her tomb the green canopy of a weeping
willow, and at the very time when you would like to raise a joyful
epithalamium, you find an epitaph to greet you all in black. Your wish
to console her melts away in the cloud of Ixion.

There are women of undoubted fidelity who in this way extort from
their feeling husbands cashmere shawls, diamonds, the payment of their
debts, or the rent of a box at the theatre; but almost always vapors
are employed as decisive weapons in Civil War.

On the plea of her spinal affection or of her weak chest, a woman
takes pains to seek out some distraction or other; you see her
dressing herself in soft fabrics like an invalid with all the symptoms
of spleen; she never goes out because an intimate friend, her mother
or her sister, has tried to tear her away from that divan which
monopolizes her and on which she spends her life in improvising
elegies. Madame is going to spend a fortnight in the country because
the doctor orders it. In short, she goes where she likes and does what
she likes. Is it possible that there can be a husband so brutal as to
oppose such desires, by hindering a wife from going to seek a cure for
her cruel sufferings? For it has been established after many long
discussions that in the nerves originate the most fearful torture.

But it is especially in bed that vapors play their part. There when a
woman has not a headache she has her vapors; and when she has neither
vapors nor headache, she is under the protection of the girdle of
Venus, which, as you know, is a myth.

Among the women who fight with you the battle of vapors, are some more
blonde, more delicate, more full of feeling than others, and who
possess the gift of tears. How admirably do they know how to weep!
They weep when they like, as they like and as much as they like. They
organize a system of offensive warfare which consists of manifesting
sublime resignation, and they gain victories which are all the more
brilliant, inasmuch as they remain all the time in excellent health.

Does a husband, irritated beyond all measure, at last express his
wishes to them? They regard him with an air of submission, bow their
heads and keep silence. This pantomime almost always puts a husband to
rout. In conjugal struggles of this kind, a man prefers a woman should
speak and defend herself, for then he may show elation or annoyance;
but as for these women, not a word. Their silence distresses you and
you experience a sort of