al
advice upon the whole tenor of your conduct."

"Dear mother, tell me, quick, all that you know yourself."

"In the first place, my dear child, the cause of the failure of married
women who desire to keep their husbands' hearts--and," she said, making
a parenthesis, "to keep their hearts and rule them is one and the same
thing--Well, the principle cause of conjugal disunion is to be found in
perpetual intercourse, which never existed in the olden time, but which
has been introduced into this country of late years with the mania for
family. Since the Revolution the manners and customs of the bourgeois
have invaded the homes of the aristocracy. This misfortune is due to one
of their writers, Rousseau, an infamous heretic, whose ideas were all
anti-social and who pretended, I don't know how, to justify the most
senseless things. He declared that all women had the same rights and
the same faculties; that living in a state of society we ought,
nevertheless, to obey nature--as if the wife of a Spanish grandee, as
if you or I had anything in common with the women of the people! Since
then, well-bred women have suckled their children, have educated their
daughters, and stayed in their own homes. Life has become so involved
that happiness is almost impossible,--for a perfect harmony between
natures such as that which has made you and me live as two friends is an
exception. Perpetual contact is as dangerous for parents and children as
it is for husband and wife. There are few souls in which love survives
this fatal omnipresence. Therefore, I say, erect between yourself and
Paul the barriers of society; go to balls and operas; go out in the
morning, dine out in the evenings, pay visits constantly, and grant but
little of your time to your husband. By this means you will always keep
your value to him. When two beings bound together for life have
nothing to live upon but sentiment, its resources are soon exhausted,
indifference, satiety, and disgust succeed. When sentiment has withered
what will become of you? Remember, affection once extinguished can lead
to nothing but indifference or contempt. Be ever young and ever new to
him. He may weary you,--that often happens,--but you must never weary
him. The faculty of being bored without showing it is a condition of
all species of power. You cannot diversify happiness by the cares of
property or the occupations of a family. If you do not make your husband
share your social interests,