We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in those which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure.  According to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception.  In this connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very many ignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand with open eyes, yet without seeing it.

We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied will produce many conversions, and that among the pages that separate this second part from that entitled Civil War many tears will be shed and many vows of repentance breathed.

Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand, who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and bellicose to raise the standard of Civil War.

To arms then, to arms!

THIRD PART

RELATING TO CIVIL WAR.

“Lovely as the seraphs of Klopstock,
Terrible as the devils of Milton.” 
—­DIDEROT.

MEDITATION XXIII.

OF MANIFESTOES.

The Preliminary precepts, by which science has been enabled at this point to put weapons into the hand of a husband, are few in number; it is not of so much importance to know whether he will be vanquished, as to examine whether he can offer any resistance in the conflict.

Meanwhile, we will set up here certain beacons to light up the arena where a husband is soon to find himself, in alliance with religion and law, engaged single-handed in a contest with his wife, who is supported by her native craft and the whole usages of society as her allies.

LXXXII. 
Anything may be expected and anything may be supposed of a woman who
is in love.

LXXXIII. 
The actions of a woman who intends to deceive her husband are almost
always the result of study, but never dictated by reason.

LXXXIV. 

The greater number of women advance like the fleas, by erratic leaps and bounds, They owe their escape to the height or depth of their first ideas, and any interruption of their plans rather favors their execution.  But they operate only within a narrow area which it is easy for the husband to make still narrower; and if he keeps cool he will end by extinguishing this piece of living saltpetre.

LXXXV. 
A husband should never allow himself to address a single disparaging
remark to his wife, in presence of a third party.

LXXXVI. 

The moment a wife decides to break her marriage vow she reckons her husband as everything or nothing.  All defensive operations must start from this proposition.