Five days later I found myself at the house of Madame de B-----, whose balls were becoming fashionable. In the midst of the quadrilles I saw the wife of my friend and that of the mathematician. Madame Alexander wore a charming dress; some flowers and white muslin were all that composed it. She wore a little cross _a la Jeannette_, hanging by a black velvet ribbon which set off the whiteness of her scented skin; long pears of gold decorated her ears. On the neck of Madame the Professoress sparkled a superb cross of diamonds. “How funny that is,” said I to a personage who had not yet studied the world’s ledger, nor deciphered the heart of a single woman. That personage was myself. If I had then the desire to dance with those fair women, it was simply because I knew a secret which emboldened my timidity. “So after all, madame, you have your cross?” I said to her first. “Well, I fairly won it!” she replied, with a smile hard to describe. “How is this! no ear-rings?” I remarked to the wife of my friend. “Ah!” she replied, “I have enjoyed possession of them during a whole luncheon time, but you see that I have ended by converting Alexander.” “He allowed himself to be easily convinced?” She answered with a look of triumph. Eight years afterwards, this scene suddenly rose to my memory, though I had long since forgotten it, and in the light of the candles I distinctly discerned the moral of it. Yes, a woman has a horror of being convinced of anything; when you try to persuade her she immediately submits to being led astray and continues to play the role which nature gave her. In her view, to allow herself to be won over is to grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound her; in order to guide her you must employ the power which she herself so frequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It is therefore in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find the instruments of his despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must the woman be made to tyrannize over herself. To know how to offer the ear-rings in such a way that they will be returned, is a secret whose application embraces the slightest details of life. And now let us pass to the second observation.