This gate is the Alpha and Omega of an
intrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these words
--entering and leaving?
Your house will be of no use to you if it does not stand between a
court and a garden, and so constructed as to be detached from all
other buildings. You must abolish all recesses in your apartments. A
cupboard, if it contain but six pots of preserves, should be walled
in. You are preparing yourself for war, and the first thought of a
general is to cut his enemy off from supplies. Moreover, all the walls
must be smooth, in order to present to the eye lines which may be
taken in at a glance, and permit the immediate recognition of the
least strange object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments
you will see that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang
principally from the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of their
walls and scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled in
pity, if they had seen the gaps which our closets make in our
drawing-rooms.
This magnificent system of defence should above all be put in active
operation in the apartment of your wife; never let her curtain her bed
in such a way that one can walk round it amid a maze of hangings; be
inexorable in the matter of connecting passages, and let her chamber
be at the bottom of your reception-rooms, so as to show at a glance
those who come and go.
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