, from
the animal kingdom, as: my chick, my duck, my dove, my lamb; or,
choosing from the vegetable kingdom, they call them: my cabbage, my
fig (this only in Provence), my plum (this only in Alsatia). Never:
--My flower! Pray note this discretion.

Or else, which is more serious, they call their wives:--Bobonne,
--mother,--daughter,--good woman,--old lady: this last when she is
very young.

Some venture upon names of doubtful propriety, such as: Mon bichon, ma
niniche, Tronquette!

We once heard one of our politicians, a man extremely remarkable for
his ugliness, call his wife, _Moumoutte_!

"I would rather he would strike me," said this unfortunate to her
neighbor.

"Poor little woman, she is really unhappy," resumed the neighbor,
looking at me when Moumoutte had gone: "when she is in company with
her husband she is upon pins and needles, and keeps out of his way.
One evening, he actually seized her by the neck and said: 'Come fatty,
let's go home!'"

It has been alleged that the cause of a very famous husband-poisoning
with arsenic, was nothing less than a series of constant indiscretions
like these that the wife had to bear in society. This husband used to
give the woman he had won at the point of the Code, public little taps
on her shoulder, he would startle her by a resounding kiss, he
dishonored her by a conspicuous tenderness, seasoned by those
impertinent attentions the secret of which belongs to the French
savages who dwell in the depths of the provinces, and whose manners
are very little known, despite the efforts of the realists in fiction.
It was, it is said, this shocking situation,--one perfectly
appreciated by a discerning jury,--which won the prisoner a verdict
softened by the extenuating circumstances.

The jurymen said to themselves:

"For a wife to murder her husband for these conjugal offences, is
certainly going rather far; but then a woman is very excusable, when
she is so harassed!"

We deeply regret, in the interest of elegant manners, that these
arguments are not more generally known. Heaven grant, therefore, that
our book may have an immense success, as women will obtain this
advantage from it, that they will be treated as they deserve, that is,
as queens.

In this respect, love is much superior to marriage, it is proud of
indiscreet sayings and doings. There are some women that seek them,
fish for them, and woe to the man who does not now and then commit
one!

What passion li