e woman. She notices the
effect she produces upon her husband, and both to avenge herself for
his neglect and to win his admiration for the lover from whom she has
received, so to speak, the treasures of her intellect, she exerts
herself, and becomes actually dazzling. The husband, better able than
any one else to appreciate a species of compensation which may have
some influence on his future, is led to think that the passions of
women are really necessary to their mental culture.

But how shall we treat those compensations which are most pleasing to
husbands?

Between the moment when the last symptoms appear, and the epoch of
conjugal peace, which we will not stop to discuss, almost a dozen
years have elapsed. During this interval and before the married couple
sign the treaty which, by means of a sincere reconciliation of the
feminine subject with her lawful lord, consecrates their little
matrimonial restoration, in order to close in, as Louis XVIII said,
the gulf of revolutions, it is seldom that the honest woman has but
one lover. Anarchy has its inevitable phases. The stormy domination of
tribunes is supplanted by that of the sword and the pen, for few loves
are met with whose constancy outlives ten years. Therefore, since our
calculations prove that an honest woman has merely paid strictly her
physiological or diabolical dues by rendering but three men happy, it
is probable that she has set foot in more than one region of love.
Sometimes it may happen that in an interregnum of love too long
protracted, the wife, whether from whim, temptation or the desire of
novelty, undertakes to seduce her own husband.

Imagine charming Mme. de T-----, the heroine of our Meditation of
_Strategy_, saying with a fascinating smile:

"I never before found you so agreeable!"

By flattery after flattery, she tempts, she rouses curiosity, she
soothes, she rouses in you the faintest spark of desire, she carries
you away with her, and makes you proud of yourself. Then the right of
indemnifications for her husband comes. On this occasion the wife
confounds the imagination of her husband. Like cosmopolitan travelers
she tells tales of all the countries which she had traversed. She
intersperses her conversation with words borrowed from several
languages. The passionate imagery of the Orient, the unique emphasis
of Spanish phraseology, all meet and jostle one another. She opens out
the treasures of her notebook with all the mysteries o