r conduct the source of a thousand more pleasures in her
future treachery, and her imagination smiles at all the barricades with
which you surround her, for will she not have the delight of surmounting
them all?

Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human
feelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the weapons
of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love, because it is
their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almost the only
means by which they can control us. Within them jealousy is a genuine
sentiment and springs from the instinct of self-preservation; it is
vital to their life or death. But with men this feeling is absolutely
absurd when it does not subserve some further end.

To entertain feelings of jealousy towards the woman you love, is to
start from a position founded on vicious reasoning. We are loved, or
we are not loved; if a man entertains jealousy under either of these
circumstances, it is a feeling absolutely unprofitable to him; jealousy
may be explained as fear, fear in love. But to doubt one's wife is to
doubt one's self.

To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error
of _amour-propre_, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather encourage
this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can obtain cashmere
shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them mark the high
thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless you appear blinded by
jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; for there is no pitfall
which she does not distrust, excepting that which she makes for herself.

Thus the wife becomes the easy dupe of a husband who is clever enough
to give to the inevitable revolution, which comes sooner or later, the
advantageous results we have indicated.

You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon whose
existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your wife will
always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like those knots
which are never so tight as when one tries to loosen them, she will
struggle to the advantage of your power over her, while she believes
that she is struggling for her independence.

The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies in
persuading his people that he goes to war for them, while all the time
he is causing them to be killed for his throne.

But many husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing