our unfaithful deputies never fail to do. They
pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time compliment her.
I hope it will be so.

But in the crisis which we have reached, the provisions of the annual
budget can never prove sufficient. There must be an increase of fichus,
of bonnets, of frocks; there is an expense which cannot be calculated
beforehand demanded by the meetings, by the diplomatic messengers, by
the ways and means of love, even while the receipts remain the same as
usual. Then must commence in your establishment a course of education
the most odious, and the most dreadful which a woman can undergo. I know
but few noble and generous souls who value, more than millions, purity
of heart, frankness of soul, and who would a thousand times more readily
pardon a passion than a lie, whose instinctive delicacy has divined
the existence of this plague of the soul, the lowest step in human
degradation.

Under these circumstances there occur in the domestic establishment the
most delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomes utterly
pliant and like to the most brilliant of all the strings of a harp, when
thrown before the fire; she rolls round you, she clasps you, she holds
you tight; she defers to all your caprices; never was her conversation
so full of tenderness; she lavishes her endearments upon you, or rather
she sells them to you; she at last becomes lower than a chorus girl, for
she prostitutes herself to her husband. In her sweetest kisses there is
money; in all her words there is money. In playing this part her heart
becomes like lead towards you. The most polished, the most treacherous
usurer never weighs so completely with a single glance the future value
in bullion of a son of a family who may sign a note to him, than your
wife appraises one of your desires as she leaps from branch to branch
like an escaping squirrel, in order to increase the sum of money she may
demand by increasing the appetite which she rouses in you. You must not
expect to get scot-free from such seductions. Nature has given boundless
gifts of coquetry to a woman, the usages of society have increased them
tenfold by its fashions, its dresses, its embroideries and its tippets.

"If I ever marry," one of the most honorable generals of our ancient
army used to say, "I won't put a sou among the wedding presents--"

"What will you put there then, general?" asked a young girl.

"The key of my safe."

The young