nearly equal to the reality.  When a wife discovers her jealousy, she merely imputes to her husband inconstancy and breach of his marriage vow; but jealousy in him imputes to her a willingness to palm a spurious offspring upon him, and upon her legitimate children, as robbers of their birthright; and, besides this, grossness, filthiness, and prostitution.  She imputes to him injustice and cruelty:  but he imputes to her that which banishes her from society; that which cuts her off for life from every thing connected with female purity; that which brands her with infamy to her latest breath.

204.  Very slow, therefore, ought a husband to be in entertaining even the thought of this crime in his wife.  He ought to be quite sure before he take the smallest step in the way of accusation; but if unhappily he have the proof, no consideration on earth ought to induce him to cohabit with her one moment longer.  Jealous husbands are not despicable because they have grounds; but because they have not grounds; and this is generally the case.  When they have grounds, their own honour commands them to cast off the object, as they would cut out a corn or a cancer.  It is not the jealousy in itself, which is despicable; but the continuing to live in that state.  It is no dishonour to be a slave in Algiers, for instance; the dishonour begins only where you remain a slave voluntarily; it begins the moment you can escape from slavery, and do not.  It is despicable unjustly to be jealous of your wife; but it is infamy to cohabit with her if you know her to be guilty.

205.  I shall be told that the law compels you to live with her, unless you be rich enough to disengage yourself from her; but the law does not compel you to remain in the same country with her; and, if a man have no other means of ridding himself of such a curse, what are mountains or seas or traverse?  And what is the risk (if such there be) of exchanging a life of bodily ease for a life of labour?  What are these, and numerous other ills (if they happen) superadded?  Nay, what is death itself, compared with the baseness, the infamy, the never-ceasing shame and reproach of living under the same roof with a prostituted woman, and calling her your wife?  But, there are children, and what are to become of these?  To be taken away from the prostitute, to be sure; and this is a duty which you owe to them:  the sooner they forget her the better, and the farther they are from her, the sooner that will be.  There is no excuse for continuing to live with an adultress; no inconvenience, no loss, no suffering, ought to deter a man from delivering himself from such a state of filthy infamy; and to suffer his children to remain in such a state, is a crime that hardly admits of adequate description; a jail is paradise compared with such a life, and he who can endure this latter, from the fear of encountering hardship, is a wretch too despicable to go by the name of man.