eries as not to have admired,
over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a woman
who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through the
crowd, like a snake through the grass. The costumes and stuffs of the
latest fashion spread out their dazzling attractions in the shop windows
without claiming her attention; on, on she goes like the faithful animal
who follows the invisible tracks of his master; she is deaf to all
compliments, blind to all glances, insensible even to the light touch
of the crowd, which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian
humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait,
her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand
indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the
idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the
face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous
in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the
unmistakable disarray of her hair, the mass of whose wavy tresses has
not received from the broken comb of the celibate that radiant lustre,
that elegant and well-proportioned adjustment which only the practiced
hand of her maid can give. And what charming ease appears in her gait!
How is it possible to describe the emotion which adds such rich tints to
her complexion!--which robs her eyes of all their assurance and gives to
them an expression of mingled melancholy and delight, of shame which is
yet blended with pride!

These observations, stolen from our Meditation, _Of the Last Symptoms_,
and which are really suggested by the situation of a woman who tries to
conceal everything, may enable you to divine by analogy the rich crop
of observation which is left for you to harvest when your wife arrives
home, or when, without having committed the great crime she innocently
lets out the secrets of her thoughts. For our own part we never see
a landing without wishing to set up there a mariner's card and a
weather-cock.

As the means to be employed for constructing a sort of domestic
observatory depend altogether on places and circumstances, we must
leave to the address of a jealous husband the execution of the methods
suggested in this Meditation.

MEDITATION XVI. THE CHARTER OF MARRIAGE.

I acknowledge that I really know of but one house in Paris which is
managed in accordance with the system unfolded in the two preceding
Me