e imaginary baron who represents the person whom
their wives abhor, and they do so in the hope of discovering a lover in
the celibate who is apparently beloved.

Oh yes, I have often met in the world young men who were absolutely
starlings in love and complete dupes of a friendship which women
pretended to show them, women who felt themselves obliged to make a
diversion and to apply a blister to their husbands as their husbands had
previously done to them! These poor innocents pass their time in running
errands, in engaging boxes at the theatre, in riding in the Bois de
Boulogne by the carriages of their pretended mistresses; they are
publicly credited with possessing women whose hands they have not even
kissed. Vanity prevents them from contradicting these flattering rumors,
and like the young priests who celebrate masses without a Host, they
enjoy a mere show passion, and are veritable supernumeraries of love.

Under these circumstances sometimes a husband on returning home asks the
porter: "Has no one been here?"--"M. le Baron came past at two o'clock
to see monsieur; but as he found no one was in but madame he went away;
but Monsieur A----- is with her now."

You reach the drawing-room, you see there a young celibate, sprightly,
scented, wearing a fine necktie, in short a perfect dandy. He is a man
who holds you in high esteem; when he comes to your house your wife
listens furtively for his footsteps; at a ball she always dances with
him. If you forbid her to see him, she makes a great outcry and it is
not till many years afterwards [see Meditation on _Las Symptoms_] that
you see the innocence of Monsieur A----- and the culpability of the
baron.

We have observed and noted as one of the cleverest manoeuvres, that of
a young woman who, carried away by an irresistible passion, exhibited a
bitter hatred to the man she did not love, but lavished upon her
lover secret intimations of her love. The moment that her husband was
persuaded that she loved the _Cicisbeo_ and hated the _Patito_, she
arranged that she and the _Patito_ should be found in a situation whose
compromising character she had calculated in advance, and her husband
and the execrated celibate were thus induced to believe that her love
and her aversion were equally insincere. When she had brought her
husband into the condition of perplexity, she managed that a passionate
letter should fall into his hands. One evening in the midst of the
admirable catastr