ill transcribe
so much of it as relates to _the woman_, leaving her advice
to _the princess_ to those whom it may concern.

"Do not hope for perfect happiness; there is no such thing in this
sublunary state.

"Your sex is the more exposed to suffer, because it is always in
dependence: be neither angry nor ashamed of this dependence on a
husband, nor of any of those which are in the order of Providence.

"Let your husband be your best friend and your only confidant.

"Do not hope that your union will procure you perfect peace: the
best marriages are those where with softness and patience they bear by
turns with each other; there are none without some contradiction and
disagreement.

"Do not expect the same degree of friendship that you feel: men are
in general less tender than women; and you will be unhappy if you are
too delicate in friendship.

"Beg of God to guard your heart from jealousy: do not hope to bring
back a husband by complaints, ill humor, and reproaches. The only means
which promise success, are patience and softness: impatience sours and
alienates hearts; softness leads them back to their duty.

"In sacrificing your own will, pretend to no right over that of a
husband: men are more attached to theirs than women, because educated
with less constraint.

"They are naturally tyrannical; they will have pleasures and
liberty, yet insist that women renounce both: do not examine whether
their rights are well founded; let it suffice to you, that they are
established; they are masters, we have only to suffer and obey with a
good grace."

Thus far Madame De Maintenon, who must be allowed to have known the
heart of man, since, after having been above twenty years a widow, she
enflamed, even to the degree of bringing him to marry her, that of a
great monarch, younger than herself, surrounded by beauties, habituated
to flattery, in the plenitude of power, and covered with glory; and
retained him in her chains to the last moment of his life.

Do not, however, my dear, be alarmed at the picture she has drawn of
marriage; nor fancy with her, that women are only born to suffer and
to obey.

That we are generally tyrannical, I am obliged to own; but such of
us as know how to be happy, willingly give up the harsh title of
master, for the more tender and endearing one of friend; men of sense
abhor those customs which treat your sex as if created meerly for the
happiness of the other; a supposition injurious to