From the pinnacle of his own greatness he makes a piquant repartee.
Madame retorts, the conversation becomes as lively as it is
interesting, and this husband, a very superior man, is quite
astonished to discover the wit of his wife, in other respects, an
accomplished woman; the right word occurs to her with wonderful
readiness; her tact and keenness enable her to meet an innuendo with
charming originality. She is no longer the same woman. She notices the
effect she produces upon her husband, and both to avenge herself for
his neglect and to win his admiration for the lover from whom she has
received, so to speak, the treasures of her intellect, she exerts
herself, and becomes actually dazzling. The husband, better able than
any one else to appreciate a species of compensation which may have
some influence on his future, is led to think that the passions of
women are really necessary to their mental culture.

But how shall we treat those compensations which are most pleasing to
husbands?

Between the moment when the last symptoms appear, and the epoch of
conjugal peace, which we will not stop to discuss, almost a dozen
years have elapsed. During this interval and before the married couple
sign the treaty which, by means of a sincere reconciliation of the
feminine subject with her lawful lord, consecrates their little
matrimonial restoration, in order to close in, as Louis XVIII said,
the gulf of revolutions, it is seldom that the honest woman has but
one lover. Anarchy has its inevitable phases. The stormy domination of
tribunes is supplanted by that of the sword and the pen, for few loves
are met with whose constancy outlives ten years. Therefore, since our
calculations prove that an honest woman has merely paid strictly her