ife!"

The fair siren herself prepares the favorite draught; she strains it
with special care, sweetens it, tastes it, and hands it to him; then,
with a smile, she ventures like a submissive odalisque to make a joke,
with a view to smoothing the wrinkles on the brow of her lord and
master. Up to that moment he had thought his wife stupid; but on hearing
a sally as witty as that which even you would cajole with, madame, he
raises his head in the way peculiar to dogs who are hunting the hare.

"Where the devil did she get that--but it's a random shot!" he says to
himself.

From the pinnacle of his own greatness he makes a piquant repartee.
Madame retorts, the conversation becomes as lively as it is interesting,
and this husband, a very superior man, is quite astonished to discover
the wit of his wife, in other respects, an accomplished woman; the
right word occurs to her with wonderful readiness; her tact and keenness
enable her to meet an innuendo with charming originality. She is no
longer the same woman. She notices the effect she produces upon her
husband, and both to avenge herself for his neglect and to win his
admiration for the lover from whom she has received, so to speak, the
treasures of her intellect, she exerts herself, and becomes actually
dazzling. The husband, better able than any one else to appreciate a
species of compensation which may have some influence on his future, is
led to think that the passions of women are really necessary to their
mental culture.

But how shall we treat those compensations which are most pleasing to
husbands?

Between the moment when the last symptoms appear, and the epoch of
conjugal peace, which we will not stop to discuss, almost a dozen years
have elapsed. During this interval and before the married couple sign
the treaty which, by means of a sincere reconciliation of the feminine
subject with her lawful lord, consecrates their little matrimonial
restoration, in order to close in, as Louis XVIII said, the gulf of
revolutions, it is seldom that the honest woman has but one lover.
Anarchy has its inevitable phases. The stormy domination of tribunes is
supplanted by that of the sword and the pen, for few loves are met with
whose constancy outlives ten years. Therefore, since our calculations
prove that an honest woman has merely paid strictly her physiological
or diabolical dues by rendering but three men happy, it is probable
that she has set foot in more than one reg