interpret her thoughts. But for you, the eye is more or lessdimmed, wide-opened or closed; the lid twitches, the eyebrow moves; awrinkle, which vanishes as quickly as a ripple on the ocean, furrowsher brow for one moment; the lip tightens, it is slightly curved or itis wreathed with animation--for you the woman has spoken. 

If in those puzzling moments in which a woman tries dissimulation inpresence of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeingthrough her, you will plainly observe that your custom-houserestrictions are mere child's play to her. 

When she comes home or goes out, when in a word she believes she isalone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and willtell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change ofexpression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity ofthis change, you will not fail to have observed the expression shewore behind your back) you may read her soul as if you were reading abook of Plain Song. Moreover, your wife will often find herself juston the point of indulging in soliloquies, and on such occasions herhusband may recognize the secret feelings of his wife. 

Is there a man as heedless of love's mysteries as not to have admired, over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of awoman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides throughthe crowd, like a snake through the grass. The costumes and stuffs ofthe latest fashion spread out their dazzling attractions in the shopwindows without claiming her attention; on, on she goes like thefaithful animal who follows the invisible tracks of his master; she isdeaf to all compliments, blind to all glances, insensible even to thelight touch of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation ofParisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Hergait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in athousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presentsto the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband toread, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret placeof rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness isimpressed even on the unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass ofwhose wavy tresses has not received from the broken comb of thecelibate that radiant lustre, that elegant and well-proportionedadjustment which only the practiced hand of her maid can give. Andwhat charming ease appears in her gait! How is it possible to describethe emotion which adds such rich tints to her complexion!--which robsher eyes of all their assurance and gives to them an expression ofmingled melancholy and delight, of shame which is yet blended withpride!

These observations, stolen from our Meditation, _Of the LastSymptoms_, and which are really suggested by the situation of a womanwho tries to conceal everything, may enable you to divine by analogythe rich crop of observation which is left for you to harvest whenyour wife arrives home, or when, without having committed the greatcrime she innocently lets out the secrets of her thoughts. For our ownpart we never see a landing without wishing to set up there amariner's card and a weather-cock. 

As the means to be employed for constructing a sort of domesticobservatory depend altogether on places and circumstances, we mustleave to the address of a jealous husband the execution of the methodssuggested in this Meditation. 

 MEDITATION XVI. 

 THE CHARTER OF MARRIAGE. 

I acknowledge that I really know of but one house in Paris which ismanaged in accordance with the system unfolded in the two precedingMeditations. But I ought to add, also, that I have built up my systemon the example of that house. The admirable fortress I allude tobelonged to a young councillor of state, who was mad with love andjealousy. 

As soon as he learned that there existed a man who was exclusivelyoccupied in bringing to perfection the institution of marriage inFrance, he had the generosity to open the doors of his mansion to meand to show me his gyneceum. I admired the profound genius which socleverly disguised the precautions of almost oriental jealousy underthe elegance of furniture, beauty of carpets and brightness of painteddecorations. I agreed with him that it was impossible for his wife torender his home a scene of treachery. 

"Sir, " said I, to this Othello of the council of state who did notseem to me peculiarly strong in the _haute politique_ of marriage, "Ihave no doubt that the viscountess is delighted to live in this littleParadise; she ought indeed to take prodigious pleasure in it, especially if you are here often. But the time will come when she willhave had enough of it; for, my dear sir, we grow tired of everything, even of the sublime. What will you do then, when madame, failing tofind in all your inventions their primitive charm, shall open hermouth in a yawn, and perhaps make a request with a view to theexercise of two rights, both of which are indispensable to herhappiness: individual liberty, that is, the privilege of going andcoming according to the caprice of her will; and the liberty of thepress, that is, the privilege of writing and receiving letters withoutfear of your censure?"

Scarcely had I said these words when the Vicomte de V----- grasped myarm tightly and cried:

"Yes, such is the ingratitude of woman! If there is any thing moreungrateful than a king, it is a nation; but, sir, woman is moreungrateful than either of them. A married woman treats us as thecitizens of a constitutional monarchy treat their king; every measurehas been taken to give these citizens a life of prosperity in aprosperous country; the government has taken all the pains in theworld with its gendarmes, its churches, its ministry and all theparaphernalia of its military forces, to prevent the people from dyingof hunger, to light the cities by gas at the expense of the citizens, to give warmth to every one by means of the sun which shines at theforty-fifth degree of latitude, and to forbid every one, excepting thetax-gatherers, to ask for money; it has labored hard to give to allthe main roads a more or less substantial pavement--but none of theseadvantages of our fair Utopia is appreciated! The citizens wantsomething else. They are not ashamed to demand the right of travelingover the roads at their own will, and of being informed where thatmoney given to the tax-gatherers goes. And, finally, the monarch willsoon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certainscribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or toadopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy showsfor the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots, riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs, for an honest woman, or for a ducal coronet. "

"But, monsieur, " I said, interrupting him, "while I perfectly agreewith you on this last point, the question remains, how will you escapegiving an answer to the just demands of your wife?"

"Sir" he replied, "I shall do--I shall answer as the governmentanswers, that is, those governments which are not so stupid as theopposition would make out to their constituents. I shall begin bysolemnly interdicting any arrangement, by virtue of which my wife willbe declared entirely free. I fully recognize her right to go whereverit seems good to her, to write to whom she chooses, and to receiveletters, the contents of which I do not know. My wife shall have allthe rights that belong to an English Parliament; I shall let her talkas much as she likes, discuss and propose strong and energeticmeasures, but without the power to put them into execution, and thenafter that--well, we shall see!"

"By St. Joseph!" said I to myself, "Here is a man who understands thescience of marriage as well as I myself do. And then, you will see, sir, " I answered aloud, in order to obtain from him the fullestrevelation of his experience; "you will see, some fine morning, thatyou are as big a fool as the next man. "

"Sir, " he gravely replied, "allow me to finish what I was saying. Hereis what the great politicians call a theory, but in practice they canmake that theory vanish in smoke; and ministers possess in a greaterdegree than even the lawyers of Normandy, the art of making fact yieldto fancy. M. De Metternich and M. De Pilat, men of the highestauthority, have been for a long time asking each other whether Europeis in its right senses, whether it is dreaming, whether it knowswhither it is going, whether it has ever exercised its reason, a thingimpossible on the part of the masses, of nations and of women. M. DeMetternich and M. De Pilat are terrified to see this age carried awayby a passion for constitutions, as the preceding age was by thepassion for philosophy, as that of Luther was for a reform of abusesin the Roman religion; for it truly seems as if different generationsof men were like those conspirators whose actions are directed to thesame end, as soon as the watchword has been given them. But theiralarm is a mistake, and it is on this point alone that I condemn them, for they are right in their wish to enjoy power without permitting themiddle class to come on a fixed day from the depth of each of theirsix kingdoms, to torment them. How could men of such remarkable talentfail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a moral ofprofound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to givethe age a bone to exercise its teeth upon! I think exactly as they doon the subject of sovereignty. A power is a moral being as muchinterested as a man is in self-preservation. This sentiment ofself-preservation is under the control of an essential principle whichmay be expressed in three words--_to lose nothing_. But in order tolose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power whichremains stationary is nullified. If it retrogrades, it is under thecontrol of something else, and loses its independent existence. I amquite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in what a false positionan unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it allows toanother power whose essence is to expand a place within its own sphereof activity. One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for everyexisting thing aims at the greatest possible development of its ownforces. A power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does notafterwards seek to retract. This struggle between two powers is thebasis on which stands the balance of government, whose elasticity somistakenly alarmed the patriarch of Austrian diplomacy, for comparingcomedy with comedy the least perilous and the most advantageousadministration is found in the seesaw system of the English and of theFrench politics. These two countries have said to the people, 'You arefree;' and the people have been satisfied; they enter the governmentlike the zeros which give value to the unit. But if the people wish totake an active part in the government, immediately they are treated, like Sancho Panza, on that occasion when the squire, having becomesovereign over an island on terra firma, made an attempt at dinner toeat the viands set before him. 

"Now we ought to parody this admirable scene in the management of ourhomes. Thus, my wife has a perfect right to go out, provided she tellme where she is going, how she is going, what is the business she isengaged in when she is out and at what hour she will return. Insteadof demanding this information with the brutality of the police, whowill doubtless some day become perfect, I take pains to speak to herin the most gracious terms. On my lips, in my eyes, in my wholecountenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity andindifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness. These little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact andaddress that it is a pleasure to take part in them. The very day onwhich I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossomswhich she wore, I understood that we were playing at a royalcoronation--the first scene in a comic pantomime!--I have mygendarmes!--I have my guard royal!--I have my attorney general--that Ido!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allowmadame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Isnot that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in sayingto everybody, 'I have my people here. ' It has always been aconservative principle of mine that my times of exercise shouldcoincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to herthat I take an ever fresh pleasure in giving her my arm. If theweather is not suitable for walking, I try to teach her how to drivewith success a frisky horse; but I swear to you that I undertake thisin such a manner that she does not learn very quickly!--If either bychance, or prompted by a deliberate wish, she takes measures to escapewithout a passport, that is to say, alone in the carriage, have I nota driver, a footman, a groom? My wife, therefore, go where she will, takes with her a complete _Santa Hermandad_, and I am perfectly easyin mind--But, my dear sir, there is abundance of means by which toannul the charter of marriage by our manner of fulfilling it! I haveremarked that the manners of high society induce a habit of idlenesswhich absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her tofeel that she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project ofdexterously leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, withoutletting her think of adultery, just as poor Musson used to amusehimself in leading some simple fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis toPierrefitte without letting him think that he had left the shadows ofSt. Lew's tower. "

"How is it, " I said, interrupting him, "that you have hit upon thoseadmirable methods of deception which I was intending to describe in aMeditation entitled _The Act of Putting Death into Life!_ Alas! Ithought I was the first man to discover that science. The epigrammatictitle was suggested to me by an account which a young doctor gave meof an excellent composition of Crabbe, as yet unpublished. In thiswork, the English poet has introduced a fantastic being called _Lifein Death_. This personage crosses the oceans of the world in pursuitof a living skeleton called _Death in Life_--I recollect at the timevery few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator ofEnglish poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as itwas fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence, thought of the whole generations which as they were hurried along bylife, passed on their way without living. Before my eyes rose faces ofwomen by the million, by the myriad, all dead, all disappointed andshedding tears of despair, as they looked back upon the lost momentsof their ignorant youth. In the distance I saw a playful Meditationrise to birth, I heard the satanic laughter which ran through it, andnow you doubtless are about to kill it. --But come, tell me inconfidence what means you have discovered by which to assist a womanto squander the swift moments during which her beauty is at its fullflower and her desires at their full strength. --Perhaps you have somestratagems, some clever devices, to describe to me--"

The viscount began to laugh at this literary disappointment of mine, and he said to me, with a self-satisfied air:

"My wife, like all the young people of our happy century, has beenaccustomed, for three or four consecutive years, to press her fingerson the keys of a piano, a long-suffering instrument. She has hammeredout Beethoven, warbled the airs of Rossini and run through theexercises of Crammer. I had already taken pains to convince her of theexcellence of music; to attain this end, I have applauded her, I havelistened without yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in the world, and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I havethus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God hascreated in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paristhere are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxesof Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which Iregularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife callsa concert. But most part of the time my wife keeps herself buried inher music-books--"

"But, my dear sir, do you not recognize the danger that lies incultivating in a woman a taste for singing, and allowing her to yieldto all the excitements of a sedentary life? It is only less dangerousto make her feed on mutton and drink cold water. "

"My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and Ialways take care that a ball shall come after a concert and areception after an Opera! I have also succeeded in making her lie downbetween one and two in the day. Ah! my dear sir, the benefits of thisnap are incalculable! In the first place each necessary pleasure isaccorded as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly carrying outmy wife's wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying asingle word, that she is being constantly amused every day from sixo'clock in the evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet, until eleven o'clock in the morning, the time when we get up. "

"Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is socompletely filled up!"

"I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; butshe has, of course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and thereare always rides in the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits topay, etc. But this is not all. The fairest ornament of a woman is themost exquisite cleanliness. A woman cannot be too particular in thisrespect, and no pains she takes can be laughed at. Now her toilet hasalso suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best hours of theday in bathing. "

"How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!" I cried; "truly, sir, you could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing toteach her an art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modernfine ladies. Why don't you enumerate to the viscountess theastonishing precautions manifest in the Oriental luxury of the Romandames? Give her the names of the slaves merely employed for the bathin Poppea's palace: the _unctores_, the _fricatores_, the_alipilarili_, the _dropacistae_, the _paratiltriae_, the_picatrices_, the _tracatrices_, the swan whiteners, and all the rest. --Talk to her about this multitude of slaves whose names are given byMirabeau in his _Erotika Biblion_. If she tries to secure the servicesof all these people you will have the fine times of quietness, not tospeak of the personal satisfaction which will redound to you yourselffrom the introduction into your house of the system invented by theseillustrious Romans, whose hair, artistically arranged, was delugedwith perfumes, whose smallest vein seemed to have acquired fresh bloodfrom the myrrh, the lint, the perfume, the douches, the flowers of thebath, all of which were enjoyed to the strains of voluptuous music. "

"Ah! sir, " continued the husband, who was warming to his subject, "canI not find also admirable pretexts in my solicitude for her heath? Herhealth, so dear and precious to me, forces me to forbid her going outin bad weather, and thus I gain a quarter of the year. And I have alsointroduced the charming custom of kissing when either of us goes out, this parting kiss being accompanied with the words, 'My sweet angel, Iam going out. ' Finally, I have taken measures for the future to makemy wife as truly a prisoner in the house as the conscript in hissentry box! For I have inspired her with an incredible enthusiasm forthe sacred duties of maternity. "

"You do it by opposing her?" I asked. 

