the tenants of the next house and even to know their
friends and relations?

A husband will never take lodgings on the ground floor.

Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary
methods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the
tenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment,
which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded.

MEDITATION XV. OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE.

"But no, madame, no--"

"Yes, for there is such inconvenience in the arrangement."

"Do you think, madame, that we wish, as at the frontier, to watch
the visits of persons who cross the threshold of your apartments, or
furtively leave them, in order to see whether they bring to you articles
of contraband? That would not be proper; and there is nothing odious in
our proceeding, any more than there is anything of a fiscal character;
do not be alarmed."

The Custom House of the marriage state is, of all the expedients
prescribed in this second part, that which perhaps demands the most tact
and the most skill as well as the most knowledge acquired _a priori_,
that is to say before marriage. In order to carry it out, a husband
ought to have made a profound study of Lavater's book, and to be imbued
with all his principles; to have accustomed his eye to judge and to
apprehend with the most astonishing promptitude, the slightest physical
expressions by which a man reveals his thoughts.

Lavater's _Physiognomy_ originated a veritable science, which has won
a place in human investigation. If at first some doubts, some jokes
greeted the appearance of this book, since then the celebrated Doctor
Gall is come with his noble theory of the skull and has completed the
system of the Swiss savant, and given stability to his fine and luminous
observations. People of talent, diplomats, women, all those who are
numbered among the choice and fervent disciples of these two celebrated
men, have often had occasion to recognize many other evident signs, by
which the course of human thought is indicated. The habits of the body,
the handwriting, the sound of the voice, have often betrayed the woman
who is in love, the diplomat who is attempting to deceive, the clever
administrator, or the sovereign who is compelled to distinguish at
a glance love, treason or merit hitherto unknown. The man whose soul
operates with energy is like a poor glowworm, which without knowing it
irradiates light from every pore