k more than usual. Should a single closet
be constructed there, you are a lost man! Above all, accustom your wife,
during the honeymoon, to bestow especial pains in the neatness of her
apartment; let nothing put off that. If you do not habituate her to be
minutely particular in this respect, if the same objects are not always
found in the same places, she will allow things to become so untidy,
that you will not be able to see that there are two pounds of silk more
or less in her room.

The curtains of your apartments ought to be of a stuff which is quite
transparent, and you ought to contract the habit in the evenings of
walking outside so that madame may see you come right up to the window
just out of absent-mindedness. In a word, with regard to windows, let
the sills be so narrow that even a sack of flour cannot be set up on
them.

If the apartment of your wife can be arranged on these principles, you
will be in perfect safety, even if there are niches enough there to
contain all the saints of Paradise. You will be able, every evening,
with the assistance of your porter, to strike the balance between
the entrances and exits of visitors; and, in order to obtain accurate
results, there is nothing to prevent your teaching him to keep a book of
visitors, in double entry.

If you have a garden, cultivate a taste for dogs, and always keep at
large one of these incorruptible guardians under your windows; you will
thus gain the respect of the Minotaur, especially if you accustom your
four-footed friend to take nothing substantial excepting from the
hand of your porter, so that hard-hearted celibates may not succeed in
poisoning him.

But all these precautions must be taken as a natural thing so that they
may not arouse suspicions. If husbands are so imprudent as to neglect
precautions from the moment they are married, they ought at once to sell
their house and buy another one, or, under the pretext of repairs, alter
their present house in the way prescribed.

You will without scruple banish from your apartment all sofas, ottomans,
lounges, sedan chairs and the like. In the first place, this is the
kind of furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they are
universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they are
essentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them without
alarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself is
lurking with his horns and cloven foot.

After all, nothing