y.

This system is founded upon what we may call the dignity of the married
woman. The first effect of this system is to mingle with your pleasures
a certain reserve and a certain lukewarmness, of which you are the sole
judge.

According to the greater or lesser violence of your sensual passion, you
have perhaps discerned some of those twenty-two pleasures which in
other times created in Greece twenty-two kinds of courtesans, devoted
especially to these delicate branches of the same art. Ignorant and
simple, curious and full of hope, your young wife may have taken
some degrees in this science as rare as it is unknown, and which we
especially commend to the attention of the future author of _Physiology
of Pleasure_.

Lacking all these different kinds of pleasure, all these caprices of
soul, all these arrows of love, you are reduced to the most common of
love fashions, of that primitive and innocent wedding gait, the calm
homage which the innocent Adam rendered to our common Mother and which
doubtless suggested to the Serpent the idea of taking them in. But a
symptom so complete is not frequent. Most married couples are too good
Christians to follow the usages of pagan Greece, so we have ranged,
among the last symptoms, the appearance in the calm nuptial couch of
those shameless pleasures which spring generally from lawless passion.
In their proper time and place we will treat more fully of this
fascinating diagnostic; at this point, things are reduced to a
listlessness and conjugal repugnance which you alone are in a condition
to appreciate.

At the same time that she is ennobling by her dignity the objects of
marriage, your wife will pretend that she ought to have her opinion and
you yours. "In marrying," she will say, "a woman does not vow that she
will abdicate the throne of reason. Are women then really slaves? Human
laws can fetter the body; but the mind!--ah! God has placed it so near
Himself that no human hand can touch it."

These ideas necessarily proceed either from the too liberal teachings
which you have allowed her to receive, or from some reflections which
you have permitted her to make. A whole Meditation has been devoted to
_Home Instruction_.

Then your wife begins to say, "_My_ chamber, _my_ bed, _my_ apartment."
To many of your questions she will reply, "But, my dear, this is no
business of yours!" Or: "Men have their part in the direction of
the house, and women have theirs." Or, laughing at m