ry life? It is only less dangerous
to make her feed on mutton and drink cold water."

"My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and I
always take care that a ball shall come after a concert and a
reception after an Opera! I have also succeeded in making her lie down
between one and two in the day. Ah! my dear sir, the benefits of this
nap are incalculable! In the first place each necessary pleasure is
accorded as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly carrying out
my wife's wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying a
single word, that she is being constantly amused every day from six
o'clock in the evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet,
until eleven o'clock in the morning, the time when we get up."

"Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is so
completely filled up!"

"I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; but
she has, of course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and there
are always rides in the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits to
pay, etc. But this is not all. The fairest ornament of a woman is the
most exquisite cleanliness. A woman cannot be too particular in this
respect, and no pains she takes can be laughed at. Now her toilet has
also suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best hours of the
day in bathing."

"How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!" I cried; "truly, sir,
you could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing to
teach her an art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modern
fine ladies. Why don't you enumerate to the viscountess the
astonishing precautions manifest in the Oriental luxury of the Roman
dames? Give her the names of the slaves merely employed for the bath
in Poppea's palace: the _unctores_, the _fricatores_, the
_alipilarili_, the _dropacistae_, the _paratiltriae_, the
_picatrices_, the _tracatrices_, the swan whiteners, and all the rest.
--Talk to her about this multitude of slaves whose names are given by
Mirabeau in his _Erotika Biblion_. If she tries to secure the services
of all these people you will have the fine times of quietness, not to
speak of the personal satisfaction which will redound to you yourself
from the introduction into your house of the system invented by these
illustrious Romans, whose hair, artistically arranged, was deluged
with perfumes, whose smallest vein seemed to have acquired fresh blood
from the myrrh, the lint