olate modesty in their relations to love, which
is nothing but the expression of our whole sensibility. If extreme
modesty is one of the conditions on which the reality of marriage is
based, as we have tried to prove [See _Conjugal Catechism, Meditation
IV._], it is evident that immodesty will destroy it. But this
position, which would require long deductions for the acceptance of
the physiologist, women generally apply, as it were, mechanically; for
society, which exaggerates everything for the benefit of the exterior
man, develops this sentiment of women from childhood, and around it
are grouped almost every other sentiment. Moreover, the moment that
this boundless veil, which takes away the natural brutality from the
least gesture, is dragged down, woman disappears. Heart, mind, love,
grace, all are in ruins. In a situation where the virginal innocence
of a daughter of Tahiti is most brilliant, the European becomes
detestable. In this lies the last weapon which a wife seizes, in order
to escape from the sentiment which her husband still fosters towards
her. She is powerful because she had made herself loathsome; and this
woman, who would count it as the greatest misfortune that her lover
should be permitted to see the slightest mystery of her toilette,
is delighted to exhibit herself to her husband in the most
disadvantageous situation that can possibly be imagined.

It is by means of this rigorous system that she will try to banish you
from the conjugal bed. Mrs. Shandy may be taken to mean us harm in
bidding the father of Tristram wind up the clock; so long as your wife
is not blamed for the pleasure she takes in interrupting you by the
most imperative questions. Where there formerly was movement and life
is now lethargy and death. An act of love becomes a transaction long
discussed and almost, as it were, settled by notarial seal. But we
have in another place shown that we never refuse to seize upon the
comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be
permitted to disdain the diversion which the muse of Verville and of
Marshall have found in the treachery of feminine manoeuvres, the
insulting audacity of their talk, amid the cold-blooded cynicism which
they exhibit in certain situations. It is too sad to laugh at, and too
funny to mourn over. When a woman resorts to such extreme measures,
worlds at once separate her from her husband. Nevertheless, there are
some women to whom Heaven has given the gif