inct of self-preservation;
it is vital to their life or death. But with men this feeling is
absolutely absurd when it does not subserve some further end.

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

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

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

You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon
whose existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your
wife will always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like
those 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 she
believes that she is struggling for her independence.

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

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

It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as
that on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the
thought of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book of
exhaustively stating the resources of human wit, which are
immeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of the
Saturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character of
their slaves, in ten minutes, than they would ha