auto-da-fe_ of the year 1600. At first his wife
employed a thousand stratagems to discover whether the annoyance of
her husband was caused by the presence of her lover; it was her first
intrigue and she displayed a thousand artifices in it. Her imagination
was aroused; it was no longer taken up with her lover; had she not
better, first of all, probe her husband's secret?

One evening the husband, moved by the desire to confide in his loving
helpmeet all his troubles, informed her that their whole fortune was
lost. They would have to give up their carriage, their box at the
theatre, balls, parties, even Paris itself; perhaps, by living on
their estate in the country a year or two, they might retrieve all!
Appealing to the imagination of his wife, he told her how he pitied
her for her attachment to a man who was indeed deeply in love with
her, but was now without fortune; he tore his hair, and his wife was
compelled in honor to be deeply moved; then in this first excitement
of their conjugal disturbance he took her off to his estate. Then
followed scarifications, mustard plaster upon mustard plaster, and the
tails of fresh dogs were cut: he caused a Gothic wing to be built to
the chateau; madame altered the park ten time over in order to have
fountains and lakes and variations in the grounds; finally, the
husband in the midst of her labors did not forget his own, which
consisted in providing her with interesting reading, and launching
upon her delicate attentions, etc. Notice, he never informed his wife
of the trick he had played on her; and if his fortune was recuperated,
it was directly after the building of the wing, and the expenditure of
enormous sums in making water-courses; but he assured her that the
lake provided a water-power by which mills might be run, etc.

Now, there was a conjugal blister well conceived, for this husband
neither neglected to rear his family nor to invite to his house
neighbors who were tiresome, stupid or old; and if he spent the winter
in Paris, he flung his wife into the vortex of balls and races, so
that she had not a minute to give to lovers, who are usually the fruit
of a vacant life.

Journeys to Italy, Switzerland or Greece, sudden complaints which
require a visit to the waters, and the most distant waters, are pretty
good blisters. In fact, a man of sense should know how to manufacture
a thousand of them.

Let us continue our examination of such personal methods.

And here we