‘The choice is an easy one,’ says an amiable lady-friend of mine, who has just become a grandmother.  ’Gudbrand’s wife is the one to imitate, not only on account of her prudence, but for her worth.  You men are much more amusing than you fancy:  when your own self-esteem is at stake, you love truth and justice about as much as bats love a glare of light.  The greatest enjoyment these gentlemen experience is in pardoning us when they are guilty, and in generously offering to overlook our errors when they alone are in the wrong.  The wisest thing we can do is to let them talk, and to pretend to believe them.  That is the way to tame these proud, magnificent creatures, and, by pursuing the plan perseveringly, one may lead them about by the nose, like Italian oxen.

‘But, aunty,’ says a fair young thing beside us, ’one can’t keep quiet all the time.  Not to yield when you’re not in the wrong, is a right.’

’And when you’re wrong, my dear niece, to yield is a royal pleasure.  What woman ever abandoned this exalted privilege?  We are all somewhat akin to that amiable lady who, when all other arguments had been exhausted, crushed her husband with a magnificent look, as she said,—­

’"Sir, I give you my word of honor that I am in the right.”

’What could he reply?  Can one contradict the veracity of one’s own wife?  And what is strength fit for if not to yield to weakness?  The poor husband hung his head, and did not utter another word.  But to keep still is not to acknowledge defeat, and silence is not peace!’

‘Madame,’ says a young married woman, ’it seems to me that there is no choice left; when a woman loves her husband all is easy; it is a pleasure to think and act as he does.’

’Yes, my child, that is the secret of the comedy.  Every one knows it, but no one avails herself of it.  So long as even the last glow of the honey-moon illuminates the chamber of a young couple, all goes along of itself.  So long as the husband hastens to anticipate every wish, we have merit and sense enough to let him do it.  But at a later moment, the scene changes.  How, then, are we to retain our sway?  Youth and beauty decay, and the charm of wit and intelligence is not sufficient.  In order to remain mistresses of our homes, we must practice the most divine of all the virtues—­gentleness—­a blind, dumb, deaf gentleness of demeanor, that pardons everything for the sake of pardoning.’

To love a great deal,—­to love unconditionally, so as to be loved a little in return,—­that is the whole moral of the story of Gudbrand.

* * * * *

THE HUGUENOT FAMILIES IN AMERICA.

II.