this
plan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation, the
question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of your long
mystification?

It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as that
on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the thought
of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book of exhaustively stating
the resources of human wit, which are immeasurable. Now here is a
proof of this. On the day of the Saturnalia the Romans discovered more
features in the character of their slaves, in ten minutes, than they
would have found out during the rest of the year! You ought therefore
to ordain Saturnalia in your establishment, and to imitate Gessler, who,
when he saw William Tell shoot the apple off his son's head, was forced
to remark, "Here is a man whom I must get rid of, for he could not miss
his aim if he wished to kill me."

You understand, then, that if your wife wishes to drink Roussillon
wine, to eat mutton chops, to go out at all hours and to read the
encyclopaedia, you are bound to take her very seriously. In the first
place, she will begin to distrust you against her own wish, on seeing
that your behaviour towards her is quite contrary to your previous
proceedings. She will suppose that you have some ulterior motive in this
change of policy, and therefore all the liberty that you give her will
make her so anxious that she cannot enjoy it. As regards the misfortunes
that this change may bring, the future will provide for them. In a
revolution the primary principle is to exercise a control over the evil
which cannot be prevented and to attract the lightning by rods which
shall lead it to the earth.

And now the last act of the comedy is in preparation.

The lover who, from the day when the feeblest of all first symptoms
shows itself in your wife until the moment when the marital revolution
takes place, has jumped upon the stage, either as a material creature or
as a being of the imagination--the LOVER, summoned by a sign from her,
now declares: "Here I am!"

MEDITATION XIX. OF THE LOVER.

We offer the following maxims for your consideration:

We should despair of the human race if these maxims had been made
before 1830; but they set forth in so clear a manner the agreements
and difficulties which distinguish you, your wife and a lover; they so
brilliantly describe what your policy should be, and demonstrate to you
so accurately