You must make your horse prance, you must
brandish your sabre, you must shout strenuously, and you must endeavor
to calm the revolt without wounding anybody.
Just as the author has found a means of passing from occult methods to
methods that are patent, so it is necessary for the husband to justify
the sudden change in his tactics; for in marriage, as in literature,
art consists entirely in the gracefulness of the transitions. This is
of the highest importance for you. What a frightful position you will
occupy if your wife has reason to complain of your conduct at the
moment, which is, perhaps, the most critical of your whole married
life!
You must therefore find some means or other to justify the secret
tyranny of your initial policy; some means which still prepare the
mind of your wife for the severe measures which you are about to take;
some means which so far from forfeiting her esteem will conciliate
her; some means which will gain her pardon, which will restore some
little of that charm of yours, by which you won her love before your
marriage.
"But what policy is it that demands this course of action? Is there
such a policy?"
Certainly there is.
But what address, what tact, what histrionic art must a husband
possess in order to display the mimic wealth of that treasure which we
are about to reveal to him! In order to counterfeit the passion whose
fire is to make you a new man in the presence of your wife, you will
require all the cunning of Talma.
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