MEDITATION XVIII.

OF MARITAL REVOLUTIONS.

The time always comes in which nations and women even the most stupid perceive that their innocence is being abused.  The cleverest policy may for a long time proceed in a course of deceit; but it would be very happy for men if they could carry on their deceit to an infinite period; a vast amount of bloodshed would then be avoided, both in nations and in families.

Nevertheless, we hope that the means of defence put forth in the preceding Meditations will be sufficient to deliver a certain number of husbands from the clutches of the Minotaur!  You must agree with the doctor that many a love blindly entered upon perishes under the treatment of hygiene or dies away, thanks to marital policy.  Yes [what a consoling mistake!] many a lover will be driven away by personal efforts, many a husband will learn how to conceal under an impenetrable veil the machinery of his machiavelism, and many a man will have better success than the old philosopher who cried:  Nolo coronari!

But we are here compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth.  Despotism has its moments of secure tranquillity.  Her reign seems like the hour which precedes the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler, stretched upon the faded grass, to hear at a mile’s distance, the song of the cicada.  Some fine morning an honest woman, who will be imitated by a great portion of our own women, discerns with an eagle eye the clever manoeuvres which have rendered her the victim of an infernal policy.  She is at first quite furious at having for so long a time preserved her virtue.  At what age, in what day, does this terrible revolution occur?  This question of chronology depends entirely upon the genius of each husband; for it is not the vocation of all to put in practice with the same talent the precepts of our conjugal gospel.

“A man must have very little love,” the mystified wife will exclaim, “to enter upon such calculations as these!  What!  From the first day I have been to him perpetually an object of suspicion!  It is monstrous, even a woman would be incapable of such artful and cruel treachery!”

This is the question.  Each husband will be able to understand the variations of this complaint which will be made in accordance with the character of the young Fury, of whom he has made a companion.

A woman by no means loses her head under these circumstances; she holds her tongue and dissembles.  Her vengeance will be concealed.  Only you will have some symptoms of hesitation to contend with on the arrival of the crisis, which we presume you to have reached on the expiration of the honeymoon; but you will also have to contend against a resolution.  She has determined to revenge herself.  From that day, so far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze.  Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming by degrees absolutely insupportable.