You must import into your establishment that remarkable phenomenon
whose existence is demonstrated in the asymptotes of geometry. Your
wife will always try to minotaurize you without being successful. Like
those knots which are never so tight as when one tries to loosen them,
she will struggle to the advantage of your power over her, while she
believes that she is struggling for her independence.
The highest degree of good play on the part of a prince lies in
persuading his people that he goes to war for them, while all the time
he is causing them to be killed for his throne.
But many husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing this
plan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation,
the question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of your
long mystification?
It will be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as
that on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the
thought of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book of
exhaustively stating the resources of human wit, which are
immeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of the
Saturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character of
their slaves, in ten minutes, than they would have found out during
the rest of the year! You ought therefore to ordain Saturnalia in your
establishment, and to imitate Gessler, who, when he saw William Tell
shoot the apple off his son's head, was forced to remark, "Here is a
man whom I must get rid of, for he could not miss his aim if he wished
to kill me.
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