the scientific jargon
of doctors can only be compared to the layers in which they envelop
their pills.

An honest woman in her chamber with the doctor is like a minister sure
of a majority; she has it in her power to make a horse, or a carriage,
according to her good pleasure and her taste; she will send you away or
receive you, as she likes. Sometimes she will pretend to be ill in
order to have a chamber separate from yours; sometimes she will surround
herself with all the paraphernalia of an invalid; she will have an old
woman for a nurse, regiments of vials and of bottles, and, environed by
these ramparts, will defy you by her invalid airs. She will talk to you
in such a depressing way of the electuaries and of the soothing draughts
which she has taken, of the agues which she has had, of her plasters and
cataplasms, that she will fill you with disgust at these sickly details,
if all the time these sham sufferings are not intended to serve as
engines by means of which, eventually, a successful attack may be made
on that singular abstraction known as _your honor_.

In this way your wife will be able to fortify herself at every point of
contact which you possess with the world, with society and with life.
Thus everything will take arms against you, and you will be alone among
all these enemies. But suppose that it is your unprecedented privilege
to possess a wife who is without religious connections, without parents
or intimate friends; that you have penetration enough to see through
all the tricks by which your wife's lover tries to entrap you; that you
still have sufficient love for your fair enemy to resist all the Martons
of the earth; that, in fact, you have for your doctor a man who is so
celebrated that he has no time to listen to the maunderings of your
wife; or that if your Esculapius is madame's vassal, you demand a
consultation, and an incorruptible doctor intervenes every time the
favorite doctor prescribes a remedy that disquiets you; even in that
case, your prospects will scarcely be more brilliant. In fact, even if
you do not succumb to this invasion of allies, you must not forget that,
so far, your adversary has not, so to speak, struck the decisive blow.
If you hold out still longer, your wife, having flung round you thread
upon thread, as a spider spins his web, an invisible net, will resort to
the arms which nature has given her, which civilization has perfected,
and which will be treated of in the n