aft on our
language, a conjugal catastrophe _se subodore_ is scented from afar;
so that our only course will be to sketch out imperfectly certain
conjugal situations of an analogous kind, thus imitating the
philosopher of ancient time who, seeking in vain to explain motion,
walked forward in his attempt to comprehend laws which were
incomprehensible.

A husband, in accordance with the principles comprised in our
Meditation on _Police_, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the
visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she
has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic
interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a
husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake
himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited
sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into
motion certain adroitly handled machinery.

Let us suppose, in order to make more interesting the natural scene to
which I refer, that you who read are a husband, whose carefully
organized police has made the discovery that your wife, profiting by
the hours devoted by you to a ministerial banquet, to which she
probably procured you an invitation, received at your house M. A----z.

Here we find all the conditions necessary to bring about the finest
possible of conjugal catastrophes.

You return home just in time to find your arrival has coincided with
that of M. A----z, for we would not advise you to have the interval
between acts too long. But in what mood should you enter? Certainly
not in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage
then? Still less should you do that. You should come in with
good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten
his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, his
pocket-handkerchief or his snuff-box.

In that case you will either catch two lovers together, or your wife,
forewarned by the maid, will have hidden the celibate.

Now let us consider these two unique situations.

But first of all we will observe that husbands ought always to be in a
position to strike terror in their homes and ought long before to make
preparations for the matrimonial second of September.

Thus a husband, from the moment that his wife has caused him to
perceive certain _first symptoms_, should never fail to give, time
after time, his personal opinion on the course of cond