e porter's lodge, where he is cutting wood, even
to the garret of your groom, from which he is throwing down innocent
bundles of straw. Believing in this headache, you leave the house, but
on your return you find that madame has decamped! Soon madame returns,
fresh and ruddy:

"The doctor came," she says, "and advised me to take exercise, and I
find myself much better!"

Another day you wish to enter madame's room.

"Oh, sir," says the maid, showing the most profound astonishment,
"madame has her usual headache, and I have never seen her in such
pain! The doctor has been sent for."

"You are a happy man," said Marshal Augereau to General R-----, "to
have such a pretty wife!"

"To have!" replied the other. "If I have my wife ten days in the year,
that is about all. These confounded women have always either the
headache or some other thing!"

The headache in France takes the place of the sandals, which, in
Spain, the Confessor leaves at the door of the chamber in which he is
with his penitent.

If your wife, foreseeing some hostile intentions on your part, wishes
to make herself as inviolable as the charter, she immediately gets up
a little headache performance. She goes to bed in a most deliberate
fashion, she utters shrieks which rend the heart of the hearer. She
goes gracefully through a series of gesticulations so cleverly
executed that you might think her a professional contortionist. Now
what man is there so inconsiderate as to dare to speak to a suffering
woman about desires which, in him, prove the most perfect health?
Politeness alone demands of him perfect silence. A woman knows under
these circumstances that by means of this all-powerful headache, she
can at her will paste on her bed the placard which sends back home the
amateurs who have been allured by the announcement of the Comedie
Francaise, when they read the words: "Closed through the sudden
indisposition of Mademoiselle Mars."

O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler
against which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be
possible that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or
raised thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest
be the brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall
find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless,
doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to
them, O deceitful headache! O magic head