a
razor in the hand of a monkey. Moreover, the first and most vital of
your duties consists in perpetual dissimulation, an accomplishment in
which most husbands are sadly lacking. In detecting the symptoms of
minotaurism a little too plainly marked in the conduct of their wives,
most men at once indulge in the most insulting suspicions. Their minds
contract a tinge of bitterness which manifests itself in their
conversation, and in their manners; and the alarm which fills their
heart, like the gas flame in a glass globe, lights up their
countenances so plainly, that it accounts for their conduct.

Now a woman, who has twelve hours more than you have each day to
reflect and to study you, reads the suspicion written upon your face
at the very moment that it arises. She will never forget this
gratuitous insult. Nothing can ever remedy that. All is now said and
done, and the very next day, if she has opportunity, she will join the
ranks of inconsistent women.

You ought then to begin under these circumstances to affect towards
your wife the same boundless confidence that you have hitherto had in
her. If you begin to lull her anxieties by honeyed words, you are
lost, she will not believe you; for she has her policy as you have
yours. Now there is as much need for tact as for kindliness in your
behavior, in order to inculcate in her, without her knowing it, a
feeling of security, which will lead her to lay back her ears, and
prevent you from using rein or spur at the wrong moment.

But how can we compare a horse, the frankest of all animals, to a
being, the flashes of whose thought, and the movements of whose
impulses render her at moments more prudent than the Servite
Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had;
more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound
than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as
pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the
whole wide world but you?

Moreover, to this dissimulation, by means of which the springs that
move your conduct ought to be made as invisible as those that move the
world, must be added absolute self-control. That diplomatic
imperturbability, so boasted of by Talleyrand, must be the least of
your qualities; his exquisite politeness and the grace of his manners
must distinguish your conversation. The professor here expressly
forbids you to use your whip, if you would obtain complete con