raws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you cause
frightful and cruel sickness, if you bring to the tomb a woman who is
dear to you; if, if,--"

This is our answer:

Have you never noticed into how many different shapes harlequin and
columbine change their little white hats? They turn and twist them so
well that they become, one after another, a spinning-top, a boat, a
wine-glass, a half-moon, a cap, a basket, a fish, a whip, a dagger, a
baby, and a man's head.

This is an exact image of the despotism with which you ought to shape
and reshape your wife.

The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of
your furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the
woman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man;
therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is in every
sense yours. Take no notice at all of her murmurs, of her cries, of
her sufferings; nature has ordained her for your use, that she may bear
everything--children, griefs, blows and pains from man.

Don't accuse yourself of harshness. In the codes of all the nations
which are called civilized, man has written the laws which govern
the destiny of women in these cruel terms: _Vae victis!_ Woe to the
conquered!

Finally, think upon this last observation, the most weighty, perhaps, of
all that we have made up to this time: if you, her husband, do not break
under the scourge of your will this weak and charming reed, there will
be a celibate, capricious and despotic, ready to bring her under a yoke
more cruel still; and she will have to endure two tyrannies instead
of one. Under all considerations, therefore, humanity demands that you
should follow the system of our hygiene.

MEDITATION XIII. OF PERSONAL MEASURES.

Perhaps the preceding Meditations will prove more likely to develop
general principles of conduct, than to repel force by force. They
furnish, however, the pharmacopoeia of medicine and not the practice of
medicine. Now consider the personal means which nature has put into your
hands for self-defence; for Providence has forgotten no one; if to the
sepia (that fish of the Adriatic) has been given the black dye by which
he produces a cloud in which he disappears from his enemy, you should
believe that a husband has not been left without a weapon; and now the
time has come for you to draw yours.

You ought to have stipulated before you married that your wife should
nurse her