You are handed over to us men swaddled, distorted, stuffed with prejudices and principles, heavy as paving-stones; all of which are the more difficult to dislodge since you look upon them as sacred; you are started on the matrimonial journey with so much luggage reckoned as indispensable; and at the first station your husband, who is not an angel, loses his temper amidst all these encumbrances, sends it all to the devil under some pretext or other, lets you go on alone, and gets into another carriage.  I do not require, mark me, that you should be allowed to grow up uncared for, that good or evil instincts should be suffered to spring up in you anyhow:  but it were better that they should not treat your poor mind like the foot of a well-born Chinese girl—­that they should not enclose it in a porcelain slipper.

A marriageable young lady is a product of maternal industry, which takes ten years to fructify, and needs from five to six more years of study on the part of the husband to purify, strip, and restore to its real shape.  In other words, it takes ten years to make a bride and six years at least to turn this bride into a woman again.  Admit frankly that this is time lost as regards happiness, but try to make it up if your husband will permit you to do so.

The sole guaranty of fidelity between husband and wife is love.  One remains side by side with a fellow-traveller only so long as one experiences pleasure and happiness in his company.  Laws, decrees, oaths, may prevent faithlessness, or at least punish it, but they can neither hinder nor punish intention.  But as regards love, intention and deed are the same.

Is it not true, my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion?  Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot?  To make one’s self lovable is the main thing.  Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me give you some more advice.

Yes, I favor marriage—­I do not conceal it—­the happy marriage in which we cast into the common lot our ideas and our sorrows, as well as our good-humor and our affections.  Suppress, by all means, in this partnership, gravity and affectation, yet add a sprinkling of gallantry and good-fellowship.  Preserve even in your intimacy that coquetry you so readily assume in society.  Seek to please your husband.  Be amiable.  Consider that your husband is an audience, whose sympathy you must conquer.

In your manner of loving mark those shades, those feminine delicacies, which double the price of things.  Do not be miserly, but remember that the manner in which one gives adds to the value of the gift; or rather do not give—­make yourself sought after.  Think of those precious jewels that are arranged with such art in their satin-lined jewel-case; never forget the case.  Let your nest be soft, let your presence be felt in all its thousand trifles.  Put a little of yourself into the ordering of everything.  Be artistic, delicate, and refined—­you can do so without effort—­and let your husband perceive in everything that surrounds him, from the lace on the curtains to the perfume that you use, a wish on your part to please him.