are terror-stricken at the conflagration.

As a general thing, all women league themselves against a married man
who is accused of tyranny; for a secret tie unites them all, as it
unites all priests of the same religion. They hate each other, yet
shield each other. You can never gain over more than one of them; and
yet this act of seduction would be a triumph for your wife.

You are, therefore, outlawed from the feminine kingdom. You see
ironical smiles on every lip, you meet an epigram in every answer.
These clever creatures force their daggers and amuse themselves by
sculpturing the handle before dealing you a graceful blow.

The treacherous art of reservation, the tricks of silence, the malice
of suppositions, the pretended good nature of an inquiry, all these
arts are employed against you. A man who undertakes to subjugate his
wife is an example too dangerous to escape destruction from them, for
will not his conduct call up against them the satire of every husband?
Moreover, all of them will attack you, either by bitter witticisms, or
by serious arguments, or by the hackneyed maxims of gallantry. A swarm
of celibates will support all their sallies and you will be assailed
and persecuted as an original, a tyrant, a bad bed-fellow, an
eccentric man, a man not to be trusted.

Your wife will defend you like the bear in the fable of La Fontaine;
she will throw paving stones at your head to drive away the flies that
alight on it. She will tell you in the evening all the things that
have been said about you, and will ask an explanation of acts which
you never committed, and of words which you never said. She professes
to have justified you for faults of which you are innocent; she has