c; to attain this end, I have applauded her, I have listened without
yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in the world, and I have at last
consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I have thus gained three
quiet evenings out of the seven which God has created in the week. I am
the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris there are drawing-rooms which
exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes of Germany. They are a sort of
continuous orchestra to which I regularly go in search of that surfeit
of harmony which my wife calls a concert. But most part of the time my
wife keeps herself buried in her music-books--"

"But, my dear sir, do you not recognize the danger that lies in
cultivating in a woman a taste for singing, and allowing her to yield
to all the excitements of a sedentary life? It is only less dangerous to
make her feed on mutton and drink cold water."

"My wife never eats anything but the white meat of poultry, and I always
take care that a ball shall come after a concert and a reception after
an Opera! I have also succeeded in making her lie down between one
and two in the day. Ah! my dear sir, the benefits of this nap are
incalculable! In the first place each necessary pleasure is accorded
as a favor, and I am considered to be constantly carrying out my wife's
wishes. And then I lead her to imagine, without saying a single word,
that she is being constantly amused every day from six o'clock in the
evening, the time of our dinner and of her toilet, until eleven o'clock
in the morning, the time when we get up."

"Ah! sir, how grateful you ought to be for a life which is so completely
filled up!"

"I have scarcely more than three dangerous hours a day to pass; but she
has, of course, sonatas to practice and airs to go over, and there are
always rides in the Bois de Boulogne, carriages to try, visits to pay,
etc. But this is not all. The fairest ornament of a woman is the most
exquisite cleanliness. A woman cannot be too particular in this respect,
and no pains she takes can be laughed at. Now her toilet has also
suggested to me a method of thus consuming the best hours of the day in
bathing."

"How lucky I am in finding a listener like you!" I cried; "truly, sir,
you could waste for her four hours a day, if only you were willing to
teach her an art quite unknown to the most fastidious of our modern
fine ladies. Why don't you enumerate to the viscountess the astonishing
precautions manifest in the Oriental luxu