m!"

Such are the discoveries which a woman is bound to make, one after
another, in accordance with the charming scenes of the comedy which
you are enacting for your amusement; and a man of the world must be an
actual fool, if he fails in making a woman believe that which flatters
her.

With what perfection of hypocrisy must you arrange, step by step, your
hypocritical behavior so as to rouse the curiosity of your wife, to
engage her in a new study, and to lead her astray among the labyrinths
of your thought!

Ye sublime actors! Do ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures
of artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which
some evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of your secret
thoughts?

Ah! to laugh in your sleeve while you are exhibiting the fierceness of
a tiger; neither to lie nor to tell the truth; to comprehend the
capricious mood of a woman, and yet to make her believe that she
controls you, while you intend to bind her with a collar of iron! O
comedy that has no audience, which yet is played by one heart before
another heart and where both of you applaud because both of you think
that you have obtained success!

She it is who will tell you that you are jealous, who will point out to
you that she knows you better than you know yourself, who will prove to
you the uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps will defy you.
She triumphs in the excited consciousness of the superiority which she
thinks she possesses over you; you of course are ennobled in her eyes;
for she finds your conduct quite natural. The only thing she feels is
that your want of confidence was useless; if she wished to betray, who
could hinder her?

Then, some evening, you will burst into a passion, and, as some trifle
affords you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of which
your anger will make you divulge the secret of your distress. And here
comes in the promulgation of our new code.

Have no fear that a woman is going to trouble herself about this. She
needs your jealousy, she rather likes your severity. This comes from the
fact that in the first place she finds there a justification for her own
conduct; and then she finds immense satisfaction in playing before other
people the part of a victim. What delightful expressions of sympathy
will she receive! Afterwards she will use this as a weapon against you,
in the expectation thereby of leading you into a pitfall.

She sees in you