"You have guessed it, " he answered, laughing. "I have maintained toher that it is impossible for a woman of the world to discharge herduties towards society, to manage her household, to devote herself tofashion, as well as to the wishes of her husband, whom she loves, and, at the same time, to rear children. She then avers that, after theexample of Cato, who wished to see how the nurse changed the swaddlingbands of the infant Pompey, she would never leave to others the leastof the services required in shaping the susceptible minds and tenderbodies of these little creatures whose education begins in the cradle. You understand, sir, that my conjugal diplomacy would not be of muchservice to me unless, after having put my wife in solitaryconfinement, I did not also employ a certain harmless machiavelism, which consists in begging her to do whatever she likes, and asking heradvice in every circumstance and on every contingency. As thisdelusive liberty has entirely deceived a creature so high-minded asshe is, I have taken pains to stop at no sacrifice which wouldconvince Madame de V----- that she is the freest woman in Paris; and, in order to attain this end, I take care not to commit those grosspolitical blunders into which our ministers so often fall. "

"I can see you, " said I, "when you wish to cheat your wife out of someright granted her by the charter, I can see you putting on a mild anddeliberate air, hiding your dagger under a bouquet of roses, and asyou plunge it cautiously into her heart, saying to her with a friendlyvoice, 'My darling, does it hurt?' and she, like those on whose toesyou tread in a crowd, will probably reply, 'Not in the least. '"

He could not restrain a laugh and said:

"Won't my wife be astonished at the Last Judgment?"

"I scarcely know, " I replied, "whether you or she will be mostastonished. "

The jealous man frowned, but his face resumed its calmness as I added:

"I am truly grateful, sir, to the chance which has given me thepleasure of your acquaintance. Without the assistance of your remarksI should have been less successful than you have been in developingcertain ideas which we possess in common. I beg of you that you willgive me leave to publish this conversation. Statements which you and Ifind pregnant with high political conceptions, others perhaps willthink characterized by more or less cutting irony, and I shall passfor a clever fellow in the eyes of both parties. "

While I thus tried to express my thanks to the viscount (the firsthusband after my heart that I had met with), he took me once morethrough his apartments, where everything seemed to be beyondcriticism. 

I was about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a littleboudoir he showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, "Is thereany way by which the least irregularity should occur without my seeingit?"

I replied to this silent interrogation by an inclination of the head, such as guests make to their Amphytrion when they taste someexceptionally choice dish. 

"My whole system, " he said to me in a whisper, "was suggested to me bythree words which my father heard Napoleon pronounce at a crowdedcouncil of state, when divorce was the subject of conversation. 'Adultery, ' he exclaimed, 'is merely a matter of opportunity!' See, then, I have changed these accessories of crime, so that they becomespies, " added the councillor, pointing out to me a divan covered withtea-colored cashmere, the cushions of which were slightly pressed. "Notice that impression, --I learn from it that my wife has had aheadache, and has been reclining there. "

We stepped toward the divan, and saw the word FOOL lightly traced uponthe fatal cushion, by four

 Things that I know not, plucked by lover's hand From Cypris' orchard, where the fairy band Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be Worthy an order of new chivalry, A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold, More mortal men than gods should be enrolled. 

"Nobody in my house has black hair!" said the husband, growing pale. 

I hurried away, for I was seized with an irresistible fit of laughter, which I could not easily overcome. 

"That man has met his judgment day!" I said to myself; "all thebarriers by which he has surrounded her have only been instrumental inadding to the intensity of her pleasures!"

This idea saddened me. The adventure destroyed from summit tofoundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholicinfallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. Iwould gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the ViscountessV----- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secureher surrender. But alas! my money will now be kept by me. 

Three days afterwards I met the councillor in the foyer of theItaliens. As soon as he saw me he rushed up. Impelled by a sort ofmodesty I tried to avoid him, but grasping my arm: "Ah! I have justpassed three cruel days, " he whispered in my ear. "Fortunately my wifeis as innocent as perhaps a new-born babe--"

"You have already told me that the viscountess was extremelyingenious, " I said, with unfeeling gaiety. 

"Oh!" he said, "I gladly take a joke this evening; for this morning Ihad irrefragable proofs of my wife's fidelity. I had risen very earlyto finish a piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in lookingabsently in my garden, I suddenly saw the _valet de chambre_ of ageneral, whose house is next to mine, climbing over the wall. Mywife's maid, poking her head from the vestibule, was stroking my dogand covering the retreat of the gallant. I took my opera glass andexamined the intruder--his hair was jet black!--Ah! never have I seena Christian face that gave me more delight! And you may well believethat during the day all my perplexities vanished. So, my dear sir, " hecontinued, "if you marry, let your dog loose and put broken bottlesover the top of your walls. "

"And did the viscountess perceive your distress during these threedays?

"Do you take me for a child?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "Ihave never been so merry in all my life as I have been since we met. "

"You are a great man unrecognized, " I cried, "and you are not--"

He did not permit me to conclude; for he had disappeared on seeing oneof his friends who approached as if to greet the viscountess. 

Now what can we add that would not be a tedious paraphrase of thelessons suggested by this conversation? All is included in it, eitheras seed or fruit. Nevertheless, you see, O husband! that yourhappiness hangs on a hair. 

 MEDITATION XVII. 

 THE THEORY OF THE BED. 

It was about seven o'clock in the evening. They were seated upon theacademic armchairs, which made a semi-circle round a huge hearth, onwhich a coal fire was burning fitfully--symbol of the burning subjectof their important deliberations. It was easy to guess, on seeing thegrave but earnest faces of all the members of this assembly, that theywere called upon to pronounce sentence upon the life, the fortunes andthe happiness of people like themselves. They had no commissionexcepting that of their conscience, and they gathered there as theassessors of an ancient and mysterious tribunal; but they representedinterests much more important than those of kings or of peoples; theyspoke in the name of the passions and on behalf of the happiness ofthe numberless generations which should succeed them. 

The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round tableon which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collectedwith remarkable intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of themeeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to takedown a report of the meeting. 

"Gentlemen, " said an old man, "the first question upon which we haveto deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of aletter. The letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline ofAnspach, by the widow of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, mother of the Regent: 'The Queen of Spain has a method of making herhusband say exactly what she wishes. The king is a religious man; hebelieves that he will be damned if he touched any woman but his wife, and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous temperament. Thusthe queen obtains her every wish. She has placed castors on herhusband's bed. If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away. Ifhe grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits himinto hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes -----'I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness ofthe German princess might in this assembly be charged withimmorality. "

Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors? This is the problemwhich we have to solve. 

The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of theassembly. I was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if twomarried people slept on two separate beds in the same room the bedsought not to be set on castors. 

"With this proviso, " put in one of the members, "that the presentdecision should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the bestarrangement of the beds of married people. "

The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which wascontained the original edition, published in 1788, of the letters ofCharlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the onlybrother of Louis XIV, and, while I was transcribing the passagealready quoted, he said:

"But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses thenotification in which the second question is stated. "

"I rise to make an observation, " exclaimed the youngest of the jealoushusbands there assembled. 

The president took his seat with a gesture of assent. 

"Gentlemen, " said the young husband, "are we quite prepared todeliberate upon so grave a question as that which is presented by theuniversally bad arrangement of the beds? Is there not here a muchwider question than that of mere cabinet-making to decide? For my ownpart I see in it a question which concerns that of universal humanintellect. The mysteries of conception, gentlemen, are still envelopedin a darkness which modern science has but partially dissipated. We donot know how far external circumstances influence the microscopicbeings whose discovery is due to the unwearied patience of Hill, Baker, Joblot, Eichorn, Gleichen, Spallanzani, and especially ofMuller, and last of all of M. Bory de Saint Vincent. The imperfectionsof the bed opens up a musical question of the highest importance, andfor my part I declare I shall write to Italy to obtain clearinformation as to the manner in which beds are generally arranged. Wedo not know whether there are in the Italian bed numerous curtainrods, screws and castors, or whether the construction of beds is inthis country more faulty than everywhere else, or whether the drynessof timber in Italy, due to the influence of the sun, does not _ab ovo_produce the harmony, the sense of which is to so large an extentinnate in Italians. For these reasons I move that we adjourn. "

"What!" cried a gentleman from the West, impatiently rising to hisfeet, "are we here to dilate upon the advancement of music? What wehave to consider first of all is manners, and the moral question isparamount in this discussion. "

"Nevertheless, " remarked one of the most influential members of thecouncil, "the suggestion of the former speaker is not in my opinion tobe passed by. In the last century, gentlemen, Sterne, one of thewriters most philosophically delightful and most delightfullyphilosophic, complained of the carelessness with which human beingswere procreated; 'Shame!' he cried 'that he who copies the divinephysiognomy of man receives crowns and applause, but he who achievesthe masterpiece, the prototype of mimic art, feels that like virtue hemust be his own reward. '

"Ought we not to feel more interest in the improvement of the humanrace than in that of horses? Gentlemen, I passed through a little townof Orleanais where the whole population consisted of hunchbacks, ofglum and gloomy people, veritable children of sorrow, and the remarkof the former speaker caused me to recollect that all the beds were ina very bad condition and the bedchambers presented nothing to the eyesof the married couple but what was hideous and revolting. Ah!gentlemen, how is it possible that our minds should be in an idealstate, when instead of the music of angels flying here and there inthe bosom of that heaven to which we have attained, our ears areassailed by the most detestable, the most angry, the most piercing ofhuman cries and lamentations? We are perhaps indebted for the finegeniuses who have honored humanity to beds which are solidlyconstructed; and the turbulent population which caused the FrenchRevolution were conceived perhaps upon a multitude of totteringcouches, with twisted and unstable legs; while the Orientals, who aresuch a beautiful race, have a unique method of making their beds. Ivote for the adjournment. "

And the gentleman sat down. 

A man belonging to the sect of Methodists arose. "Why should we changethe subject of debate? We are not dealing here with the improvement ofthe race nor with the perfecting of the work. We must not lose sightof the interests of the jealous husband and the principles on whichmoral soundness is based. Don't you know that the noise of which youcomplain seems more terrible to the wife uncertain of her crime, thanthe trumpet of the Last Judgment? Can you forget that a suit forinfidelity could never be won by a husband excepting through thisconjugal noise? I will undertake, gentlemen, to refer to the divorcesof Lord Abergavenny, of Viscount Bolingbroke, of the late QueenCaroline, of Eliza Draper, of Madame Harris, in fact, of all those whoare mentioned in the twenty volumes published by--. " (The secretarydid not distinctly hear the name of the English publisher. )

The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed tomake up a purse for the author producing the best dissertationaddressed to the society upon a subject which Sterne considered ofsuch importance; but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings wasthe total sum found in the hat of the president. 

The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed inLondon for the improvement of manners and of marriage and which LordByron scoffed at, was transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins, Esq. , cousin-german of the famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract mayserve to solve any difficulties which may occur in the theory of bedconstruction. 

But the author of the book considers that the English society hasgiven too much importance to this preliminary question. There existsin fact quite as many reasons for being a _Rossinist_ as for being a_Solidist_ in the matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that itis either beneath or above him to solve this difficulty. He thinkswith Laurence Sterne that it is a disgrace to European civilizationthat there exist so few physiological observations on callipedy, andhe refuses to state the results of his Meditations on this subject, because it would be difficult to formulate them in terms of prudery, and they would be but little understood, and misinterpreted. Suchreserve produces an hiatus in this part of the book; but the authorhas the pleasant satisfaction of leaving a fourth work to beaccomplished by the next century, to which he bequeaths the legacy ofall that he has not accomplished, a negative munificence which maywell be followed by all those who may be troubled by an overplus ofideas. 

The theory of the bed presents questions much more important thanthose put forth by our neighbors with regard to castors and themurmurs of criminal conversation. 

We know only three ways in which a bed (in the general sense of thisterm) may be arranged among civilized nations, and particularly amongthe privileged classes to whom this book is addressed. These threeways are as follows:

 1. TWIN BEDS. 2. SEPARATE ROOMS. 3. ONE BED FOR BOTH. 

Before applying ourselves to the examination of these three methods ofliving together, which must necessarily have different influences uponthe happiness of husbands and wives, we must take a rapid survey ofthe practical object served by the bed and the part it plays in thepolitical economy of human existence. 

The most incontrovertible principle which can be laid down in thismatter is, _that the bed was made to sleep upon_. 

It would be easy to prove that the practice of sleeping together wasestablished between married people but recently, in comparison withthe antiquity of marriage. 

By what reasonings has man arrived at that point in which he broughtin vogue a practice so fatal to happiness, to health, even to_amour-propre_? Here we have a subject which it would be curious toinvestigate. 

