The old type of the hectoring husband, even with his bludgeon, is no longer a terror. No one is so likely to play a puppet’s part as the man who fancies he is monarch of all he surveys. The foolish fellow is so convinced of his superiority that he never perceives the slender cords by which he is led. He works like an ox,[103] and his wife calls him a selfish beast and curmudgeon. She croaks of the workhouse if things are not going well with him, while if everything is going smoothly she “cockers and cossets him,” and then gets, not a beating, but a dress or a blouse. She has tears or smiles as occasion serves, and, if need be, practises her blandishments on the friends of the dear man. She wheedles even Heaven itself, for all that is required to ensure peace is to bring the shirt that her lord and master is to wear on Sunday into contact with the altar during Friday’s mass, and there is no difficulty in that. It is commonly said that “a woman is easy to manage provided ’tis a man that takes the trouble”; a man is still easier to manage provided a woman is good enough to take him in hand. In short, the women had long before this quietly juggled away this harassing domestic problem. That is why, despite the bogey of principles, the women thought highly of marriage. They reconciled themselves to obedience, so long as they did not obey. For the same reason the warmest friends of women found no better means of combating marriage than to defend it. The men alone girded at it, because, accustomed in their bachelor days to eat their own cake, they did not easily get into the habit of working for a little community. Erasmus has very cleverly summed up the situation in the form of a dialogue between a young bride and a matron of sense and sobriety.[104] The former makes loud outcry. “What a hell is marriage!” she exclaims, “what a slave’s business! And for whom, ye gods! For a gambler, a brute, a rake! ’Twould be better far to sleep with a pig!” The other soothes her. She must take her husband as she finds him, that is to say, a coarse animal, a sort of elephant, to be tamed with a lump of sugar.[105] She must appear to give in to him about trifles, to put up with some of his whims and eccentricities, and above all to lay in a large stock of good temper and never be idle or dull, for the husband has a perfect horror of being bored, perhaps because he is such a bore himself, and sulkiness upsets him, especially if he is sulky. What she must do is to leave him what he has, and give him what he lacks, those charming possessions with which the new system of civilisation has endowed women. She may even add a little affection, and then, one fine day, she will be struck with astonishment (for men do not shine at finesse) to see this rough husband of hers at her feet, and, instead of considering her a nonentity, taking her for the image of God. From that moment she possesses the affection she has sought; and the task is not very difficult.