Now headache is an affection which affords infinite resources to a woman.  This malady, which is the easiest of all to feign, for it is destitute of any apparent symptom, merely obliges her to say:  “I have a headache.”  A woman trifles with you and there is no one in the world who can contradict her skull, whose impenetrable bones defy touch or ocular test.  Moreover, headache is, in our opinion, the queen of maladies, the pleasantest and the most terrible weapon employed by wives against their husbands.  There are some coarse and violent men who have been taught the tricks of women by their mistresses, in the happy hours of their celibacy, and so flatter themselves that they are never to be caught by this vulgar trap.  But all their efforts, all their arguments end by being vanquished before the magic of these words:  “I have a headache.”  If a husband complains, or ventures on a reproach, if he tries to resist the power of this Il buondo cani of marriage, he is lost.

Imagine a young woman, voluptuously lying on a divan, her head softly supported by a cushion, one hand hanging down; on a small table close at hand is her glass of lime-water.  Now place by her side a burly husband.  He has made five or six turns round the room; but each time he has turned on his heels to begin his walk all over again, the little invalid has made a slight movement of her eyebrows in a vain attempt to remind him that the slightest noise fatigues her.  At last he musters all his courage and utters a protest against her pretended malady, in the bold phrase: 

“And have you really a headache?”

At these words the young woman slightly raises her languid head, lifts an arm, which feebly falls back again upon her divan, raises her eyes to the ceiling, raises all that she has power to raise; then darting at you a leaden glance, she says in a voice of remarkable feebleness: 

“Oh!  What can be the matter with me?  I suffer the agonies of death!  And this is all the comfort you give me!  Ah! you men, it is plainly seen that nature has not given you the task of bringing children into the world.  What egoists and tyrants you are!  You take us in all the beauty of our youth, fresh, rosy, with tapering waist, and then all is well!  When your pleasures have ruined the blooming gifts which we received from nature, you never forgive us for having forfeited them to you!  That was all understood.  You will allow us to have neither the virtues nor the sufferings of our condition.  You must needs have children, and we pass many nights in taking care of them.  But child-bearing has ruined our health, and left behind the germs of serious maladies.—­Oh, what pain I suffer!  There are few women who are not subject to headaches; but your wife must be an exception.  You even laugh at our sufferings; that is generosity!—­please don’t walk about —­I should not have expected this of you!—­Stop the clock; the click of the pendulum rings in my head.  Thanks!  Oh, what an unfortunate creature I am!  Have you a scent-bottle with you?  Yes, oh! for pity’s sake, allow me to suffer in peace, and go away; for this scent splits my head!”