If you knew one of your rivals who had discovered a method of placingyou in a position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those whowere dearest to you--for instance, while you had your mouth crookedlike that of a theatrical mask, or while your eloquent lips, like thecopper faucet of a scanty fountain, dripped pure water--you wouldprobably stab him. This rival is sleep. Is there a man in the worldwho knows how he appears to others, and what he does when he isasleep?

In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown powerwhich seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddestshapes; some have a sleep which is intellectual, while the sleep ofothers is mere stupor. 

There are some people who slumber with their mouths open in thesilliest fashion. 

There are others who snore loud enough to make the timbers shake. 

Most people look like the impish devils that Michael Angelosculptured, putting out their tongues in silent mockery of thepassers-by. 

The only person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air isAgamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the momentwhen Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover, I have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the kingof kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized withdread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those ofProvidence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nursesnorting in her sleep "like a whale, " to use a slang expression, Ihave added a petition to the special litany which I address toSaint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save mefrom indulging in this sort of eloquence. 

When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquelysurmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over hisleft temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, andit is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated inthe strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleamof life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead--and if youartists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on thestage-coach and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, justexamine the physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you ahundred times as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucraticphysiognomies, at least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes areopen, and you have some expression in your countenance. Do you knowhow you looked an hour before you awoke, or during the first hour ofyour sleep, when you were neither a man nor an animal, but merely athing, subject to the dominion of those dreams which issue from thegate of horn? But this is a secret between your wife and God. 

Is it for the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber thatthe Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass?We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions theelucidation of this point. 

Assuredly, the first man who took it into his head, at the inspirationof the devil, not to leave his wife, even while she was asleep, shouldknow how to sleep in the very best style; but do not forget to reckonamong the sciences necessary to a man on setting up an establishment, the art of sleeping with elegance. Moreover, we will place here as acorollary to Axiom XXV of our Marriage Catechism the two followingaphorisms:

 A husband should sleep as lightly as a watch-dog, so as never to be caught with his eyes shut. 

 A man should accustom himself from childhood to go to bed bareheaded. 

Certain poets discern in modesty, in the alleged mysteries of love, some reason why the married couple should share the same bed; but thefact must be recognized that if primitive men sought the shade ofcaverns, the mossy couch of deep ravines, the flinty roof of grottoesto protect his pleasure, it was because the delight of love left himwithout defence against his enemies. No, it is not more natural to laytwo heads upon the same pillow, than it is reasonable to tie a stripof muslin round the neck. Civilization is come. It has shut up amillion of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalledthem in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feetsquare; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another likethe tubes of a telescope. 

From this cause and from many others, such as thrift, fear, andill-concealed jealousy, has sprung the custom of the sleeping togetherof the married couple; and this custom has given rise to punctualityand simultaneity in rising and retiring. 

And here you find the most capricious thing in the world, the feelingmost pre-eminently fickle, the thing which is worthless without itsown spontaneous inspiration, which takes all its charm from thesuddenness of its desires, which owes its attractions to thegenuineness of its outbursts--this thing we call love, subjugated to amonastic rule, to that law of geometry which belongs to the Board ofLongitude!

If I were a father I should hate the child, who, punctual as theclock, had every morning and evening an explosion of tenderness andwished me good-day and good-evening, because he was ordered to do so. It is in this way that all that is generous and spontaneous in humansentiment becomes strangled at its birth. You may judge from this whatlove means when it is bound to a fixed hour!

Only the Author of everything can make the sun rise and set, morn andeve, with a pomp invariably brilliant and always new, and no one herebelow, if we may be permitted to use the hyperbole of Jean-BaptisteRousseau, can play the role of the sun. 

From these preliminary observations, we conclude that it is notnatural for two to lie under the canopy in the same bed;

That a man is almost always ridiculous when he is asleep;

And that this constant living together threatens the husband withinevitable dangers. 

We are going to try, therefore, to find out a method which will bringour customs in harmony with the laws of nature, and to combine customand nature in a way that will enable a husband to find in the mahoganyof his bed a useful ally, and an aid in defending himself. 

 1. TWIN BEDS. 

If the most brilliant, the best-looking, the cleverest of husbandswishes to find himself minotaurized just as the first year of hismarried life ends, he will infallibly attain that end if he is unwiseenough to place two beds side by side, under the voluptuous dome ofthe same alcove. 

The argument in support of this may be briefly stated. The followingare its main lines:

The first husband who invented the twin beds was doubtless anobstetrician, who feared that in the involuntary struggles of somedream he might kick the child borne by his wife. 

But no, he was rather some predestined one who distrusted his power ofchecking a snore. 

Perhaps it was some young man who, fearing the excess of his owntenderness, found himself always lying at the edge of the bed and indanger of tumbling off, or so near to a charming wife that hedisturbed her slumber. 

But may it not have been some Maintenon who received the suggestionfrom her confessor, or, more probably, some ambitious woman who wishedto rule her husband? Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty littlePompadour overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly describedby M. De Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracteddisgrace and certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis XVI'sreign:

 "Iris, we love those features sweet, Your graces all are fresh and free; And flowerets spring beneath your feet, Where naught, alas! but flowers are seen. "

But why should it not have been a philosopher who dreaded thedisenchantment which a woman would experience at the sight of a manasleep? And such a one would always roll himself up in a coverlet andkeep his head bare. 

Unknown author of this Jesuitical method, whoever thou art, in thedevil's name, we hail thee as a brother! Thou hast been the cause ofmany disasters. Thy work has the character of all half measures; it issatisfactory in no respect, and shares the bad points of the two othermethods without yielding the advantages of either. How can the man ofthe nineteenth century, how can this creature so supremelyintelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who hasemployed the resources of his genius in concealing the machinery ofhis life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he mightnot despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, fromEgyptian beans, from seeds of Mexico, their perfume, their treasure, their soul; going so far as to chisel the diamond, chase the silver, melt the gold ore, paint the clay and woo every art that may serve todecorate and to dignify the bowl from which he feeds!--how can thisking, after having hidden under folds of muslin covered with diamonds, studded with rubies, and buried under linen, under folds of cotton, under the rich hues of silk, under the fairy patterns of lace, thepartner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreckin the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. Whatadvantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve ourexistence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it tohave instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of anupholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twinbeds] robs our love of all its illusions, strips it bare of themajestic company of its delights and gives it in their stead nothingbut what is ugliest and most odious? For this is the whole history ofthe two bed system. 

 LXIII. That it shall appear either sublime or grotesque are the alternatives to which we have reduced a desire. 

If it be shared, our love is sublime; but should you sleep in twinbeds, your love will always be grotesque. The absurdities which thishalf separation occasions may be comprised in either one of twosituations, which will give us occasion to reveal the causes of verymany marital misfortunes. 

Midnight is approaching as a young woman is putting on her curl papersand yawning as she did so. I do not know whether her melancholyproceeded from a headache, seated in the right or left lobe of herbrain, or whether she was passing through one of those seasons ofweariness during which all things appear black to us; but to see hernegligently putting up her hair for the night, to see her languidlyraising her leg to take off her garter, it seemed to me that she wouldprefer to be drowned rather than to be denied the relief of plungingher draggled life into the slumber that might restore it. At thisinstant, I know not to what degree from the North Pole she stands, whether at Spitzberg or in Greenland. Cold and indifferent she goes tobed thinking, as Mistress Walter Shandy might have thought, that themorrow would be a day of sickness, that her husband is coming homevery late, that the beaten eggs which she has just eaten were notsufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs toher dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you maysuppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhilearrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting, has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots, leaves his stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before thefireplace; and wrapping his head up in a red silk handkerchief, without giving himself the trouble to tuck in the corners, he firesoff at his wife certain interjectory phrases, those little maritalendearments, which form almost the whole conversation at thosetwilight hours, where drowsy reason is no longer shining in thismechanism of ours. "What, in bed already! It was devilish cold thisevening! Why don't you speak, my pet? You've already rolled yourselfup in bed, then! Ah! you are in the dumps and pretend to be asleep!"These exclamations are mingled with yawns; and after numberless littleincidents which according to the usage of each home vary this prefaceof the night, our friend flings himself into his own bed with a heavythud. 

Alas! before a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear whendesire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject, biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts withmore or less sprightliness the scene where, in _Venice Preserved_, thegenius of Orway has represented the senator Antonio, repeating ahundred times over at the feet of Aquilina: "Aquilina, Quilina, Lina, Aqui, Nacki!" without winning from her aught save the stroke of herwhip, inasmuch as he has undertaken to fawn upon her like a dog. Inthe eyes of every woman, even of a lawful wife, the more a man showseager passion under these circumstances, the more silly he appears. Heis odious when he commands, he is minotaurized if he abuses his power. On this point I would remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriagecatechism from which you will see that you are violating its mostsacred precepts. Whether a woman yields, or does not yield, thisinstitution of twin beds gives to marriage such an element ofroughness and nakedness that the most chaste wife and the mostintelligent husband are led to immodesty. 

This scene, which is enacted in a thousand ways and which mayoriginate in a thousand different incidents, has a sequel in thatother situation which, while it is less pleasant, is far moreterrible. 

One evening when I was talking about these serious matters with thelate Comte de Noce, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, atall white-haired old man, his intimate friend, whose name I will notgive, because he is still alive, looked at us with a somewhatmelancholy air. We guessed that he was about to relate some tale ofscandal, and we accordingly watched him, somewhat as the stenographerof the _Moniteur_ might watch, as he mounted the tribune, a ministerwhose speech had already been written out for the reporter. Thestory-teller on this occasion was an old marquis, whose fortune, together with his wife and children, had perished in the disasters ofthe Revolution. The marchioness had been one of the most inconsistentwomen of the past generation; the marquis accordingly was not wantingin observations on feminine human nature. Having reached an age inwhich he saw nothing before him but the gulf of the grave, he spokeabout himself as if the subject of his talk were Mark Antony orCleopatra. 

"My young friend"--he did me the honor to address me, for it was I whomade the last remark in this discussion--"your reflections make methink of a certain evening, in the course of which one of my friendsconducted himself in such a manner as to lose forever the respect ofhis wife. Now, in those days a woman could take vengeance withmarvelous facility--for it was always a word and a blow. The marriedcouple I speak of were particular in sleeping on separate beds, withtheir head under the arch of the same alcove. They came home one nightfrom a brilliant ball given by the Comte de Mercy, ambassador of theemperor. The husband had lost a considerable sum at play, so he wascompletely absorbed in thought. He had to pay a debt, the next day, ofsix thousand crowns!--and you will recollect, Noce, that a hundredcrowns couldn't be made up from scraping together the resources of tensuch musketeers. The young woman, as generally happens under suchcircumstances, was in a gale of high spirits. 'Give to the marquis, 'she said to a _valet de chambre_, 'all that he requires for histoilet. ' In those days people dressed for the night. Theseextraordinary words did not rouse the husband from his mood ofabstraction, and then madame, assisted by her maid, began to indulgein a thousand coquetries. 'Was my appearance to your taste thisevening?' 'You are always to my taste, ' answered the marquis, continuing to stride up and down the room. 'You are very gloomy! Comeand talk to me, you frowning lover, ' said she, placing herself beforehim in the most seductive negligee. But you can have no idea of theenchantments of the marchioness unless you had known her. Ah! you haveseen her, Noce!" he said with a mocking smile. "Finally, in spite ofall her allurements and beauty, the marchioness was lost sight of amidthoughts of the six thousand crowns which this fool of a husband couldnot get out of his head, and she went to bed all alone. But womenalways have one resource left; so that the moment that the goodhusband made as though he would get into his bed, the marchionesscried, 'Oh, how cold I am!' 'So am I, ' he replied. 'How is it that theservants have not warmed our beds?'--And then I rang. "

The Comte de Noce could not help laughing, and the old marquis, quiteput out of countenance, stopped short. 

Not to divine the desire of a wife, to snore while she lies awake, tobe in Siberia when she is in the tropics, these are the slighterdisadvantages of twin beds. What risks will not a passionate woman runwhen she becomes aware that her husband is a heavy sleeper?

I am indebted to Beyle for an Italian anecdote, to which his dry andsarcastic manner lent an infinite charm, as he told me this tale offeminine hardihood. 

Ludovico had his palace at one end of the town of Milan; at the otherwas that of the Countess of Pernetti. At midnight, on a certainoccasion, Ludovico resolved, at the peril of his life, to make a rashexpedition for the sake of gazing for one second on the face headored, and accordingly appeared as if by magic in the palace of hiswell-beloved. He reached the nuptial chamber. Elisa Pernetti, whoseheart most probably shared the desire of her lover, heard the sound ofhis footsteps and divined his intention. She saw through the walls ofher chamber a countenance glowing with love. She rose from hermarriage bed, light as a shadow she glided to the threshold of herdoor, with a look she embraced him, she seized his hand, she made asign to him, she drew him in. 

"But he will kill you!" said he. 

"Perhaps so. "

But all this amounts to nothing. Let us grant that most husbands sleeplightly. Let us grant that they sleep without snoring, and that theyalways discern the degree of latitude at which their wives are to befound. Moreover, all the reasons which we have given why twin bedsshould be condemned, let us consider but dust in the balance. But, after all, a final consideration would make us also proscribe the useof beds ranged within the limits of the same alcove. 

