to the principles
prescribed in the Meditation, you will easily discern the place into
which the celibate has vanished, although he be not, like Lord Byron's
Don Juan, bundled up under the cushion of a divan. If by chance your
apartment is in disorder, you ought to have sufficient discernment to
know that there is only one place in which a man could bestow himself.
Finally, if by some devilish inspiration he has made himself so small
that he has squeezed into some unimaginable lurking-place (for we may
expect anything from a celibate), well, either your wife cannot help
casting a glance towards this mysterious spot, or she will pretend to
look in an exactly opposite direction, and then nothing is easier for
a husband than to set a mouse-trap for his wife.

The hiding-place being discovered, you must walk straight up to the
lover. You must meet him face to face!

And now you must endeavor to produce a fine effect. With your face
turned three-quarters towards him, you must raise your head with an
air of superiority. This attitude will enhance immensely the effect
which you aim at producing.

The most essential thing to do at this moment, is to overwhelm the
celibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all
the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the
door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's
axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already
probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There
must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high
social rank," says a young English author, "never behave like their
inferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarm
throughout the whole neighborhood."

When the celibate has gone, you will find yourself alone with your
wife, and then is the time when you must subjugate her forever.

You should therefore stand before her, putting on an air whose
affected calmness betrays the profoundest emotion; then you must
choose from among the following topics, which we have rhetorically
amplified, and which are most congenial to your feelings: "Madame,"
you must say, "I will speak to you neither of your vows, nor of my
love; for you have too much sense and I have too much pride to make it
possible that I should overwhelm you with those execrations, which all
husbands have a right to utter under these circumstances; for the
least of the mistakes that I s