o use an expression of Buffon, immediately rouses
himself and rends you with his keen points of contact.

This description of a special class of human creatures, which we hope
you will not run up against during your earthly journey, presents a
picture of what your wife may be to you. Every one of the sentiments
which nature has endowed your heart with, in their gentlest form, will
become a dagger in the hand of your wife. You will be stabbed every
moment, and you will necessarily succumb; for your love will flow like
blood from every wound.

This is the last struggle, but for her it also means victory.

In order to carry out the distinction which we think we have established
among three sorts of feminine temperament, we will divide this
Meditation into three parts, under the following titles:

1. OF HEADACHES.
2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.
3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.

1. OF HEADACHES.

Women are constantly the dupes or the victims of excessive sensibility;
but we have already demonstrated that with the greater number of them
this delicacy of soul must needs, almost without their knowing it,
receive many rude blows, from the very fact of their marriage. (See
Meditations entitled _The Predestined_ and _Of the Honeymoon_.) Most of
the means of defence instinctively employed by husbands are nothing but
traps set for the liveliness of feminine affections.

Now the moment comes when the wife, during the Civil War, traces by a
single act of thought the history of her moral life, and is irritated on
perceiving the prodigious way in which you have taken advantage of her
sensibility. It is very rarely that women, moved either by an innate
feeling for revenge, which they themselves can never explain, or by
their instinct of domination, fail to discover that this quality in
their natural machinery, when brought into play against the man, is
inferior to no other instrument for obtaining ascendancy over him.

With admirable cleverness, they proceed to find out what chords in the
hearts of their husbands are most easily touched; and when once they
discover this secret, they eagerly proceed to put it into practice;
then, like a child with a mechanical toy, whose spring excites their
curiosity, they go on employing it, carelessly calling into play the
movements of the instrument, and satisfied simply with their success in
doing so. If they kill you, they will mourn over you