To a man placed in the position of a husband, there are circumstanceswhich have led us to consider the nuptial couch as an actual means ofdefence. For it is only in bed that a man can tell whether his wife'slove is increasing or decreasing. It is the conjugal barometer. Now tosleep in twin beds is to wish for ignorance. You will understand, whenwe come to treat of _civil war_ (See Part Third) of what extremeusefulness a bed is and how many secrets a wife reveals in bed, without knowing it. 

Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious goodnature of such an institution as that of twin beds. 

It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in theworld. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!

But in proportion as this method is pernicious in the case of youngmarried people, it is salutary and advantageous for those who havereached the twentieth year of married life. Husband and wife can thenmost conveniently indulge their duets of snoring. It will, moreover, be more convenient for their various maladies, whether rheumatism, obstinate gout, or even the taking of a pinch of snuff; and the coughor the snore will not in any respect prove a greater hindrance than itis found to be in any other arrangement. 

We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional caseswhich authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinionof Bonaparte was that when once there had taken place an interchangeof life and breath (such are his words), nothing, not even sickness, should separate married people. This point is so delicate that it isnot possible here to treat it methodically. 

Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchalfamilies whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of twobeds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have beenhappy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that theauthor vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectablepeople who pass their lives in watching games of billiards. 

 2. SEPARATE ROOMS. 

There cannot be found in Europe a hundred husbands of each nationsufficiently versed in the science of marriage, or if you like, oflife, to be able to dwell in an apartment separate from that of theirwives. 

The power of putting this system into practice shows the highestdegree of intellectual and masculine force. 

The married couple who dwell in separate apartments have become eitherdivorced, or have attained to the discovery of happiness. They eitherabominate or adore each other. We will not undertake to detail herethe admirable precepts which may be deduced from this theory whose endis to make constancy and fidelity easy and delightful. It may besufficient to declare that by this system alone two married people canrealize the dream of many noble souls. This will be understood by allthe faithful. 

As for the profane, their curious questionings will be sufficientlyanswered by the remark that the object of this institution is to givehappiness to one woman. Which among them will be willing to deprivegeneral society of any share in the talents with which they thinkthemselves endowed, to the advantage of one woman? Nevertheless, therendering of his mistress happy gives any one the fairest title toglory which can be earned in this valley of Jehosaphat, since, according to Genesis, Eve was not satisfied even with a terrestrialParadise. She desired to taste the forbidden fruit, the eternal emblemof adultery. 

But there is an insurmountable reason why we should refrain fromdeveloping this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from themain theme of our work. In the situation which we have supposed to bethat of a married establishment, a man who is sufficiently unwise tosleep apart from his wife deserves no pity for the disaster which hehimself invites. 

Let us then resume our subject. Every man is not strong enough toundertake to occupy an apartment separate from that of his wife;although any man might derive as much good as evil from thedifficulties which exist in using but one bed. 

We now proceed to solve the difficulties which superficial minds maydetect in this method, for which our predilection is manifest. 

But this paragraph, which is in some sort a silent one, inasmuch as weleave it to the commentaries which will be made in more than one home, may serve as a pedestal for the imposing figure of Lycurgus, thatancient legislator, to whom the Greeks are indebted for theirprofoundest thoughts on the subject of marriage. May his system beunderstood by future generations! And if modern manners are too muchgiven to softness to adopt his system in its entirety, they may atleast be imbued with the robust spirit of this admirable code. 

 3. ONE BED FOR BOTH. 

On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light whichpresages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in agreat many soldiers to Prussia. "

The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principaldisadvantage which results from the constant living together ofmarried people. Although it may be permitted to Napoleon and toFrederick to estimate the value of a woman more or less according tothe number of her children, yet a husband of talent ought, accordingto the maxims of the thirteenth Meditation, to considerchild-begetting merely as a means of defence, and it is for him toknow to what extent it may take place. 

The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muserecoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chamberswhile they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and thereare occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passagein my book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before hereyes so as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through theinterstices of her tapering fingers, she will take advantage of thisattack of modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners. InEngland the nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couplealone have the privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, weare told, makes her bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyondthe sea, why should the only one which we despise be precisely that, whose grace and mystery ought undoubtedly to meet the approval of alltender souls on this continent? Refined women condemn the immodestywith which strangers are introduced into the sanctuary of marriage. Asfor us, who have energetically anathematized women who walk abroad atthe time when they expect soon to be confined, our opinion cannot bedoubted. If we wish the celibate to respect marriage, married peopleought to have some regard for the inflammability of bachelors. 

To sleep every night with one's wife may seem, we confess, an act ofthe most insolent folly. 

Many husbands are inclined to ask how a man, who desires to bringmarriage to perfection, dare prescribe to a husband a rule of conductwhich would be fatal in a lover. 

Nevertheless, such is the decision of a doctor of arts and sciencesconjugal. 

In the first place, without making a resolution never to sleep byhimself, this is the only course left to a husband, since we havedemonstrated the dangers of the preceding systems. We must now try toprove that this last method yields more advantage and lessdisadvantage than the two preceding methods, that is, so far asrelates to the critical position in which a conjugal establishmentstands. 

Our observations on the twin beds ought to have taught husbands thatthey should always be strung into the same degree of fervor as thatwhich prevails in the harmonious organization of their wives. Now itseems to us that this perfect equality in feelings would naturally becreated under the white Aegis, which spreads over both of them itsprotecting sheet; this at the outset is an immense advantage, andreally nothing is easier to verify at any moment than the degree oflove and expansion which a woman reaches when the same pillow receivesthe heads of both spouses. 

Man [we speak now of the species] walks about with a memorandum alwaystotalized, which shows distinctly and without error the amount ofpassion which he carries within him. This mysterious gynometer istraced in the hollow of the hand, for the hand is really that one ofour members which bears the impress most plainly of our characters. Chirology is a fifth work which I bequeath to my successors, for I amcontented here to make known but the elements of this interestingscience. 

The hand is the essential organ of touch. Touch is the sense whichvery nearly takes the place of all the others, and which alone isindispensable. Since the hand alone can carry out all that a mandesires, it is to an extent action itself. The sum total of ourvitality passes through it; and men of powerful intellects are usuallyremarkable for their shapely hands, perfection in that respect being adistinguishing trait of their high calling. 

Jesus Christ performed all His miracles by the imposition of hands. The hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to thephysician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than anyother part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance, which for want of another term we style _will_. The eye can discoverthe mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secretsof the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty ofimposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on ourforehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our featurescan be compared to the richness of its expression. The heat and coldwhich it feels in such delicate degrees often escape the notice ofother senses in thoughtless people; but a man knows how to distinguishthem, however little time he may have bestowed in studying the anatomyof sentiments and the affairs of human life. Thus the hand has athousand ways of becoming dry, moist, hot, cold, soft, rough, unctuous. The hand palpitates, becomes supple, grows hard and again issoftened. In fine it presents a phenomenon which is inexplicable sothat one is tempted to call it the incarnation of thought. It causesthe despair of the sculptor and the painter when they wish to expressthe changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments. To stretch outyour hand to a man is to save him, it serves as a ratification of thesentiments we express. The sorcerers of every age have tried to readour future destines in those lines which have nothing fanciful inthem, but absolutely correspond with the principles of each one's lifeand character. When she charges a man with want of tact, which ismerely touch, a woman condemns him without hope. We use theexpressions, the "Hand of Justice, " the "Hand of God;" and a _coup demain_ means a bold undertaking. 

To understand and recognize the hidden feelings by the atmosphericvariations of the hand, which a woman almost always yields withoutdistrust, is a study less unfruitful and surer than that ofphysiognomy. 

In this way you will be able, if you acquire this science, to wieldvast power, and to find a clue which will guide you through thelabyrinth of the most impenetrable heart. This will render your livingtogether free from very many mistakes, and, at the same time, rich inthe acquisition of many a treasure. 

Buffon and certain physiologists affirm that our members are morecompletely exhausted by desire than by the most keen enjoyments. Andreally, does not desire constitute of itself a sort of intuitivepossession? Does it not stand in the same relation to visible action, as those incidents in our mental life, in which we take part in adream, stand to the incidents of our actual life? This energeticapprehension of things, does it not call into being an internalemotion more powerful than that of the external action? If ourgestures are only the accomplishment of things already enacted by ourthought, you may easily calculate how desire frequently entertainedmust necessarily consume the vital fluids. But the passions which areno more than the aggregation of desires, do they not furrow with thewrinkle of their lightning the faces of the ambitious, of gamblers, for instance, and do they not wear out their bodies with marvelousswiftness?

These observations, therefore, necessarily contain the germs of amysterious system equally favored by Plato and by Epicurus; we willleave it for you to meditate upon, enveloped as it is in the veilwhich enshrouds Egyptian statues. 

But the greatest mistake that a man commits is to believe that lovecan belong only to those fugitive moments which, according to themagnificent expression of Bossuet, are like to the nails scatteredover a wall: to the eye they appear numerous; but when they arecollected they make but a handful. 

Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few thingsinexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feeleverything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; toreproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make apresent without pride; to double the value of a certain action by theway in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words;to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression;to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voiceproduce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; toamuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; tospeak to the soul--this is all that women ask. They will abandon allthe delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may livewith a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for whichthey are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have alittle consideration. 

This outline comprises a great portion of such secrets as belong tothe nuptial couch. There are perhaps some witty people who may takethis long definition of politeness for a description of love, while inany case it is no more than a recommendation to treat your wife as youwould treat the minister on whose good-will depends your promotion tothe post you covet. 

I hear numberless voices crying out that this book is a specialadvocate for women and neglects the cause of men;

That the majority of women are unworthy of these delicate attentionsand would abuse them;

That there are women given to licentiousness who would not lendthemselves to very much of what they would call mystification;

That women are nothing but vanity and think of nothing but dress;

That they have notions which are truly unreasonable;

That they are very often annoyed by an attention;

That they are fools, they understand nothing, are worth nothing, etc. 

In answer to all these clamors we will write here the followingphrases, which, placed between two spaces, will perhaps have the airof a thought, to quote an expression of Beaumarchais. 

 LXIV. A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her. 

The reasons why the single bed must triumph over the other two methodsof organizing the nuptial couch are as follows: In the single couch wehave a faithful interpreter to translate with profound truthfulnessthe sentiments of a woman, to render her a spy over herself, to keepher at the height of her amorous temperature, never to leave her, tohave the power of hearing her breathe in slumber, and thus to avoidall the nonsense which is the ruin of so many marriages. 

As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, youare bound to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignityunder the silk handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to seethat your slumber is light, not to cough too much, and to imitatethose modern authors who write more prefaces than books. 

 MEDITATION XVIII. 

 OF MARITAL REVOLUTIONS. 

The time always comes in which nations and women even the most stupidperceive that their innocence is being abused. The cleverest policymay for a long time proceed in a course of deceit; but it would bevery happy for men if they could carry on their deceit to an infiniteperiod; a vast amount of bloodshed would then be avoided, both innations and in families. 

Nevertheless, we hope that the means of defence put forth in thepreceding Meditations will be sufficient to deliver a certain numberof husbands from the clutches of the Minotaur! You must agree with thedoctor that many a love blindly entered upon perishes under thetreatment of hygiene or dies away, thanks to marital policy. Yes [whata consoling mistake!] many a lover will be driven away by personalefforts, many a husband will learn how to conceal under animpenetrable veil the machinery of his machiavelism, and many a manwill have better success than the old philosopher who cried: _Nolocoronari!_

But we are here compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth. Despotismhas its moments of secure tranquillity. Her reign seems like the hourwhich precedes the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler, stretched upon the faded grass, to hear at a mile's distance, the songof the cicada. Some fine morning an honest woman, who will be imitatedby a great portion of our own women, discerns with an eagle eye theclever manoeuvres which have rendered her the victim of an infernalpolicy. She is at first quite furious at having for so long a timepreserved her virtue. At what age, in what day, does this terriblerevolution occur? This question of chronology depends entirely uponthe genius of each husband; for it is not the vocation of all to putin practice with the same talent the precepts of our conjugal gospel. 

"A man must have very little love, " the mystified wife will exclaim, "to enter upon such calculations as these! What! From the first day Ihave been to him perpetually an object of suspicion! It is monstrous, even a woman would be incapable of such artful and cruel treachery!"

This is the question. Each husband will be able to understand thevariations of this complaint which will be made in accordance with thecharacter of the young Fury, of whom he has made a companion. 

A woman by no means loses her head under these circumstances; sheholds her tongue and dissembles. Her vengeance will be concealed. Onlyyou will have some symptoms of hesitation to contend with on thearrival of the crisis, which we presume you to have reached on theexpiration of the honeymoon; but you will also have to contend againsta resolution. She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, sofar as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze. Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becomingby degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only atthe moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glassoverflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we finddifficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse of timewhich intervenes between this last hour, the limit of your goodunderstanding, and the day when your wife becomes cognizant of yourartifices, is nevertheless quite sufficient to permit you to institutea series of defensive operations, which we will now explain. 

Up to this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertionof a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugalmachinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, ifyou would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun bynegotiating, you must end by mounting your horse, sabre in hand, likea Parisian gendarme. You must make your horse prance, you mustbrandish your sabre, you must shout strenuously, and you must endeavorto calm the revolt without wounding anybody. 

Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods tomethods that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justifythe sudden change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature, art consists entirely in the gracefulness of the transitions. This isof the highest importance for you. What a frightful position you willoccupy if your wife has reason to complain of your conduct at themoment, which is, perhaps, the most critical of your whole marriedlife!

