confused consciousness that her nature
contains an infinity of things to be discovered;
that she possesses the means of answering the
persevering love which should pursue this
endless search; and that she would continually
afford a thousand unexpected aspects of
grace and attachment. This obstinacy of
love, this effort of ardent curiosity, which
seeks to find infinity in one single being,
implies a thoroughly pure, exclusive, and
monogamous home. Nothing is colder than a
seraglio; it is the habitation of a caterpillar-love
which crawls from rose to rose, spoiling
the edges of the petals without ever reaching
the cup.

The astounding spectacle of restlessness
and agitation which we now behold in the
mania for dress displayed by certain females,
results less from real inconstancy than from
rivalry and vanity, frequently also from
uneasiness at their youth and beauty's slipping
away, and their consequent desire to renovate
themselves every morning. These astonishing
changes of decoration are very frequently the
caprices of an ailing heart which wants to
retain love, and finds a difficulty in doing so.
There are very faithful women who, in order
to keep their lover, incessantly strive to
disguise and alter themselves. They would act
exactly the same in a vast solitude, in a
desert, or in an Alpine chalet which they
inhabited with no other company than the
object of their affections. Do they succeed?
It is more than doubtful. The impressions
of the heart are rather disturbed than
confirmed by this perpetual variation. You feel
tempted to say to them, "My dear girl, do
not change quite so quickly. Why should
you force a faithful heart to be guilty of
permanent infidelity? Yesterday you were
so pretty! I was thoroughly in love with
that charming person. And where is she
to-day? Vanished presto! How deeply I
regret her! Restore her to my presence;
do not compel me to love with such changeability."

Dress is a great symbol. There should
be some novelty, but nothing violent; above
all, never so complete a novelty as to cause
love to wander without chart or compass. A
flower, more or less, a ribbon, a bit of lace, a
mere nothing, often enchants us, and the
whole portrait becomes transfigured. This
changeless change goes to the heart, and
silently says, "Always different, and always
faithful."

A man should mould his wife after his own
model; she herself desires nothing better.
The girl of eighteen will be willingly the
daughter, that is to say, the docile spouse of
the man of twenty-eight or thirty. She
trusts to him in everything, easily believes
that he knows more than her and all the
world besides,—more than her father and
mother (whom she quits with tears but without
inconsolable sorrow). She believes everything
he tells her, and confiding her whole
heart to him, she is very far from discussing
the shades of opinion which may separate
them at bottom; unconsciously she
also yields him her faith. She believes that
she is beginning—she wishes to begin an
absolutely new life in reference to her former
life. She desires to be born again, with him,and
of him.

"Let this day," she says, "be the first
of my days. Your creed is my creed. Your
people shall be my people, and your God my
God."

This is an admirable moment of power for
the man, if he only knows how to employ it
to advantage. He should wish what she
wishes, and take her at her word; he should
re-make, re-new, and re-model her,—re-create
her, in short.

Deliver her, therefore, from her insignificance,
from all which hinders her from
becoming an intellectual being, from all evil
precedents, from any faults of education or
family she may have. It is her interest,
moreover, and the interest of your love. She
feels—she knows by the power of female
second-sight—that love, in these modern
times, loves not what it finds, but what it
makes. We are workmen, creators, fabricators,
the true sons of Prometheus; only,
instead of a ready-made Pandora, we prefer a
Pandora to make. This is the guarantee
that these latter days, which we believe to
be cold and heartless, are likely to produce
instances of a force of love unknown to
bygone ages.

The passion of the old times for a fixed
ideal was almost still-born at its outset; it
soon turned to indifference, because it had no
hand in the work. But our modern passion
for a progressive creature, for a living,
loving piece of work, which we fashion
ourselves, hour by hour, for a beauty which we
have a right to call our own, is the source
of an inexhaustible flame.

In marriage there is no medium or mediocrity.
He who does not take strong and
powerful possession of his wife's affections is
neither respected nor beloved by her. He
wearies her; and weariness, with women, is not
far distant from dislike and hatred. You ask
what right you have thus to take possession
of her will. The first and most rightful title
to your claim is her own ardent wish, on
contracting marriage, to be able to say truly,
"I am yours." In that case she feels herself
free, provided that you are her master.
Freed from what, do you want to know?
Freed from her mother who, loving her all
the while, treats her up to twenty years of
age, and would treat her up to thirty, exactly
like a little girl. French mothers are terrible.
They adore their child, but they wage
war against her; they annihilate her by the
splendour, the power, and the charm of their
personality. They are much more graceful,
and often even prettier, and especially
younger than their daughters. As long as