From the day when they pay the household expenses, women consider the parts reversed, and begin by assuming the most perfect liberty. Henceforth no more constraint, no more subterfuges, no more Judas kisses. They are now, mark you, equal[109] or superior to their husband in those material concerns which are the essence of domesticity; and as moreover they fancy that morally they excel the men, that they are at once more affectionate, more chaste and more steadfast; as they are reminded on all sides of the example of paragons like Cleopatra, they make up their minds to be Cleopatras too. They consent, out of goodness of soul, to try their prentice hand on their husbands. They make him happy, sometimes even in his own despite; they are going to transform him “from a battered ingot or a base coin into a new crown piece.” In his heart of hearts the husband may fret and fume, call to mind the old-time ways, wonder at his wife’s continual absences from home and her choice of friends, and at times even try to interfere; but he is quickly given to understand that my lady is not going to be held in a leash or shut up in a band-box, that seraglios exist no longer. She will devote herself to his happiness, provided he shows himself docile and recognises his incapacity and helplessness. Ay, and let him reflect: how could he get on without so virtuous a wife? He would go into a consumption. She is there, regulating his expenses, his pleasures, the frets and sallies of his temperament; she watches like a sister of mercy over his physical and moral well-being, and it is by this means that the household represents henceforth a unity, sound, robust, with two bodies, four arms, and two souls. Obviously (to repeat it once more), we have no intention of enunciating an absolute rule. In speaking of households, we do not mean that all the households in France were cast in the same mould, and that everywhere at the same moment they were all acting precisely in the same way. No two were alike.