arms three months afterwards. But
it may be truly said that in general married people in betraying their
indifference towards each other show the same naivete with which they
first betrayed their love. At the time when you are traversing with
madame the ravishing fields of the seventh heaven--where according to
their temperament, newly married people remain encamped for a longer or
shorter time, as the preceding Meditation has proved--you go little or
not at all into society. Happy as you are in your home, if you do go
abroad, it will be for the purpose of making up a choice party and
visiting the theatre, the country, etc. From the moment you the newly
wedded make your appearance in the world again, you and your bride
together, or separately, and are seen to be attentive to each other at
balls, at parties, at all the empty amusements created to escape the
void of an unsatisfied heart, the celibates discern that your wife comes
there in search of distraction; her home, her husband are therefore
wearisome to her.

At this point the celibate knows that half of the journey is
accomplished. At this point you are on the eve of being minotaurized,
and your wife is likely to become inconsistent; which means that she is
on the contrary likely to prove very consistent in her conduct, that she
has reasoned it out with astonishing sagacity and that you are likely
very soon to smell fire. From that moment she will not in appearance
fail in any of her duties, and will put on the colors of that virtue in
which she is most lacking. Said Crebillon:

"Alas!
Is it right to be heir of the man who we slay?"

Never has she seemed more anxious to please you. She will seek, as
much as possible, to allay the secret wounds which she thinks about
inflicting upon your married bliss, she will do so by those little
attentions which induce you to believe in the eternity of her love;
hence the proverb, "Happy as a fool." But in accordance with the
character of women, they either despise their own husbands from the very
fact that they find no difficulty in deceiving them; or they hate them
when they find themselves circumvented by them; or they fall into a
condition of indifference towards them, which is a thousand times worse
than hatred. In this emergency, the first thing which may be diagnosed
in a woman is a decided oddness of behavior. A woman loves to be saved
from herself, to escape her conscience, but without the eagerness shown
in t