selection, and in marriage it is necessary in order to rule the
husband. Only one thing suppresses or interrupts these tendencies for
a time,--namely, children,--and then only when the woman is not a
monster,--that is, when she nurses her own children. Here again the
doctor interferes.

"With my wife, who desired to nurse her own children, and who did nurse
six of them, it happened that the first child was sickly. The doctors,
who cynically undressed her and felt of her everywhere, and whom I had
to thank and pay for these acts,--these dear doctors decided that she
ought not to nurse her child, and she was temporarily deprived of
the only remedy for coquetry. A nurse finished the nursing of this
first-born,--that is to say, we profited by the poverty and ignorance of
a woman to steal her from her own little one in favor of ours, and for
that purpose we dressed her in a kakoschnik trimmed with gold lace.
Nevertheless, that is not the question; but there was again awakened in
my wife that coquetry which had been sleeping during the nursing period.
Thanks to that, she reawakened in me the torments of jealousy which I
had formerly known, though in a much slighter degree."



CHAPTER XV.

"Yes, jealousy, that is another of the secrets of marriage known to all
and concealed by all. Besides the general cause of the mutual hatred of
husbands and wives resulting from complicity in the pollution of a human
being, and also from other causes, the inexhaustible source of marital
wounds is jealousy. But by tacit consent it is determined to conceal
them from all, and we conceal them. Knowing them, each one supposes in