f coquetry, she
is delightful, you never saw her thus before! With that remarkable art
which women alone possess of making their own everything that has been
told them, she blends all shades and variations of character so as to
create a manner peculiarly her own. You received from the hands of
Hymen only one woman, awkward and innocent; the celibate returns you a
dozen of them. A joyful and rapturous husband sees his bed invaded by
the giddy and wanton courtesans, of whom we spoke in the Meditation on
_The First Symptoms_. These goddesses come in groups, they smile and
sport under the graceful muslin curtains of the nuptial bed. The
Phoenician girl flings to you her garlands, gently sways herself to
and fro; the Chalcidian woman overcomes you by the witchery of her
fine and snowy feet; the Unelmane comes and speaking the dialect of
fair Ionia reveals the treasures of happiness unknown before, and in
the study of which she makes you experience but a single sensation.

Filled with regret at having disdained so many charms, and frequently
tired of finding too often as much perfidiousness in priestesses of
Venus as in honest women, the husband sometimes hurries on by his
gallantry the hour of reconciliation desired of worthy people. The
aftermath of bliss is gathered even with greater pleasure, perhaps,
than the first crop. The Minotaur took your gold, he makes restoration
in diamonds. And really now seems the time to state a fact of the
utmost importance. A man may have a wife without possessing her. Like
most husbands you had hitherto received nothing from yours, and the
powerful intervention of the celibate was needed to make your union
complete. How shall we give a name to this miracle, perhaps the only
one wrought upon a patient during his absence? Alas, my brothers, we
did not make Nature!

But how many other compensations, not less precious, are there, by
which the noble and generous soul of the young celibate may many a
time purchase his pardon! I recollect witnessing one of the most
magnificent acts of reparation which a lover should perform toward the
husband he is minotaurizing.

One warm evening in the summer of 1817, I saw entering one of the
rooms of Tortoni one of the two hundred young men whom we confidently
style our friends; he was in the full bloom of his modesty. A lovely
woman, dressed in perfect taste, and who had consented to enter one of
the cool parlors devoted to people of fashion, had stepped f