If your wife has not nursed her first child, you have too much sense
not to notice this circumstance, and not to make her desire to nurse
her next one. You will read to her the _Emile_ of Jean-Jacques; you
will fill her imagination with a sense of motherly duties; you will
excite her moral feelings, etc.: in a word, you are either a fool or a
man of sense; and in the first case, even after reading this book, you
will always be minotaurized; while in the second, you will understand
how to take a hint.
This first expedient is in reality your own personal business. It will
give you a great advantage in carrying out all the other methods.
Since Alcibiades cut the ears and the tail of his dog, in order to do
a service to Pericles, who had on his hands a sort of Spanish war, as
well as an Ouvrard contract affair, such as was then attracting the
notice of the Athenians, there is not a single minister who has not
endeavored to cut the ears of some dog or other.
So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point of
the system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point,
by means of blisters, scarifications and cupping.
Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with a
mental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion in
your favor.
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