orture.

But it is especially in bed that vapors play their part. There when a
woman has not a headache she has her vapors; and when she has neither
vapors nor headache, she is under the protection of the girdle of Venus,
which, as you know, is a myth.

Among the women who fight with you the battle of vapors, are some more
blonde, more delicate, more full of feeling than others, and who possess
the gift of tears. How admirably do they know how to weep! They weep
when they like, as they like and as much as they like. They organize
a system of offensive warfare which consists of manifesting sublime
resignation, and they gain victories which are all the more brilliant,
inasmuch as they remain all the time in excellent health.

Does a husband, irritated beyond all measure, at last express his wishes
to them? They regard him with an air of submission, bow their heads and
keep silence. This pantomime almost always puts a husband to rout. In
conjugal struggles of this kind, a man prefers a woman should speak and
defend herself, for then he may show elation or annoyance; but as for
these women, not a word. Their silence distresses you and you experience
a sort of remorse, like the murderer who, when he finds his victim
offers no resistance, trembles with redoubled fear. He would prefer to
slay him in self-defence. You return to the subject. As you draw near,
your wife wipes away her tears and hides her handkerchief, so as to
let you see that she has been weeping. You are melted, you implore your
little Caroline to speak, your sensibility has been touched and you
forget everything; then she sobs while she speaks, and speaks while
she sobs. This is a sort of machine eloquence; she deafens you with
her tears, with her words which come jerked out in confusion; it is the
clapper and torrent of a mill.

French women and especially Parisians possess in a marvelous degree
the secret by which such scenes are enacted, and to these scenes their
voices, their sex, their toilet, their manner give a wonderful charm.
How often do the tears upon the cheeks of these adorable actresses give
way to a piquant smile, when they see their husbands hasten to break the
silk lace, the weak fastening of their corsets, or to restore the comb
which holds together the tresses of their hair and the bunch of golden
ringlets always on the point of falling down?

But how all these tricks of modernity pale before the genius of
antiquity, before nervous atta