, time
after time, his personal opinion on the course of conduct to be
pursued by a husband in a great matrimonial crisis.

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

With regard to the discussion that you will thus give rise to, you
will be led on to aver that the law ought to have given to the
husband, as it did in ancient Rome, the right of life and death over
his 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 them
lightly, even laughingly--and say to her, "Certainly, my dear, I would
kill you right gladly. Would you like to be murdered by me?"

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

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

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

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

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

He weeps, and she weeps, and this tearful catastrophe leaves nothing
to be desired.

We would explain, apropos of the second method by which the
catastrophe may be brought about, what should be the motives which
lead a husband to vary this scene, in accordance with the greater or
less 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 place
of concealment, the catastrophe will be very much more