To what extent this wary walking really availed is a question upon which opinions have always been pretty evenly divided. Marriage was the time-honoured target at which everyone had a prescriptive right to discharge the shafts of his wit; for all that, marrying and giving in marriage proceeded apace, and the institution went on perpetuating itself imperturbably. It may well be believed that, at an epoch when conversation, free discussion, and a mania for philosophising were in vogue, no one lost an opportunity of airing his views on the surprises and the advantages of wedlock; and indeed it is at this time that we see the first indication that the shafts of irony were taking effect, and that the target, after all, was showing signs of wear. Here, too, there emerges more clearly into view a truth which the reader will already have seen faintly suggesting itself in the careful and impartial sketch we have endeavoured to draw of the beginning of life for women: the truth, namely, that the ascendency of man developed in him strange principles of egotism. It might be supposed that married women, handed over, as we have shown, like so many sheep, would pitifully cry out against their sacrifice, while the husbands would be abundantly satisfied with the results of a “deal” (if the word may be allowed) effected at so little cost to themselves. But such was not the case: humanity is so constituted that, sunk in abject slavery, with no glimpse of anything beyond, it will hug its chains; while the more freedom it enjoys, the keener grows its appetite for freedom. So long as we are sure of a to-morrow, and believe that somehow or other our lot may yet improve, the present does not count: but, for us to love the present, the future must stretch out before us into the gloom of the unknown, and this, no doubt, is why Providence imposes on us the great enigma of death. So it was with marriage. While the women were content, the husbands railed at it. Monogamy irritated them. Despite all possible precautions monogamy almost inevitably endows the wife with a certain influence. Polygamy alone, in virtue of the classic principle _divide et impera_, can assure to a husband an undisputed authority, and that is why, at bottom, to many men who dared not avow it, polygamy appeared the most natural of luxuries. There are savants, too, who will prove to you that in many countries it was easy to slacken the marriage bond, turn it, even, to profitable account; that it was regularly let on lease for a month or a year. The Babylonians would rather have lent a wife than an ass. With women, on the other hand, we remark a resignation springing largely from the code of perfect realism by which their marriage was regulated.