In the bitterness of your thoughts you may, perhaps, venture to question the doctor's mode of proceeding, upon the supposition that the nurse, having been recommended by him as a skilful and competent person, should alone have _actively_[17] interfered, when you may be truculently told that he was not there "only to stand by and make reports;" or that "an accoucheur is not necessarily an old woman;" that "there are no feelings;"[18] that "the first thing he always does, when he comes to the bed-side, is to make _an examination per vaginam_!" with other observations equally harrowing to the sensibilities of a husband. What shock so terrible to a man who, rejoicing in the delightful sentiment of a wife's purity, discovers that all he held dearest and most sacred, all which he would shield from profanation with the last drop of his life's blood, has been invaded by the presence, and _violated by the actual contact_ of the _man_-midwife? The doctor may be a sober, discreet, oily man, of staid appearance, and a very pattern of propriety; or he may be a vulgar, low-bred person, in his leisure consorting with those of a similar bent; or "Yonder a vile physician, blabbing The case of his patient...;" or he may be a tippling, jovial fellow, who at some roystering party is always called on for "a good song," sure to have as its theme wine, love, and woman,--for accoucheurs are mortals like other men; or he may be some tyro in "the art," just let loose from his course of walking the hospitals, strong in syphilitic cases, and with all the recollections of a young surgeon's life fresh upon him: nevertheless, whatever he be, _the very inmost secrets of your wife's person_ are known to him,[19] the veil of modesty has been rudely torn aside, and the sanctity of marriage exists but in the name. ----"Such an act, That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows As false as dicer's oaths: oh, such a deed, As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow; Yea this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act." CHAPTER II. "O shame! where is thy blush?"