e genuine
and constant? What power must a husband possess to struggle successfully
against a man who casts over a woman a spell strong enough to make her
submit to such misfortunes!

We think, then, as a general rule, a husband, if he knows how to use
the means of defence which we have outlined, can lead his wife up to her
twenty-seventh year, not without her having chosen a lover, but without
her having committed the great crime. Here and there we meet with men
endowed with deep marital genius, who can keep their wives, body and
soul to themselves alone up to their thirtieth or thirty-fifth year;
but these exceptions cause a sort of scandal and alarm. The phenomenon
scarcely ever is met with excepting in the country, where life is
transparent and people live in glass houses and the husband wields
immense power. The miraculous assistance which men and things thus give
to a husband always vanishes in the midst of a city whose population
reaches to two hundred and fifty thousand.

It would therefore almost appear to be demonstrated that thirty is the
age of virtue. At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficult
to guard, that in order successfully to enchain her within the conjugal
Paradise, resort must be had to those last means of defence which remain
to be described, and which we will reveal in the _Essay on Police_, the
_Art of Returning Home_, and _Catastrophes_.

MEDITATION XX. ESSAY ON POLICE.

The police of marriage consist of all those means which are given you
by law, manners, force, and stratagem for preventing your wife in her
attempt to accomplish those three acts which in some sort make up the
life of love: writing, seeing and speaking.

The police combine in greater or less proportion the means of defence
put forth in the preceding Meditations. Instinct alone can teach in what
proportions and on what occasions these compounded elements are to be
employed. The whole system is elastic; a clever husband will easily
discern how it must be bent, stretched or retrenched. By the aid of
the police a man can guide his wife to her fortieth year pure from any
fault.

We will divide this treatise on Police into five captions:

1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.
2. OF CORRESPONDENCE.
3. OF SPIES.
4. THE INDEX.
5. OF THE BUDGET.

1. OF MOUSE-TRAPS.

In spite of the grave crisis which the husband has reached, we do not
suppose that the lover has completely acquired th