nd although all amours resemble
each other in the same manner that all men resemble each other, it is
proved to the abstractors of true things, that for the happiness of
women, each love has its especial physiognomy, and if there is nothing
that resembles a man so much as a man, there is also nothing differs
from a man so much as a man. That it is, which confuses all things, or
explains the thousand fancies of women, who seek the best men with a
thousand pains and a thousand pleasures, perhaps more the one than the
other. But how can I blame them for their essays, changes, and
contradictory aims? Why, Nature frisks and wriggles, twists and turns
about, and you expect a woman to remain still! Do you know if ice is
really cold? No. Well then, neither do you know that cuckoldom is not
a lucky chance, the produce of brains well furnished and better made
than all the others. Seek something better than ventosity beneath the
sky. This will help to spread the philosophic reputation of this
eccentric book. Oh yes; go on. He who cries "vermin powder," is more
advanced than those who occupy themselves with Nature, seeing that she
is a proud jade and a capricious one, and only allows herself to be
seen at certain times. Do you understand? So in all languages does she
belong to the feminine gender, being a thing essentially changeable
and fruitful and fertile in tricks.

Now Carandas soon recognised the fact that among cuckoldoms the best
understood and the most discreet is ecclesiastical cuckoldom. This is
how the good dyer's wife had laid her plans. She went always towards
her cottage at Grenadiere-les-St.-Cyr on the eve of the Sabbath,
leaving her good husband to finish his work, to count up and check his
books, and to pay his workmen; then Taschereau would join her there on
the morrow, and always found a good breakfast ready and his good wife
gay, and always brought the priest with him. The fact is, this
damnable priest crossed the Loire the night before in a small boat, in
order to keep the dyer's wife warm, and to calm her fancies, in order
that she might sleep well during the night, a duty which young men
understand very well. Then this fine curber of phantasies got back to
his house in the morning by the time Taschereau came to invite him to
spend the day at La Grenadiere, and the cuckold always found the
priest asleep in his bed. The boatman being well paid, no one knew
anything of these goings on, for the lover journeyed t