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.
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