own children; in this case, as long as she is occupied in
bearing children or in nursing them you will avoid the danger from one
or two quarters. The wife who is engaged in bringing into the world and
nursing a baby has not really the time to bother with a lover, not to
speak of the fact that before and after her confinement she cannot
show herself in the world. In short, how can the most bold of the
distinguished women who are the subject of this work show herself under
these circumstances in public? O Lord Byron, thou didst not wish to see
women even eat!

Six months after her confinement, and when the child is on the eve
of being weaned, a woman just begins to feel that she can enjoy her
restoration and her liberty.

If your wife has not nursed her first child, you have too much sense
not to notice this circumstance, and not to make her desire to nurse
her next one. You will read to her the _Emile_ of Jean-Jacques; you will
fill her imagination with a sense of motherly duties; you will excite
her moral feelings, etc.: in a word, you are either a fool or a man of
sense; and in the first case, even after reading this book, you will
always be minotaurized; while in the second, you will understand how to
take a hint.

This first expedient is in reality your own personal business. It will
give you a great advantage in carrying out all the other methods.

Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to do a
service to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, as well
as an Ouvrard contract affair, such as was then attracting the notice of
the Athenians, there is not a single minister who has not endeavored to
cut the ears of some dog or other.

So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point of
the system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point, by
means of blisters, scarifications and cupping.

Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with a
mental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion in
your favor.

A man of considerable mental resources had made his honeymoon last for
about four years; the moon began to wane, and he saw appearing the fatal
hollow in its circle. His wife was exactly in that state of mind which
we attributed at the close of our first part to every honest woman; she
had taken a fancy to a worthless fellow who was both insignificant in
appearance and ugly; the only thing in his favor was