influence in your home. As for the services which your wife can claim
from her mother, they are immense; and the assistance which she may
derive from the neutrality of her mother is not less powerful. But on
this point everything passes out of the domain of science, for all is
veiled in secrecy. The reinforcements which a mother brings up in
support of a daughter are so varied in nature, they depend so much on
circumstances, that it would be folly to attempt even a nomenclature
for them. Yet you may write out among the most valuable precepts of
this conjugal gospel, the following maxims.

A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.

A husband ought to study all the reasons why all the celibates under
forty who form her habitual society are so closely united by ties of
friendship to his mother-in-law; for, if a daughter rarely falls in
love with the lover of her mother, her mother has always a weak spot
for her daughter's lover.


3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.

Louise de L-----, daughter of an officer killed at Wagram, had been
the object of Napoleon's special protection. She left Ecouen to marry
a commissary general, the Baron de V-----, who is very rich.

Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and
her complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming
figure, good eyes, a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and
abundant intelligence. The baron, worn out by the fatigues of war and
still more by the excesses of a stormy youth, had one of those faces