from which he is throwing down innocent
bundles of straw. Believing in this headache, you leave the house, but
on your return you find that madame has decamped! Soon madame returns,
fresh and ruddy:

"The doctor came," she says, "and advised me to take exercise, and I
find myself much better!"

Another day you wish to enter madame's room.

"Oh, sir," says the maid, showing the most profound astonishment,
"madame has her usual headache, and I have never seen her in such pain!
The doctor has been sent for."

"You are a happy man," said Marshal Augereau to General R-----, "to have
such a pretty wife!"

"To have!" replied the other. "If I have my wife ten days in the
year, that is about all. These confounded women have always either the
headache or some other thing!"

The headache in France takes the place of the sandals, which, in Spain,
the Confessor leaves at the door of the chamber in which he is with his
penitent.

If your wife, foreseeing some hostile intentions on your part, wishes
to make herself as inviolable as the charter, she immediately gets up
a little headache performance. She goes to bed in a most deliberate
fashion, she utters shrieks which rend the heart of the hearer. She goes
gracefully through a series of gesticulations so cleverly executed that
you might think her a professional contortionist. Now what man is there
so inconsiderate as to dare to speak to a suffering woman about desires
which, in him, prove the most perfect health? Politeness alone demands
of him perfect silence. A woman knows under these circumstances that by
means of this all-powerful headache, she can at her will paste on her
bed the placard which sends back home the amateurs who have been allured
by the announcement of the Comedie Francaise, when they read the words:
"Closed through the sudden indisposition of Mademoiselle Mars."

O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler against
which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be possible
that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or raised
thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest be the
brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall find out
thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless, doubtless
through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to them, O
deceitful headache! O magic headache!

2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.

There is, however