Wycherley, too, had his connubial infelicities. He married the widowed Countess of Drogheda, whom Macaulay describes as ill-tempered, imperious, and extravagantly jealous. Nothing is more likely than that she had due cause for jealousy, for Wycherley was no saint. But she managed to keep him under restraint, and only permitted him to meet his cronies under her surveillance. That is, he was suffered to entertain his fellow-dramatists in a room of the tavern that stood opposite their house, whence she could observe him through the open windows, and assure herself that no woman was of the company. Wycherley had, doubtless, himself to blame for this espionage and suspicion; but jealousy is, perhaps, as frequently unfounded as deserved. Berlioz, for instance, who married the charming Henrietta Smithson, an Irish operatic singer, was driven, through his wife’s unreasonable jealousy, to elope with the first pretty girl he met. He had been madly infatuated with her, and she seems to have wed him, not from affection, but because of his importunity; and, even so, she did not comply until after an accident had unfitted her for the stage, and she was fain to retire. But indifference changed to an acute jealousy after marriage. She so wearied the musician with her baseless suspicions, that at last he felt the absurdity of bearing the odium of sin without having experienced its pleasures. So, one fine day, he packed a portmanteau and sped to Brussels in company with ‘another,’ to speak in the manner of the lady novelists. Comte, the founder of the Positivist religion, and the defender of marriage, led a wretched married life. Hooker, the ‘judicious,’ seems not to have deserved that epithet in so far as his choice of a domestic tyrant was concerned. Sir Richard Steele should not have married a second time; he might have known that the good fortune of his first choice militated against the chance of equal luck on another occasion. Montaigne--good soul--declared that he would not marry again after his untoward experiences; no, not if he had the choice of wisdom incarnate. Man who has once been wed deserves the consolations of heaven, according to the story in which a soul (masculine) comes to the gates of Paradise and knocks. Peter catechises him, but finds his record inadequate, and is about to turn him away. ‘Stay, though,’ says the saint; ‘have you been married?’ ‘Yes,’ replies the soul. ‘Enter, then,’ rejoins the janitor, compassionately; ‘you have deserved much from your sufferings on earth!’ ‘Ah!’ cries the spirit, enlarging upon its claims to present bliss from past ills; ‘I have been married twice!’ ‘Twice?’ shouts Peter, indignantly; ‘away with you. Paradise is not for fools!’