his connection by wives who are thoroughly unhappy. She dresses
herself with especial care, in order, she will tell you, to flatter your
_amour-propre_ by drawing all eyes upon her in the midst of parties and
public entertainments.

When she returns to the bosom of her stupid home you will see that, at
times, she is gloomy and thoughtful, then suddenly laughing and gay as
if beside herself; or assuming the serious expression of a German
when he advances to the fight. Such varying moods always indicate the
terrible doubt and hesitation to which we have already referred. There
are women who read romances in order to feast upon the images of love
cleverly depicted and always varied, of love crowned yet triumphant;
or in order to familiarize themselves in thought with the perils of an
intrigue.

She will profess the highest esteem for you, she will tell you that she
loves you as a sister; and that such reasonable friendship is the only
true, the only durable friendship, the only tie which it is the aim of
marriage to establish between man and wife.

She will adroitly distinguish between the duties which are all she has
to perform and the rights which she can demand to exercise.

She views with indifference, appreciated by you alone, all the details
of married happiness. This sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been
very agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it
well, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes
from these circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this
frail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away on the
tempest of passion.

LX.
The more a man judges the less he loves.

And now will burst forth from her those pleasantries at which you will
be the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you
by their profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the
caprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme
tenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects;
sometimes she will be sullen and at cross-purposes with you; in a word,
she will fulfill the _varium et mutabile femina_ which we hitherto have
had the folly to attribute to the feminine temperament. Diderot, in his
desire to explain the mutations almost atmospheric in the behavior of
women, has even gone so far as to make them the offspring of what he
calls _la bete feroce