dent,
whose more or less importance we find difficulty in determining, has
rendered you odious. The lapse of time which intervenes between this
last hour, the limit of your good understanding, and the day when
your wife becomes cognizant of your artifices, is nevertheless quite
sufficient to permit you to institute a series of defensive operations,
which we will now explain.

Up to this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion of
a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal machinery
must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if you would
prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by negotiating,
you must end by mounting your horse, sabre in hand, like a Parisian
gendarme. You must make your horse prance, you must brandish your sabre,
you must shout strenuously, and you must endeavor to calm the revolt
without wounding anybody.

Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods to
methods that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justify
the sudden change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature, art
consists entirely in the gracefulness of the transitions. This is of the
highest importance for you. What a frightful position you will occupy
if your wife has reason to complain of your conduct at the moment, which
is, perhaps, the most critical of your whole married life!

You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secret
tyranny of your initial policy; some means which still prepare the mind
of your wife for the severe measures which you are about to take; some
means which so far from forfeiting her esteem will conciliate her; some
means which will gain her pardon, which will restore some little of that
charm of yours, by which you won her love before your marriage.

"But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is there such
a policy?"

Certainly there is.

But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husband possess
in order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which we are about
to reveal to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whose fire is to
make you a new man in the presence of your wife, you will require all
the cunning of Talma.

This passion is JEALOUSY.

"My husband is jealous. He has been so from the beginning of our
marriage. He has concealed this feeling from me by his usual refined
delicacy. Does he love me still? I am going to do as I like with hi