You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secrettyranny of your initial policy; some means which still prepare themind of your wife for the severe measures which you are about to take;some means which so far from forfeiting her esteem will conciliateher; some means which will gain her pardon, which will restore somelittle of that charm of yours, by which you won her love before yourmarriage. 

"But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is theresuch a policy?"

Certainly there is. 

But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husbandpossess in order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which weare about to reveal to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whosefire is to make you a new man in the presence of your wife, you willrequire all the cunning of Talma. 

This passion is JEALOUSY. 

"My husband is jealous. He has been so from the beginning of ourmarriage. He has concealed this feeling from me by his usual refineddelicacy. Does he love me still? I am going to do as I like with him!"

Such are the discoveries which a woman is bound to make, one afteranother, in accordance with the charming scenes of the comedy whichyou are enacting for your amusement; and a man of the world must be anactual fool, if he fails in making a woman believe that which flattersher. 

With what perfection of hypocrisy must you arrange, step by step, yourhypocritical behavior so as to rouse the curiosity of your wife, toengage her in a new study, and to lead her astray among the labyrinthsof your thought!

Ye sublime actors! Do ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gesturesof artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning whichsome evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of yoursecret thoughts?

Ah! to laugh in your sleeve while you are exhibiting the fierceness ofa tiger; neither to lie nor to tell the truth; to comprehend thecapricious mood of a woman, and yet to make her believe that shecontrols you, while you intend to bind her with a collar of iron! Ocomedy that has no audience, which yet is played by one heart beforeanother heart and where both of you applaud because both of you thinkthat you have obtained success!

She it is who will tell you that you are jealous, who will point outto you that she knows you better than you know yourself, who willprove to you the uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps willdefy you. She triumphs in the excited consciousness of the superioritywhich she thinks she possesses over you; you of course are ennobled inher eyes; for she finds your conduct quite natural. The only thing shefeels is that your want of confidence was useless; if she wished tobetray, who could hinder her?

Then, some evening, you will burst into a passion, and, as some trifleaffords you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of whichyour anger will make you divulge the secret of your distress. And herecomes in the promulgation of our new code. 

Have no fear that a woman is going to trouble herself about this. Sheneeds your jealousy, she rather likes your severity. This comes fromthe fact that in the first place she finds there a justification forher own conduct; and then she finds immense satisfaction in playingbefore other people the part of a victim. What delightful expressionsof sympathy will she receive! Afterwards she will use this as a weaponagainst you, in the expectation thereby of leading you into a pitfall. 

She sees in your conduct the source of a thousand more pleasures inher future treachery, and her imagination smiles at all the barricadeswith which you surround her, for will she not have the delight ofsurmounting them all?

Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two humanfeelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or theweapons of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love, because it is their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almostthe only means by which they can control us. Within them jealousy is agenuine sentiment and springs from the instinct of self-preservation;it is vital to their life or death. But with men this feeling isabsolutely absurd when it does not subserve some further end. 

To entertain feelings of jealousy towards the woman you love, is tostart from a position founded on vicious reasoning. We are loved, orwe are not loved; if a man entertains jealousy under either of thesecircumstances, it is a feeling absolutely unprofitable to him;jealousy may be explained as fear, fear in love. But to doubt one'swife is to doubt one's self. 

To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the errorof _amour-propre_, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women ratherencourage this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they canobtain cashmere shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for themmark the high thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless youappear blinded by jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; forthere is no pitfall which she does not distrust, excepting that whichshe makes for herself. 

Thus the wife becomes the easy dupe of a husband who is clever enoughto give to the inevitable revolution, which comes sooner or later, theadvantageous results we have indicated. 

You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenonwhose existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Yourwife will always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Likethose knots which are never so tight as when one tries to loosen them, she will struggle to the advantage of your power over her, while shebelieves that she is struggling for her independence. 

The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies inpersuading his people that he goes to war for them, while all the timehe is causing them to be killed for his throne. 

But many husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing thisplan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation, the question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of yourlong mystification?

It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well asthat on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning thethought of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book ofexhaustively stating the resources of human wit, which areimmeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of theSaturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character oftheir slaves, in ten minutes, than they would have found out duringthe rest of the year! You ought therefore to ordain Saturnalia in yourestablishment, and to imitate Gessler, who, when he saw William Tellshoot the apple off his son's head, was forced to remark, "Here is aman whom I must get rid of, for he could not miss his aim if he wishedto kill me. "

You understand, then, that if your wife wishes to drink Roussillonwine, to eat mutton chops, to go out at all hours and to read theencyclopaedia, you are bound to take her very seriously. In the firstplace, she will begin to distrust you against her own wish, on seeingthat your behaviour towards her is quite contrary to your previousproceedings. She will suppose that you have some ulterior motive inthis change of policy, and therefore all the liberty that you give herwill make her so anxious that she cannot enjoy it. As regards themisfortunes that this change may bring, the future will provide forthem. In a revolution the primary principle is to exercise a controlover the evil which cannot be prevented and to attract the lightningby rods which shall lead it to the earth. 

And now the last act of the comedy is in preparation. 

The lover who, from the day when the feeblest of all first symptomsshows itself in your wife until the moment when the marital revolutiontakes place, has jumped upon the stage, either as a material creatureor as a being of the imagination--the LOVER, summoned by a sign fromher, now declares: "Here I am!"

 MEDITATION XIX. 

 OF THE LOVER. 

We offer the following maxims for your consideration:

We should despair of the human race if these maxims had been madebefore 1830; but they set forth in so clear a manner the agreementsand difficulties which distinguish you, your wife and a lover; they sobrilliantly describe what your policy should be, and demonstrate toyou so accurately the strength of the enemy, that the teacher has puthis _amour-propre_ aside, and if by chance you find here a single newthought, send it to the devil, who suggested this work. 

 LXV. To speak of love is to make love. 

 LXVI. In a lover the coarsest desire always shows itself as a burst of honest admiration. 

 LXVII. A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are lacking in a husband. 

 LXVIII. A lover not only gives life to everything, he makes one forget life; the husband does not give life to anything. 

 LXIX. All the affected airs of sensibility which a woman puts on invariablydeceive a lover; and on occasions when a husband shrugs his shoulders, a lover is in ecstasies. 

 LXX. A lover betrays by his manner alone the degree of intimacy in which he stands to a married woman. 

 LXXI. A woman does not always know why she is in love. It is rarely that aman falls in love without some selfish purpose. A husband shoulddiscover this secret motive of egotism, for it will be to him thelever of Archimedes. 

 LXXII. A clever husband never betrays his supposition that his wife has a lover. 

 LXXIII. The lover submits to all the caprices of a woman; and as a man isnever vile while he lies in the arms of his mistress, he will take themeans to please her that a husband would recoil from. 

 LXXIV. A lover teaches a wife all that her husband has concealed from her. 

 LXXV. All the sensations which a woman yields to her lover, she gives inexchange; they return to her always intensified; they are as rich inwhat they give as in what they receive. This is the kind of commercein which almost all husbands end by being bankrupt. 

 LXXVI. A lover speaks of nothing to a woman but that which exalts her; whilea husband, although he may be a loving one, can never refrain fromgiving advice which always has the appearance of reprimand. 

 LXXVII. A lover always starts from his mistress to himself; with a husband the contrary is the case. 

 LXXVIII. A lover always has a desire to appear amiable. There is in thissentiment an element of exaggeration which leads to ridicule; studyhow to take advantage of this. 

 LXXIX. When a crime has been committed the magistrate who investigates thecase knows [excepting in the case of a released convict who commitsmurder in jail] that there are not more than five persons to whom hecan attribute the act. He starts from this premise a series ofconjectures. The husband should reason like the judge; there are onlythree people in society whom he can suspect when seeking the lover of his wife. 

 LXXX. A lover is never in the wrong. 

 LXXXI. The lover of a married woman says to her: "Madame, you have need ofrest. You have to give an example of virtue to your children. You havesworn to make your husband happy, and although he has some faults--hehas fewer than I have--he is worthy of your esteem. Nevertheless youhave sacrificed everything for me. Do not let a single murmur escapeyou; for regret is an offence which I think worthy of a severerpenalty than the law decrees against infidelity. As a reward for thesesacrifices, I will bring you as much pleasure as pain. " And theincredible part about it is, that the lover triumphs. The form whichhis speech takes carries it. He says but one phrase: "I love you. " Alover is a herald who proclaims either the merit, the beauty, or thewit of a woman. What does a husband proclaim?

To sum up all, the love which a married woman inspires, or that whichshe gives back, is the least creditable sentiment in the world; in herit is boundless vanity; in her lover it is selfish egotism. The loverof a married woman contracts so many obligations, that scarcely threemen in a century are met with who are capable of discharging them. Heought to dedicate his whole life to his mistress, but he always endsby deserting her; both parties are aware of this, and, from thebeginning of social life, the one has always been sublime inself-sacrifice, the other an ingrate. The infatuation of love alwaysrouses the pity of the judges who pass sentence on it. But where doyou find such love genuine and constant? What power must a husbandpossess to struggle successfully against a man who casts over a womana spell strong enough to make her submit to such misfortunes!

We think, then, as a general rule, a husband, if he knows how to usethe means of defence which we have outlined, can lead his wife up toher twenty-seventh year, not without her having chosen a lover, butwithout her having committed the great crime. Here and there we meetwith men endowed with deep marital genius, who can keep their wives, body and soul to themselves alone up to their thirtieth orthirty-fifth year; but these exceptions cause a sort of scandal andalarm. The phenomenon scarcely ever is met with excepting in thecountry, where life is transparent and people live in glass houses andthe husband wields immense power. The miraculous assistance which menand things thus give to a husband always vanishes in the midst of acity whose population reaches to two hundred and fifty thousand. 

It would therefore almost appear to be demonstrated that thirty is theage of virtue. At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficultto guard, that in order successfully to enchain her within theconjugal Paradise, resort must be had to those last means of defencewhich remain to be described, and which we will reveal in the _Essayon Police_, the _Art of Returning Home_, and _Catastrophes_. 

 MEDITATION XX. 

 ESSAY ON POLICE. 

The police of marriage consist of all those means which are given youby law, manners, force, and stratagem for preventing your wife in herattempt to accomplish those three acts which in some sort make up thelife of love: writing, seeing and speaking. 

The police combine in greater or less proportion the means of defenceput forth in the preceding Meditations. Instinct alone can teach inwhat proportions and on what occasions these compounded elements areto be employed. The whole system is elastic; a clever husband willeasily discern how it must be bent, stretched or retrenched. By theaid of the police a man can guide his wife to her fortieth year purefrom any fault. 

We will divide this treatise on Police into five captions:

 1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS. 2. OF CORRESPONDENCE. 3. OF SPIES. 4. THE INDEX. 5. OF THE BUDGET. 

 1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS. 

In spite of the grave crisis which the husband has reached, we do notsuppose that the lover has completely acquired the freedom of the cityin the marital establishment. Many husbands often suspect that theirwives have a lover, and yet they do not know upon which of the five orsix chosen ones of whom we have spoken their suspicions ought to fall. This hesitation doubtless springs from some moral infirmity, to whoseassistance the professor must come. 

Fouche had in Paris three or four houses resorted to by people of thehighest distinction; the mistresses of these dwellings were devoted tohim. This devotion cost a great deal of money to the state. Theminister used to call these gatherings, of which nobody at the timehad any suspicion, his _mouse-traps_. More than one arrest was made atthe end of the ball at which the most brilliant people of Paris hadbeen made accomplices of this oratorian. 

The act of offering some fragments of roasted nuts, in order to seeyour wife put her white hand in the trap, is certainly exceedinglydelicate, for a woman is certain to be on her guard; nevertheless, wereckon upon at least three kinds of mouse-traps: _The Irresistible_, _The Fallacious_, and that which is _Touch and Go_. 

 _The Irresistible. _

Suppose two husbands, we will call them A and B, wish to discover whoare the lovers of their wives. We will put the husband A at the centreof a table loaded with the finest pyramids of fruit, of crystals, ofcandies and of liqueurs, and the husband B shall be at whatever pointof this brilliant circle you may please to suppose. The champagne hasgone round, every eye is sparkling and every tongue is wagging. 

HUSBAND A. (peeling a chestnut)--Well, as for me, I admire literarypeople, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversationthey are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faultsor their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), peopleof genius are like tonics--you like, but you must use themtemperately. 

WIFE B. (who has listened attentively)--But, M. A. , you are veryexacting (with an arch smile); it seems to me that dull people have asmany faults as people of talent, with this difference perhaps, thatthe former have nothing to atone for them!

HUSBAND A. (irritably)--You will agree at least, madame, that they arenot very amiable to you. 

WIFE B. (with vivacity)--Who told you so?

HUSBAND A. (smiling)--Don't they overwhelm you all the time with theirsuperiority? Vanity so dominates their souls that between you and themthe effort is reciprocal--

THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE. (aside to Wife A)--You well deserved it, mydear. (Wife A shrugs her shoulders. )

HUSBAND A. (still continuing)--Then the habit they have of combiningideas which reveal to them the mechanism of feeling! For them love ispurely physical and every one knows that they do not shine. 

