women, you yield
an advantage to your wife by which she will profit eternally. A husband,
like a government, ought never to acknowledge a mistake. In case you do
so, your power will be outflanked by the subtle artifices of feminine
dignity; then all will be lost; from that moment she will advance from
concession to concession until she has driven you from her bed.

The woman being shrewd, intelligent, sarcastic and having leisure to
meditate over an ironical phrase, can easily turn you into ridicule
during a momentary clash of opinions. The day on which she turns you
into ridicule, sees the end of your happiness. Your power has expired.
A woman who has laughed at her husband cannot henceforth love him. A man
should be, to the woman who is in love with him, a being full of
power, of greatness, and always imposing. A family cannot exist without
despotism. Think of that, ye nations!

Now the difficult course which a man has to steer in presence of such
serious incidents as these, is what we may call the _haute politique_ of
marriage, and is the subject of the second and third parts of our book.
That breviary of marital Machiavelism will teach you the manner in which
you may grow to greatness within that frivolous mind, within that soul
of lacework, to use Napoleon's phrase. You may learn how a man may
exhibit a soul of steel, may enter upon this little domestic war without
ever yielding the empire of his will, and may do so without compromising
his happiness. For if you exhibit any tendency to abdication, your wife
will despise you, for the sole reason that she has discovered you to be
destitute of mental vigor; you are no longer a _man_ to her.

But we have not yet reached the point at which are to be developed those
theories and principles, by means of which a man may unite elegance of
manners with severity of measures; let it suffice us, for the moment,
to point out the importance of impending events and let us pursue our
theme.

At this fatal epoch, you will see that she is adroitly setting up a
right to go out alone.

You were at one time her god, her idol. She has now reached that height
of devotion at which it is permitted to see holes in the garments of the
saints.

"Oh, mon Dieu! My dear," said Madame de la Valliere to her husband, "how
badly you wear your sword! M. de Richelieu has a way of making it hang
straight at his side, which you ought to try to imitate; it is in much
better taste."

"My dear, yo