CHAPTER XII

THE IDEAL HUSBAND

There are qualities which most women admire in men, and there are
qualities which practically every man admires in all women; but if you
were to ask of a hundred men, 'What is the ideal wife?' and of a hundred
women, 'What is the ideal husband?' you would get a hundred opinions all
different one from the other.

_Quot capita, tot sensus_, which, in the case of women, I should like to
translate, 'So many pretty heads, so many different opinions.' This,
however, is as it should be. Only there remains that terrible problem
for every man and woman to solve: Find your ideal if you can, and when
you think you have found it, see that you are not disappointed.

I have of late interviewed a good many Parisiennes on the subject, and I
will give some of the answers which I have received.

One said to me: 'The ideal husband is the one who devotes his life to
his wife, who makes her the first consideration in all his thoughts and
acts, who understands that she is the aim of everything which he
undertakes, and that he should use all the resources that Nature has
placed in his mind and Fortune has put in his hands in order that she
may be happy and remain long beautiful.'

I need not say that this was the opinion of a young girl who had only
just made her debut in society. Nor do I need say that the following
came from the lips of a married woman--one, however, whom I guarantee to
be in the possession of all the womanly virtues likely to make a husband
most satisfied with his lot.

'The ideal husband,' she said, 'is the one who lets his wife alone, who
does not interfere with her household duties or any of her little
womanly fads, who is not always paying her compliments or besieging her
with advice, and who is not always by her side or behind her back, who
seldom addresses her reproaches, and never reminds her of what he has
done to deserve her gratitude, who is not fussy, fidgety, or a bore of a
model of propriety and virtue.

'When I was a young girl I dreamed of matrimony as a sweet state of
slavery. Now I shout for liberty--liberty for him and liberty for me. I
do not mean to say, of course, that man and wife should live apart and
not care one what the other does. No, no; but I firmly believe that we
should remain at a respectful distance from the objects which we want to
see to advantage and admire.

'A woman should never allow even the most loving and beloved of husbands
to be