WIFE B. (biting her lips, interrupting him)--It seems to me, sir, thatwe are the sole judges in this matter. I can well understand why menof the world do not like men of letters! But it is easier to criticisethan to imitate them. 

HUSBAND A. (disdainfully)--Oh, madame, men of the world can assail theauthors of the present time without being accused of envy. There ismany a gentleman of the drawing-room, who if he undertook to write--

WIFE B. (with warmth)--Unfortunately for you, sir, certain friends ofyours in the Chamber have written romances; have you been able to readthem?--But really, in these days, in order to attain the leastoriginality, you must undertake historic research, you must--

HUSBAND B. (making no answer to the lady next him and speaking aside)--Oh! Oh! Can it be that it is M. De L-----, author of the _Dreams ofa Young Girl_, whom my wife is in love with?--That is singular; Ithought that it was Doctor M-----. But stay! (Aloud. ) Do you know, mydear, that you are right in what you say? (All laugh. ) Really, Ishould prefer to have always artists and men of letters in mydrawing-room--(aside) when we begin to receive!--rather than to seethere other professional men. In any case artists speak of things aboutwhich every one is enthusiastic, for who is there who does not believein good taste? But judges, lawyers, and, above all, doctors--Heavens!I confess that to hear them constantly speaking about lawsuits anddiseases, those two human ills--

WIFE A. (sitting next to Husband B, speaking at the same time)--Whatis that you are saying, my friend? You are quite mistaken. In thesedays nobody wishes to wear a professional manner; doctors, since youhave mentioned doctors, try to avoid speaking of professional matters. They talk politics, discuss the fashions and the theatres, they tellanecdotes, they write books better than professional authors do; thereis a vast difference between the doctors of to-day and those ofMoliere--

HUSBAND A. (aside)--Whew! Is it possible my wife is in love with Dr. M-----? That would be odd. (Aloud. ) That is quite possible, my dear, but I would not give a sick dog in charge of a physician who writes. 

WIFE A. (interrupting her husband)--I know people who have five or sixoffices, yet the government has the greatest confidence in them;anyway, it is odd that you should speak in this way, you who were oneof Dr. M-----'s great cases--

HUSBAND A. (aside)--There can be no doubt of it!

 _The Fallacious. _

A HUSBAND. (as he reaches home)--My dear, we are invited by Madame deFischtaminel to a concert which she is giving next Tuesday. I reckonedon going there, as I wanted to speak with a young cousin of theminister who was among the singers; but he is gone to Frouville to seehis aunt. What do you propose doing?

HIS WIFE. --These concerts tire me to death!--You have to sit nailed toyour chair whole hours without saying a word. --Besides, you know quitewell that we dine with my mother on that day, and it is impossible tomiss paying her a visit. 

HER HUSBAND. (carelessly)--Ah! that is true. 

_(Three days afterwards. )_

THE HUSBAND. (as he goes to bed)--What do you think, my darling?To-morrow I will leave you at your mother's, for the count hasreturned from Frouville and will be at Madame de Fischtaminel'sconcert. 

HIS WIFE. (vivaciously)--But why should you go alone? You know how Iadore music!

 _The Touch and Go Mouse-Trap. _

THE WIFE. --Why did you go away so early this evening?

THE HUSBAND. (mysteriously)--Ah! It is a sad business, and all themore so because I don't know how I can settle it. 

THE WIFE. --What is it all about, Adolph? You are a wretch if you donot tell me what you are going to do!

THE HUSBAND. --My dear, that ass of a Prosper Magnan is fighting a duelwith M. De Fontanges, on account of an Opera singer. --But what is thematter with you?

THE WIFE. --Nothing. --It is very warm in this room and I don't knowwhat ails me, for the whole day I have been suffering from suddenflushing of the face. 

THE HUSBAND. (aside)--She is in love with M. De Fontanges. (Aloud. )Celestine! (He shouts out still louder. ) Celestine! Come quick, madameis ill!

You will understand that a clever husband will discover a thousandways of setting these three kinds of traps. 

 2. OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read itand burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplestterms. 

Yet consider what immense resources are given by civilization, by ourmanners and by our love to the women who wish to conceal thesematerial actions from the scrutiny of a husband. 

The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receivesits epistolary provender from all hands. 

There is also the fatal invention of the General Delivery. A loverfinds in the world a hundred charitable persons, male and female, who, for a slight consideration, will slip the billets-doux into theamorous and intelligent hand of his fair mistress. 

A correspondence is a variable as Proteus. There are sympathetic inks. A young celibate has told us in confidence that he has written aletter on the fly-leaf of a new book, which, when the husband askedfor it of the bookseller, reached the hands of his mistress, who hadbeen prepared the evening before for this charming article. 

A woman in love, who fears her husband's jealousy, will write and readbillets-doux during the time consecrated to those mysteriousoccupations during which the most tyrannical husband must leave heralone. 

Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code ofsignals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At aball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, apocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing thenose, wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on oneside, wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a certain songin a concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the eyeson a point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy whichpasses your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to thenewspaper announcement of a horse for sale--all may be reckoned ascorrespondence. 

How many times, in short, will a wife craftily ask her husband to dosuch and such commission for her, to go to such and such a shop orhouse, having previously informed her lover that your presence at suchor such a place means yes or no?

On this point the professor acknowledges with shame that there is nopossible means of preventing correspondence between lovers. But alittle machiavelism on the part of the husband will be much morelikely to remedy the difficulty than any coercive measures. 

An agreement, which should be kept sacred between married people, istheir solemn oath that they will respect each other's sealed letters. Clever is the husband who makes this pledge on his wedding-day and isable to keep it conscientiously. 

In giving your wife unrestrained liberty to write and to receiveletters, you will be enabled to discern the moment she begins tocorrespond with a lover. 

But suppose your wife distrusts you and covers with impenetrableclouds the means she takes to conceal from you her correspondence. Isit not then time to display that intellectual power with which wearmed you in our Meditation entitled _Of the Custom House_? The manwho does not see when his wife writes to her lover, and when shereceives an answer, is a failure as a husband. 

The proposed study which you ought to bestow upon the movements, theactions, the gestures, the looks of your wife, will be perhapstroublesome and wearying, but it will not last long; the only point isto discover when your wife and her lover correspond and in what way. 

We cannot believe that a husband, even of moderate intelligence, willfail to see through this feminine manoeuvre, when once he suspects itsexistence. 

Meanwhile, you can judge from a single incident what means of policeand of restraint remain to you in the event of such a correspondence. 

A young lawyer, whose ardent passion exemplified certain of theprinciples dwelt upon in this important part of our work, had marrieda young person whose love for him was but slight; yet thiscircumstance he looked upon as an exceedingly happy one; but at theend of his first year of marriage he perceived that his dear Anna [forAnna was her name] had fallen in love with the head clerk of astock-broker. 

Adolph was a young man of about twenty-five, handsome in face and asfond of amusement as any other celibate. He was frugal, discreet, possessed of an excellent heart, rode well, talked well, had fineblack hair always curled, and dressed with taste. In short, he wouldhave done honor and credit to a duchess. The advocate was ugly, short, stumpy, square-shouldered, mean-looking, and, moreover, a husband. Anna, tall and pretty, had almond eyes, white skin and refinedfeatures. She was all love; and passion lighted up her glance with abewitching expression. While her family was poor, Maitre Lebrun had anincome of twelve thousand francs. That explains all. 

One evening Lebrun got home looking extremely chop-fallen. He wentinto his study to work; but he soon came back shivering to his wife, for he had caught a fever and hurriedly went to bed. There he laygroaning and lamenting for his clients and especially for a poor widowwhose fortune he was to save the very next day by effecting acompromise. An appointment had been made with certain business men andhe was quite incapable of keeping it. After having slept for a quarterof an hour, he begged his wife in a feeble voice to write to one ofhis intimate friends, asking him to take his (Lebrun's) place next dayat the conference. He dictated a long letter and followed with his eyethe space taken up on the paper by his phrases. When he came to beginthe second page of the last sheet, the advocate set out to describe tohis confrere the joy which his client would feel on the signing of thecompromise, and the fatal page began with these words:

 "My good friend, go for Heaven's sake to Madame Vernon's at once; you are expected with impatience there; she lives at No. 7 Rue de Sentier. Pardon my brevity; but I count on your admirable good sense to guess what I am unable to explain. 

 "Tout a vous, "

"Give me the letter, " said the lawyer, "that I may see whether it iscorrect before signing it. "

The unfortunate wife, who had been taken off her guard by this letter, which bristled with the most barbarous terms of legal science, gave upthe letter. As soon as Lebrun got possession of the wily script hebegan to complain, to twist himself about, as if in pain, and todemand one little attention after another of his wife. Madame left theroom for two minutes during which the advocate leaped from his bed, folded a piece of paper in the form of a letter and hid the missivewritten by his wife. When Anna returned, the clever husband seized theblank paper, made her address it to the friend of his, to whom theletter which he had taken out was written, and the poor creaturehanded the blank letter to his servant. Lebrun seemed to growgradually calmer; he slept or pretended to do so, and the next morninghe still affected to feel strange pains. Two days afterwards he toreoff the first leaf of the letter and put an "e" to the word _tout_ inthe phrase "tout a vous. "[*] He folded mysteriously the paper whichcontained the innocent forgery, sealed it, left his bedroom and calledthe maid, saying to her:

[*] Thus giving a feminine ending to the signature, and lending the impression that the note emanated from the wife personally--J. W. M. 

"Madame begs that you will take this to the house of M. Adolph; now, be quick about it. "

He saw the chambermaid leave the house and soon afterwards he, on aplea of business, went out, hurried to Rue de Sentier, to the addressindicated, and awaited the arrival of his rival at the house of afriend who was in the secret of his stratagem. The lover, intoxicatedwith happiness, rushed to the place and inquired for Madame de Vernon;he was admitted and found himself face to face with Maitre Lebrun, whoshowed a countenance pale but chill, and gazed at him with tranquilbut implacable glance. 

"Sir, " he said in a tone of emotion to the young clerk, whose heartpalpitated with terror, "you are in love with my wife, and you aretrying to please her; I scarcely know how to treat you in return forthis, because in your place and at your age I should have done exactlythe same. But Anna is in despair; you have disturbed her happiness, and her heart is filled with the torments of hell. Moreover, she hastold me all, a quarrel soon followed by a reconciliation forced her towrite the letter which you have received, and she has sent me here inher place. I will not tell you, sir, that by persisting in your planof seduction you will cause the misery of her you love, that you willforfeit her my esteem, and eventually your own; that your crime willbe stamped on the future by causing perhaps sorrow to my children. Iwill not even speak to you of the bitterness you will infuse into mylife;--unfortunately these are commonplaces! But I declare to you, sir, that the first step you take in this direction will be the signalfor a crime; for I will not trust the risk of a duel in order to stabyou to the heart!"

And the eyes of the lawyer flashed ominously. 

"Now, sir, " he went on in a gentler voice, "you are young, you have agenerous heart. Make a sacrifice for the future happiness of her youlove; leave her and never see her again. And if you must needs be amember of my family, I have a young aunt who is yet unsettled in life;she is charming, clever and rich. Make her acquaintance, and leave avirtuous woman undisturbed. "

This mixture of raillery and intimidation, together with theunwavering glance and deep voice of the husband, produced a remarkableimpression on the lover. He remained for a moment utterly confused, like people overcome with passion and deprived of all presence of mindby a sudden shock. If Anna has since then had any lovers [which is apure hypothesis] Adolph certainly is not one of them. 

This occurrence may help you to understand that correspondence is adouble-edged weapon which is of as much advantage for the defence ofthe husband as for the inconsistency of the wife. You should thereforeencourage correspondence for the same reason that the prefect ofpolice takes special care that the street lamps of Paris are keptlighted. 

 3. OF SPIES. 

To come so low as to beg servants to reveal secrets to you, and tofall lower still by paying for a revelation, is not a crime; it isperhaps not even a dastardly act, but it is certainly a piece offolly; for nothing will ever guarantee to you the honesty of a servantwho betrays her mistress, and you can never feel certain whether sheis operating in your interest or in that of your wife. This pointtherefore may be looked upon as beyond controversy. 

Nature, that good and tender parent, has set round about the mother ofa family the most reliable and the most sagacious of spies, the mosttruthful and at the same time the most discreet in the world. They aresilent and yet they speak, they see everything and appear to seenothing. 

One day I met a friend of mine on the boulevard. He invited me todinner, and we went to his house. Dinner had been already served, andthe mistress of the house was helping her two daughters to plates ofsoup. 

"I see here my first symptoms, " I said to myself. 

We sat down. The first word of the husband, who spoke withoutthinking, and for the sake of talking, was the question:

"Has any one been here to-day?"

"Not a soul, " replied his wife, without lifting her eyes. 

I shall never forget the quickness with which the two daughters lookedup to their mother. The elder girl, aged eight, had somethingespecially peculiar in her glance. There was at the same timerevelation and mystery, curiosity and silence, astonishment and apathyin that look. If there was anything that could be compared to thespeed with which the light of candor flashed from their eyes, it wasthe prudent reserve with which both of them closed down, likeshutters, the folds of their white eyelids. 

Ye sweet and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to theage of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she isnot a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinctof your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man'svoice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything, and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, even themeaning of a word spoken in the air, even the meaning of your mother'sslightest gesture?

There is something of gratitude, something in fact instinctive, in thepredilection of fathers for their daughters and mothers for theirsons. 

