nouements, and since genius neither
knows it nor teaches it, the practitioner in conjugal laws feels
compelled to confess at the outset that he is incapable of reducing to
definite principles a science which is as changeable as circumstances,
as delusive as opportunity, and as indefinable as instinct.

If we may use an expression which neither Diderot, d'Alembert nor
Voltaire, in spite of every effort, have been able to engraft on our
language, a conjugal catastrophe _se subodore_ is scented from afar; so
that our only course will be to sketch out imperfectly certain conjugal
situations of an analogous kind, thus imitating the philosopher of
ancient time who, seeking in vain to explain motion, walked forward in
his attempt to comprehend laws which were incomprehensible.

A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in our Meditation
on _Police_, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the visits of a
celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she has promised
never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic interior we leave
for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a husband can delineate them
much better than we can; he will betake himself in thought back to those
days when delightful longings invited sincere confidences and when
the workings of his policy put into motion certain adroitly handled
machinery.

Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene
to which I refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefully
organized police has made the discovery that your wife, profiting by
the hours devoted by you to a ministerial banquet, to which she probably
procured you an invitation, received at your house M. A----z.

Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finest
possible of conjugal catastrophes.

You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided with
that of M. A----z, for we would not advise you to have the interval
between acts too long. But in what mood should you enter? Certainly not
in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage then?
Still less should you do that. You should come in with good-natured
carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten his purse,
the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, his
pocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box.

In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife,
forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate.

Now le