It would therefore almost appear to be demonstrated that thirty is the age of virtue.  At that critical period, a woman becomes so difficult to guard, that in order successfully to enchain her within the conjugal Paradise, resort must be had to those last means of defence which remain to be described, and which we will reveal in the Essay on Police, the Art of Returning Home, and Catastrophes.

MEDITATION XX.

ESSAY ON POLICE.

The police of marriage consist of all those means which are given you by law, manners, force, and stratagem for preventing your wife in her attempt to accomplish those three acts which in some sort make up the life of love:  writing, seeing and speaking.

The police combine in greater or less proportion the means of defence put forth in the preceding Meditations.  Instinct alone can teach in what proportions and on what occasions these compounded elements are to be employed.  The whole system is elastic; a clever husband will easily discern how it must be bent, stretched or retrenched.  By the aid of the police a man can guide his wife to her fortieth year pure from any fault.

We will divide this treatise on Police into five captions: 

1.  OF MOUSE-TRAPS. 2.  OF CORRESPONDENCE. 3.  OF SPIES. 4.  THE INDEX. 5.  OF THE BUDGET.

1.  OF MOUSE-TRAPS.

In spite of the grave crisis which the husband has reached, we do not suppose that the lover has completely acquired the freedom of the city in the marital establishment.  Many husbands often suspect that their wives have a lover, and yet they do not know upon which of the five or six chosen ones of whom we have spoken their suspicions ought to fall.  This hesitation doubtless springs from some moral infirmity, to whose assistance the professor must come.

Fouche had in Paris three or four houses resorted to by people of the highest distinction; the mistresses of these dwellings were devoted to him.  This devotion cost a great deal of money to the state.  The minister used to call these gatherings, of which nobody at the time had any suspicion, his mouse-traps.  More than one arrest was made at the end of the ball at which the most brilliant people of Paris had been made accomplices of this oratorian.

The act of offering some fragments of roasted nuts, in order to see your wife put her white hand in the trap, is certainly exceedingly delicate, for a woman is certain to be on her guard; nevertheless, we reckon upon at least three kinds of mouse-traps:  The Irresistible, The Fallacious, and that which is Touch and Go.

The Irresistible.

Suppose two husbands, we will call them A and B, wish to discover who are the lovers of their wives.  We will put the husband A at the centre of a table loaded with the finest pyramids of fruit, of crystals, of candies and of liqueurs, and the husband B shall be at whatever point of this brilliant circle you may please to suppose.  The champagne has gone round, every eye is sparkling and every tongue is wagging.