But the act of setting spies which are in some way inanimate is meredotage, and nothing is easier than to find a better plan than that ofthe beadle, who took it into his head to put egg-shells in his bed, and who obtained no other sympathy from his confederate than thewords, "You are not very successful in breaking them. "

The Marshal de Saxe did not give much consolation to his Popelinierewhen they discovered in company that famous revolving chimney, invented by the Duc de Richelieu. 

"That is the finest piece of horn work that I have ever seen!" criedthe victor of Fontenoy. 

Let us hope that your espionage will not give you so troublesome alesson. Such misfortunes are the fruits of the civil war and we do notlive in that age. 

 4. THE INDEX. 

The Pope puts books only on the Index; you will mark with a stigma ofreprobation men and things. 

It is forbidden to madame to go into a bath except in her own house. 

It is forbidden to madame to receive into her house him whom yoususpect of being her lover, and all those who are the accomplices oftheir love. 

It is forbidden to madame to take a walk without you. 

But the peculiarities which in each household originate from thediversity of characters, the numberless incidents of passion, and thehabits of the married people give to this black book so manyvariations, the lines in it are multiplied or erased with suchrapidity that a friend of the author has called this Index _TheHistory of Changes in the Marital Church_. 

There are only two things which can be controlled or prescribed inaccordance with definite rules; the first is the country, the secondis the promenade. 

A husband ought never to take his wife to the country nor permit herto go there. Have a country home if you like, live there, entertainthere nobody excepting ladies or old men, but never leave your wifealone there. But to take her, for even half a day, to the house ofanother man is to show yourself as stupid as an ostrich. 

To keep guard over a wife in the country is a task most difficult ofaccomplishment. Do you think that you will be able to be in thethickets, to climb the trees, to follow the tracks of a lover over thegrass trodden down at night, but straightened by the dew in themorning and refreshed by the rays of the sun? Can you keep your eye onevery opening in the fence of the park? Oh! the country and theSpring! These are the two right arms of the celibate. 

When a woman reaches the crisis at which we suppose her to be, ahusband ought to remain in town till the declaration of war, or toresolve on devoting himself to all the delights of a cruel espionage. 

With regard to the promenade: Does madame wish to go to parties, tothe theatre, to the Bois de Boulogne, to purchase her dresses, to findout what is the fashion? Madame shall go, shall see everything in therespectable company of her lord and master. 

If she take advantage of the moment when a business appointment, whichyou cannot fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacitpermission to some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain thatpermission she displays all the witcheries of those cajoleries inwhich women excel and whose powerful influence you ought already tohave known, well, well, the professor implores you to allow her to winyou over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon she asks; andabove all convince this creature, whose soul is at once as changeableas water and as firm as steel, that it is impossible for you from theimportance of your work to leave your study. 

But as soon as your wife has set foot upon the street, if she goes onfoot, don't give her time to make fifty steps; follow and track her insuch a way that you will not be noticed. 

It is possible that there exist certain Werthers whose refined anddelicate souls recoil from this inquisition. But this is not moreblamable than that of a landed proprietor who rises at night and looksthrough the windows for the purpose of keeping watch over the peacheson his _espaliers_. You will probably by this course of action obtain, before the crime is committed, exact information with regard to theapartments which so many lovers rent in the city under fictitiousnames. If it happens [which God forbid!] that your wife enters a housesuspected by you, try to find out if the place has several exits. 

Should your wife take a hack, what have you to fear? Is there not aprefect of police, to whom all husbands ought to decree a crown ofsolid gold, and has he not set up a little shed or bench where thereis a register, an incorruptible guardian of public morality? And doeshe not know all the comings and goings of these Parisian gondolas?

One of the vital principles of our police will consist in alwaysfollowing your wife to the furnishers of your house, if she isaccustomed to visit them. You will carefully find out whether there isany intimacy between her and her draper, her dressmaker or hermilliner, etc. In this case you will apply the rules of the conjugalCustom House, and draw your own conclusions. 

If in your absence your wife, having gone out against your will, tellsyou that she had been to such a place, to such a shop, go thereyourself the next day and try to find out whether she has spoken thetruth. 

But passion will dictate to you, even better than the Meditation, thevarious resources of conjugal tyranny, and we will here cut shortthese tiresome instructions. 

 5. OF THE BUDGET. 

In outlining the portrait of a sane and sound husband (See _Meditationon the Predestined_), we urgently advise that he should conceal fromhis wife the real amount of his income. 

In relying upon this as the foundation stone of our financial systemwe hope to do something towards discounting the opinion, so verygenerally held, that a man ought not to give the handling of hisincome to his wife. This principle is one of the many popular errorsand is one of the chief causes of misunderstanding in the domesticestablishment. 

But let us, in the first place, deal with the question of heart, before we proceed to that of money. 

To draw up a little civil list for your wife and for the requirementsof the house and to pay her money as if it were a contribution, intwelve equal portions month by month, has something in it that is alittle mean and close, and cannot be agreeable to any but sordid andmistrustful souls. By acting in this way you prepare for yourselfinnumerable annoyances. 

I could wish that during the first year of your mellifluous union, scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate thehanding over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when theself-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel herto ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant herthe bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do. They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same timecompliment her. I hope it will be so. 

But in the crisis which we have reached, the provisions of the annualbudget can never prove sufficient. There must be an increase offichus, of bonnets, of frocks; there is an expense which cannot becalculated beforehand demanded by the meetings, by the diplomaticmessengers, by the ways and means of love, even while the receiptsremain the same as usual. Then must commence in your establishment acourse of education the most odious, and the most dreadful which awoman can undergo. I know but few noble and generous souls who value, more than millions, purity of heart, frankness of soul, and who woulda thousand times more readily pardon a passion than a lie, whoseinstinctive delicacy has divined the existence of this plague of thesoul, the lowest step in human degradation. 

Under these circumstances there occur in the domestic establishmentthe most delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomesutterly pliant and like to the most brilliant of all the strings of aharp, when thrown before the fire; she rolls round you, she claspsyou, she holds you tight; she defers to all your caprices; never washer conversation so full of tenderness; she lavishes her endearmentsupon you, or rather she sells them to you; she at last becomes lowerthan a chorus girl, for she prostitutes herself to her husband. In hersweetest kisses there is money; in all her words there is money. Inplaying this part her heart becomes like lead towards you. The mostpolished, the most treacherous usurer never weighs so completely witha single glance the future value in bullion of a son of a family whomay sign a note to him, than your wife appraises one of your desiresas she leaps from branch to branch like an escaping squirrel, in orderto increase the sum of money she may demand by increasing the appetitewhich she rouses in you. You must not expect to get scot-free fromsuch seductions. Nature has given boundless gifts of coquetry to awoman, the usages of society have increased them tenfold by itsfashions, its dresses, its embroideries and its tippets. 

"If I ever marry, " one of the most honorable generals of our ancientarmy used to say, "I won't put a sou among the wedding presents--"

"What will you put there then, general?" asked a young girl. 

"The key of my safe. "

The young girl made a curtsey of approbation. She moved her littlehead with a quiver like that of the magnetic needle; raised her chinslightly as if she would have said:

"I would gladly marry the general in spite of his forty-five years. "

But with regard to money, what interest can you expect your wife totake in a machine in which she is looked upon as a mere bookkeeper?

Now look at the other system. 

In surrendering to your wife, with an avowal of absolute confidence inher, two-thirds of your fortune and letting her as mistress controlthe conjugal administration, you win from her an esteem which nothingcan destroy, for confidence and high-mindedness find powerful echoesin the heart of a woman. Madame will be loaded with a responsibilitywhich will often raise a barrier against extravagances, all thestronger because it is she herself who has created it in her heart. You yourself have made a portion of the work, and you may be sure thatfrom henceforth your wife will never perhaps dishonor herself. 

Moreover, by seeking in this way a method of defence, consider whatadmirable aids are offered to you by this plan of finances. 

You will have in your house an exact estimate of the morality of yourwife, just as the quotations of the Bourse give you a just estimate ofthe degree of confidence possessed by the government. 

And doubtless, during the first years of your married life, your wifewill take pride in giving you every luxury and satisfaction which yourmoney can afford. 

She will keep a good table, she will renew the furniture, and thecarriages; she will always keep in her drawer a sum of money sacred toher well-beloved and ready for his needs. But of course, in the actualcircumstances of life, the drawer will be very often empty andmonsieur will spend a great deal too much. The economies ordered bythe Chamber never weigh heavily upon the clerks whose income is twelvehundred francs; and you will be the clerk at twelve hundred francs inyour own house. You will laugh in your sleeve, because you will havesaved, capitalized, invested one-third of your income during a longtime, like Louis XV, who kept for himself a little separate treasury, "against a rainy day, " he used to say. 

Thus, if your wife speaks of economy, her discourse will be equal tothe varying quotations of the money-market. You will be able to divinethe whole progress of the lover by these financial fluctuations, andyou will have avoided all difficulties. _E sempre bene. _

If your wife fails to appreciate the excessive confidence, anddissipates in one day a large proportion of your fortune, in the firstplace it is not probable that this prodigality will amount toone-third of the revenue which you have been saving for ten years;moreover you will learn, from the Meditation on _Catastrophes_, thatin the very crisis produced by the follies of your wife, you will havebrilliant opportunities of slaying the Minotaur. 

But the secret of the treasure which has been amassed by yourthoughtfulness need never be known till after your death; and if youhave found it necessary to draw upon it, in order to assist your wife, you must always let it be thought that you have won at play, or made aloan from a friend. 

These are the true principles which should govern the conjugal budget. 

The police of marriage has its martyrology. We will cite but oneinstance which will make plain how necessary it is for husbands whoresort to severe measures to keep watch over themselves as well asover their wives. 

An old miser who lived at T-----, a pleasure resort if there ever wasone, had married a young and pretty woman, and he was so wrapped up inher and so jealous that love triumphed over avarice; he actually gaveup trade in order to guard his wife more closely, but his only realchange was that his covetousness took another form. I acknowledge thatI owe the greater portion of the observations contained in this essay, which still is doubtless incomplete, to the person who made a study ofthis remarkable marital phenomenon, to portray which, one singledetail will be amply sufficient. When he used to go to the country, this husband never went to bed without secretly raking over thepathways of his park, and he had a special rake for the sand of histerraces. He had made a close study of the footprints made by thedifferent members of his household; and early in the morning he usedto go and identify the tracks that had been made there. 

"All this is old forest land, " he used to say to the person I havereferred to, as he showed him over the park; "for nothing can be seenthrough the brushwood. "

His wife fell in love with one of the most charming young men of thetown. This passion had continued for nine years bright and fresh inthe hearts of the two lovers, whose sole avowal had been a lookexchanged in a crowded ball-room; and while they danced together theirtrembling hands revealed through the scented gloves the depth of theirlove. From that day they had both of them taken great delight on thosetrifles which happy lovers never disdain. One day the young man ledhis only confidant, with a mysterious air, into a chamber where hekept under glass globes upon his table, with more care than he wouldhave bestowed upon the finest jewels in the world, the flowers that, in the excitement of the dance, had fallen from the hair of hismistress, and the finery which had been caught in the trees which shehad brushed through in the park. He also preserved there the narrowfootprint left upon the clay soil by the lady's step. 

"I could hear, " said this confidant to me afterwards, "the violent andrepressed palpitations of his heart sounding in the silence which wepreserved before the treasures of this museum of love. I raised myeyes to the ceiling, as if to breathe to heaven the sentiment which Idared not utter. 'Poor humanity!' I thought. 'Madame de ----- told methat one evening at a ball you had been found nearly fainting in hercard-room?' I remarked to him. 

"'I can well believe it, ' said he casting down his flashing glance, 'Ihad kissed her arm!--But, ' he added as he pressed my hand and shot atme a glance that pierced my heart, 'her husband at that time had thegout which threatened to attack his stomach. '"

Some time afterwards, the old man recovered and seemed to take a newlease of life; but in the midst of his convalescence he took to hisbed one morning and died suddenly. There were such evident symptoms ofpoisoning in the condition of the dead man that the officers ofjustice were appealed to, and the two lovers were arrested. Then wasenacted at the court of assizes the most heartrending scene that everstirred the emotions of the jury. At the preliminary examination, eachof the two lovers without hesitation confessed to the crime, and withone thought each of them was solely bent on saving, the one her lover, the other his mistress. There were two found guilty, where justice waslooking for but a single culprit. The trial was entirely taken up withthe flat contradictions which each of them, carried away by the furyof devoted love, gave to the admissions of the other. There they wereunited for the first time, but on the criminals' bench with a gendarmeseated between them. They were found guilty by the unanimous verdictof a weeping jury. No one among those who had the barbarous courage towitness their conveyance to the scaffold can mention them to-daywithout a shudder. Religion had won for them a repentance for theircrime, but could not induce them to abjure their love. The scaffoldwas their nuptial bed, and there they slept together in the long nightof death. 

 MEDITATION XXI. 

 THE ART OF RETURNING HOME. 

Finding himself incapable of controlling the boiling transports of hisanxiety, many a husband makes the mistake of coming home and rushinginto the presence of his wife, with the object of triumphing over herweakness, like those bulls of Spain, which, stung by the red_banderillo_, disembowel with furious horns horses, matadors, picadors, toreadors and their attendants. 

