her lover, and when she
receives an answer, is a failure as a husband.

The proposed study which you ought to bestow upon the movements, the
actions, the gestures, the looks of your wife, will be perhaps
troublesome and wearying, but it will not last long; the only point is
to discover when your wife and her lover correspond and in what way.

We cannot believe that a husband, even of moderate intelligence, will
fail to see through this feminine manoeuvre, when once he suspects its
existence.

Meanwhile, you can judge from a single incident what means of police
and of restraint remain to you in the event of such a correspondence.

A young lawyer, whose ardent passion exemplified certain of the
principles dwelt upon in this important part of our work, had married
a young person whose love for him was but slight; yet this
circumstance he looked upon as an exceedingly happy one; but at the
end of his first year of marriage he perceived that his dear Anna [for
Anna was her name] had fallen in love with the head clerk of a
stock-broker.

Adolph was a young man of about twenty-five, handsome in face and as
fond of amusement as any other celibate. He was frugal, discreet,
possessed of an excellent heart, rode well, talked well, had fine
black hair always curled, and dressed with taste. In short, he would
have done honor and credit to a duchess. The advocate was ugly, short,
stumpy, square-shouldered, mean-looking, and, moreover, a husband.
Anna, tall and pretty, had almond eyes, white skin and refined
features. She was all love; and passion lighted up her glance with a
bewitching expression. While her family was poor, Maitre Lebrun had an
income of twelve thousand francs. That explains all.

One evening Lebrun got home looking extremely chop-fallen. He went
into his study to work; but he soon came back shivering to his wife,
for he had caught a fever and hurriedly went to bed. There he lay
groaning and lamenting for his clients and especially for a poor widow
whose fortune he was to save the very next day by effecting a
compromise. An appointment had been made with certain business men and
he was quite incapable of keeping it. After having slept for a quarter
of an hour, he begged his wife in a feeble voice to write to one of
his intimate friends, asking him to take his (Lebrun's) place next day
at the conference. He dictated a long letter and followed with his eye
the space taken up on the paper by his phrases. When he