h as an actual means of
defence. For it is only in bed that a man can tell whether his wife's
love is increasing or decreasing. It is the conjugal barometer. Now to
sleep in twin beds is to wish for ignorance. You will understand, when
we come to treat of _civil war_ (See Part Third) of what extreme
usefulness a bed is and how many secrets a wife reveals in bed,
without knowing it.

Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good
nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.

It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the
world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!

But in proportion as this method is pernicious in the case of young
married people, it is salutary and advantageous for those who have
reached the twentieth year of married life. Husband and wife can then
most conveniently indulge their duets of snoring. It will, moreover,
be more convenient for their various maladies, whether rheumatism,
obstinate gout, or even the taking of a pinch of snuff; and the cough
or the snore will not in any respect prove a greater hindrance than it
is found to be in any other arrangement.

We have not thought it necessary to mention the exceptional cases
which authorize a husband to resort to twin beds. However, the opinion
of Bonaparte was that when once there had taken place an interchange
of life and breath (such are his words), nothing, not even sickness,
should separate married people. This point is so delicate that it is
not possible here to treat it methodically.

Certain narrow minds will object that there are certain patriarchal
families whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two
beds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been
happy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the
author vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable
people who pass their lives in watching games of billiards.

2. SEPARATE ROOMS.

There cannot be found in Europe a hundred husbands of each nation
sufficiently versed in the science of marriage, or if you like, of
life, to be able to dwell in an apartment separate from that of their
wives.

The power of putting this system into practice shows the highest
degree of intellectual and masculine force.

The married couple who dwell in separate apartments have become either
divorced, or have attained to the discovery of happiness. They either