But oh! to enter with a tender gentle mien, like Mascarillo, whoexpects a beating and becomes merry as a lark when he finds his masterin a good humor! Well--that is the mark of a wise man!--

"Yes, my darling, I know that in my absence you could have behavedbadly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for yourconsiderateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn my eternalgratitude. "

Such are the ideas which ought to be expressed by your face andbearing, but perhaps all the while you say to yourself:

"Probably he has been here!"

Always to bring home a pleasant face, is a rule which admits of noexception. 

But the art of never leaving your house without returning when thepolice have revealed to you a conspiracy--to know how to return at theright time--this is the lesson which is hard to learn. In this mattereverything depends upon tact and penetration. The actual events oflife always transcend anything that is imaginable. 

The manner of coming home is to be regulated in accordance with anumber of circumstances. For example:

Lord Catesby was a man of remarkable strength. It happened one daythat he was returning from a fox hunt, to which he had doubtlesspromised to go, with some ulterior view, for he rode towards the fenceof his park at a point where, he said, he saw an extremely fine horse. As he had a passion for horses, he drew near to examine this one closeat hand, There he caught sight of Lady Catesby, to whose rescue it wascertainly time to go, if he were in the slightest degree jealous forhis own honor. He rushed upon the gentleman he saw there, and seizinghim by the belt he hurled him over the fence on to the road side. 

"Remember, sir, " he said calmly, "it rests with me to decide whetherit well be necessary to address you hereafter and ask for satisfactionon this spot. "

"Very well, my lord; but would you have the goodness to throw over myhorse also?"

But the phlegmatic nobleman had already taken the arm of his wife ashe gravely said:

"I blame you very much, my dear creature, for not having told me thatI was to love you for two. Hereafter every other day I shall love youfor the gentleman yonder, and all other days for myself. "

This adventure is regarded in England as one of the best returns homethat were ever known. It is true it consisted in uniting, withsingular felicity, eloquence of deed to that of word. 

But the art of re-entering your home, principles of which are nothingelse but natural deductions from the system of politeness anddissimulation which have been commended in preceding Meditations, isafter all merely to be studied in preparation for the conjugalcatastrophes which we will now consider. 

 MEDITATION XXII. 

 OF CATASTROPHES. 

The word _Catastrophe_ is a term of literature which signifies thefinal climax of a play. 

To bring about a catastrophe in the drama which you are playing is amethod of defence which is as easy to undertake as it is certain tosucceed. In advising to employ it, we would not conceal from you itsperils. 

The conjugal catastrophe may be compared to one of those high feverswhich either carry off a predisposed subject or completely restore hishealth. Thus, when the catastrophe succeeds, it keeps a woman foryears in the prudent realms of virtue. 

Moreover, this method is the last of all those which science has beenable to discover up to this present moment. 

The massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Sicilian Vespers, the death ofLucretia, the two embarkations of Napoleon at Frejus are examples ofpolitical catastrophe. It will not be in your power to act on such alarge scale; nevertheless, within their own area, your dramaticclimaxes in conjugal life will not be less effective than these. 

But since the art of creating a situation and of transforming it, bythe introduction of natural incidents, constitutes genius; since thereturn to virtue of a woman, whose foot has already left some tracksupon the sweet and gilded sand which mark the pathway of vice, is themost difficult to bring about of all denouements, and since geniusneither knows it nor teaches it, the practitioner in conjugal lawsfeels compelled to confess at the outset that he is incapable ofreducing to definite principles a science which is as changeable ascircumstances, as delusive as opportunity, and as indefinable asinstinct. 

If we may use an expression which neither Diderot, d'Alembert norVoltaire, in spite of every effort, have been able to engraft on ourlanguage, a conjugal catastrophe _se subodore_ is scented from afar;so that our only course will be to sketch out imperfectly certainconjugal situations of an analogous kind, thus imitating thephilosopher of ancient time who, seeking in vain to explain motion, walked forward in his attempt to comprehend laws which wereincomprehensible. 

A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in ourMeditation on _Police_, will expressly forbid his wife to receive thevisits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom shehas promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domesticinterior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; ahusband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betakehimself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invitedsincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put intomotion certain adroitly handled machinery. 

Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene towhich I refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefullyorganized police has made the discovery that your wife, profiting bythe hours devoted by you to a ministerial banquet, to which sheprobably procured you an invitation, received at your house M. A----z. 

Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finestpossible of conjugal catastrophes. 

You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided withthat of M. A----z, for we would not advise you to have the intervalbetween acts too long. But in what mood should you enter? Certainlynot in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a ragethen? Still less should you do that. You should come in withgood-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgottenhis purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, hispocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box. 

In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife, forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate. 

Now let us consider these two unique situations. 

But first of all we will observe that husbands ought always to be in aposition to strike terror in their homes and ought long before to makepreparations for the matrimonial second of September. 

Thus a husband, from the moment that his wife has caused him toperceive certain _first symptoms_, should never fail to give, timeafter time, his personal opinion on the course of conduct to bepursued by a husband in a great matrimonial crisis. 

"As for me, " you should say, "I should have no hesitation in killingthe man I caught at my wife's feet. "

With regard to the discussion that you will thus give rise to, youwill be led on to aver that the law ought to have given to thehusband, as it did in ancient Rome, the right of life and death overhis children, so that he could slay those who were spurious. 

These ferocious opinions, which really do not bind you to anything, will impress your wife with salutary terror; you will enumerate themlightly, even laughingly--and say to her, "Certainly, my dear, I wouldkill you right gladly. Would you like to be murdered by me?"

A woman cannot help fearing that this pleasantry may some day become avery serious matter, for in these crimes of impulse there is a certainproof of love; and then women who know better than any one else how tosay true things laughingly at times suspect their husbands of thisfeminine trick. 

When a husband surprises his wife engaged in even innocentconversation with her lover, his face still calm, should produce theeffect mythologically attributed to the celebrated Gorgon. 

In order to produce a favorable catastrophe at this juncture, you mustact in accordance with the character of your wife, either play apathetic scene a la Diderot, or resort to irony like Cicero, or rushto your pistols loaded with a blank charge, or even fire them off, ifyou think that a serious row is indispensable. 

A skillful husband may often gain a great advantage from a scene ofunexaggerated sentimentality. He enters, he sees the lover andtransfixes him with a glance. As soon as the celibate retires, hefalls at the feet of his wife, he declaims a long speech, in whichamong other phrases there occurs this:

"Why, my dear Caroline, I have never been able to love you as Ishould!"

He weeps, and she weeps, and this tearful catastrophe leaves nothingto be desired. 

We would explain, apropos of the second method by which thecatastrophe may be brought about, what should be the motives whichlead a husband to vary this scene, in accordance with the greater orless degree of strength which his wife's character possesses. 

Let us pursue this subject. 

If by good luck it happens that your wife has put her lover in a placeof concealment, the catastrophe will be very much more successful. 

Even if the apartment is not arranged according to the principlesprescribed in the Meditation, you will easily discern the place intowhich the celibate has vanished, although he be not, like Lord Byron'sDon Juan, bundled up under the cushion of a divan. If by chance yourapartment is in disorder, you ought to have sufficient discernment toknow that there is only one place in which a man could bestow himself. Finally, if by some devilish inspiration he has made himself so smallthat he has squeezed into some unimaginable lurking-place (for we mayexpect anything from a celibate), well, either your wife cannot helpcasting a glance towards this mysterious spot, or she will pretend tolook in an exactly opposite direction, and then nothing is easier fora husband than to set a mouse-trap for his wife. 

The hiding-place being discovered, you must walk straight up to thelover. You must meet him face to face!

And now you must endeavor to produce a fine effect. With your faceturned three-quarters towards him, you must raise your head with anair of superiority. This attitude will enhance immensely the effectwhich you aim at producing. 

The most essential thing to do at this moment, is to overwhelm thecelibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing allthe time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him thedoor. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner'saxe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will alreadyprobably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. Theremust be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of highsocial rank, " says a young English author, "never behave like theirinferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarmthroughout the whole neighborhood. "

When the celibate has gone, you will find yourself alone with yourwife, and then is the time when you must subjugate her forever. 

You should therefore stand before her, putting on an air whoseaffected calmness betrays the profoundest emotion; then you mustchoose from among the following topics, which we have rhetoricallyamplified, and which are most congenial to your feelings: "Madame, "you must say, "I will speak to you neither of your vows, nor of mylove; for you have too much sense and I have too much pride to make itpossible that I should overwhelm you with those execrations, which allhusbands have a right to utter under these circumstances; for theleast of the mistakes that I should make, if I did so, is that I wouldbe fully justified. I will not now, even if I could, indulge either inwrath or resentment. It is not I who have been outraged; for I havetoo much heart to be frightened by that public opinion which almostalways treats with ridicule and condemnation a husband whose wife hasmisbehaved. When I examine my life, I see nothing there that makesthis treachery deserved by me, as it is deserved by many others. Istill love you. I have never been false, I will not say to my duty, for I have found nothing onerous in adoring you, but not even to thosewelcome obligations which sincere feeling imposes upon us both. Youhave had all my confidence and you have also had the administration ofmy fortune. I have refused you nothing. And now this is the first timethat I have turned to you a face, I will not say stern, but which isyet reproachful. But let us drop this subject, for it is of no use forme to defend myself at a moment when you have proved to me with suchenergy that there is something lacking in me, and that I am notintended by nature to accomplish the difficult task of rendering youhappy. But I would ask you, as a friend speaking to a friend, howcould you have the heart to imperil at the same time the lives ofthree human creatures: that of the mother of my children, who willalways be sacred to me; that of the head of the family; and finally ofhim--who loves--[she perhaps at these words will throw herself at yourfeet; you must not permit her to do so; she is unworthy of kneelingthere]. For you no longer love me, Eliza. Well, my poor child [youmust not call her _my poor child_ excepting when the crime has notbeen committed]--why deceive ourselves? Why do you not answer me? Iflove is extinguished between a married couple, cannot friendship andconfidence still survive? Are we not two companions united in makingthe same journey? Can it be said that during the journey the one mustnever hold out his hand to the other to raise up a comrade or toprevent a comrade's fall? But I have perhaps said too much and I amwounding your pride--Eliza! Eliza!"

Now what the deuce would you expect a woman to answer? Why acatastrophe naturally follows, without a single word. 

In a hundred women there may be found at least a good half dozen offeeble creatures who under this violent shock return to their husbandsnever perhaps again to leave them, like scorched cats that dread thefire. But this scene is a veritable alexipharmaca, the doses of whichshould be measured out by prudent hands. 

For certain women of delicate nerves, whose souls are soft and timid, it would be sufficient to point out the lurking-place where the loverlies, and say: "M. A----z is there!" [at this point shrug yourshoulders]. "How can you thus run the risk of causing the death of twoworthy people? I am going out; let him escape and do not let thishappen again. "

But there are women whose hearts, too violently strained in theseterrible catastrophes, fail them and they die; others whose bloodundergoes a change, and they fall a prey to serious maladies; othersactually go out of their minds. These are examples of women who takepoison or die suddenly--and we do not suppose that you wish the deathof the sinner. 

Nevertheless, the most beautiful and impressionable of all the queensof France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seenRizzio murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, withthe Earl of Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens are abnormal indisposition. 

We will suppose, then, that the woman whose portrait adorns our firstMeditation is a little Mary Stuart, and we will hasten to raise thecurtain for the fifth act in this grand drama entitled _Marriage_. 

A conjugal catastrophe may burst out anywhere, and a thousandincidents which we cannot describe may give it birth. Sometimes it isa handkerchief, as in _Othello_; or a pair of slippers, as in _DonJuan_; sometimes it is the mistake of your wife, who cries out--"DearAlphonse!" instead of "Dear Adolph!" Sometimes a husband, finding outthat his wife is in debt, will go and call on her chief creditor, andwill take her some morning to his house, as if by chance, in order tobring about a catastrophe. "Monsieur Josse, you are a jeweler and yousell your jewels with a readiness which is not equaled by thereadiness of your debtors to pay for them. The countess owes youthirty thousand francs. If you wish to be paid to-morrow [tradesmenshould always be visited at the end of the month] come to her at noon;her husband will be in the chamber. Do not attend to any sign whichshe may make to impose silence upon you--speak out boldly. I will payall. "

So that the catastrophe in the science of marriage is what figures arein arithmetic. 

All the principles of higher conjugal philosophy, on which are basedthe means of defence outlined in this second part of our book, arederived from the nature of human sentiments, and we have found them indifferent places in the great book of the world. Just as persons ofintellect instinctively apply the laws of taste whose principles theywould find difficulty in formulating, so we have seen numberlesspeople of deep feeling employing with singular felicity the preceptswhich we are about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted on adefinite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired onlyrevealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as thescientific men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfectmicroscopes did not enable them to see all the living organisms, whoseexistence had yet been proved to them by the logic of their patientgenius. 

We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in thosewhich follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion whichfrivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. Accordingto our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and morethan that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with themarriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In thisconnection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very manyignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand withopen eyes, yet without seeing it. 

We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied willproduce many conversions, and that among the pages that separate thissecond part from that entitled _Civil War_ many tears will be shed andmany vows of repentance breathed. 

Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have socarefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge thebelief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand, who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, andbellicose to raise the standard of _Civil War_. 

To arms then, to arms!