CLVIII. A few months after the souls of two consorts, are united together by the matrimonial bond, a woman begins to lose that estimation, which she at first obtained, as a delectable object newly acquired, and recently possessed. The man, passes from tenderness to lukewarmness, which lukewarmness many times, comes to end in contempt, and positive disestimation. When the husband arrives at this vicious extreme, he, presuming on the advantages which he supposes to be annexed to the superiority of his sex, begins to triumph over, and insult his wife; instructed by, and versed in those sentences, which pronounce, that the most which a woman can attain, may be attained by a boy of fourteen years old, and that it is in vain, to seek for either sense or prudence in them, together with other ridiculous, and injurious reflections of the same kind; treating every thing he observes in his wife, with the utmost contempt. In this situation, if the poor woman attempts to remonstrate, she is accused of raving; all she says, is impertinent, and foreign to the purpose; all she does is wrong. If she is handsome, the attraction of her beauty stands her in little stead, for its charm is dissolved, and the security of possessing it, has made it of no value. The husband only recollects, that his wife is an imperfect animal; and if he neglects her, will upbraid the most spotless woman with being a vase of impurities. CLIX. When the unhappy woman is in this humiliating and dejected state, a gallant casts fond, or, as we commonly say in Spain, good eyes on her. To her, who at all times is condemned to see nothing but a frowning brow, it is natural to suppose, a pleasant countenance appears very delightsome: and such a leading circumstance conduces much to bring on, and facilitates a conversation between the parties; in which, the woman hears nothing but what is flattering and pleasing to her. Before this, she used to be accosted in nought but terms of reproach and contempt, and now, she is addressed in expressions of tenderness and adoration. She lately was treated as something beneath a woman; and now, she is elevated to the sphere of a divinity. She was accustomed lately to be called nothing but fool; and now, she is told that she possesses a sublime understanding. In the language of her husband, she was all imperfections; in that of her gallant, she is all charms and graces. The partner of her bed, lorded it over her like a tyrant master; the other, throws himself at her feet as an humble slave; and although the lover, if he had been her husband, would have acted just as the husband did: this reflection escapes the miserable wife, and she only sees that sort of difference between them, which there is between an angel and a brute. She views in her husband, a heart full of thorns; and in her gallant, one crowned with flowers. There a chain of iron presents itself to her sight; here a golden one. There slavery; here dominion. There a dungeon; here a throne.