gynoecium.  You were not born to be the mother of a family or the steward of a household.  If you have children, I hope they will not come to spoil your figure on the morrow of your marriage; nothing is so bourgeois as to have a child at once.  If you have them two or three years after your marriage, well and good; governesses and tutors will bring them up.  You are to be the lady, the great lady, who represents the luxury and the pleasure of the house.  But remember one thing—­let your superiority be visible in those things only which flatter a man’s self-love; hide the superiority you must also acquire over him in great things.”

“But you frighten me, mamma,” cried Natalie.  “How can I remember all these precepts?  How shall I ever manage, I, such a child, and so heedless, to reflect and calculate before I act?”

“But, my dear little girl, I am telling you to-day that which you must surely learn later, buying your experience by fatal faults and errors of conduct which will cause you bitter regrets and embarrass your whole life.”

“But how must I begin?” asked Natalie, artlessly.

“Instinct will guide you,” replied her mother.  “At this moment Paul desires you more than he loves you; for love born of desires is a hope; the love that succeeds their satisfaction is the reality.  There, my dear, is the question; there lies your power.  What woman is not loved before marriage?  Be so on the morrow and you shall remain so always.  Paul is a weak man who is easily trained to habit.  If he yields to you once he will yield always.  A woman ardently desired can ask all things; do not commit the folly of many women who do not see the importance of the first hours of their sway,—­that of wasting your power on trifles, on silly things with no result.  Use the empire your husband’s first emotions give you to accustom him to obedience.  And when you make him yield, choose that it be on some unreasonable point, so as to test the measure of your power by the measure of his concession.  What victory would there be in making him agree to a reasonable thing?  Would that be obeying you?  We must always, as the Castilian proverb says, take the bull by the horns; when a bull has once seen the inutility of his defence and of his strength he is beaten.  When your husband does a foolish thing for you, you can govern him.”

“Why so?”

“Because, my child, marriage lasts a lifetime, and a husband is not a man like other men.  Therefore, never commit the folly of giving yourself into his power in everything.  Keep up a constant reserve in your speech and in your actions.  You may even be cold to him without danger, for you can modify coldness at will.  Besides, nothing is more easy to maintain than our dignity.  The words, ’It is not becoming in your wife to do thus and so,’ is a great talisman.  The life of a woman lies in the words, ‘I will not.’  They are the final argument.  Feminine power is in them,