[Bill[_10_]]

is true? Well, make trial of it: let the swain, his
beloved one sinks rapturously on his breast, whispering unintelligibly:
"Thine forever," and hides her head on his bosom - let him but say to
her: "My sweet Kitty, your coiffure is not at all in fashion." -
Possibly, men don't give thought to this, but he who knows it, and has
the reputation of knowing it, he is the most dangerous man in the
kingdom. What blissful hours the lover passes with his sweetheart before
marriage I do not know; but of the blissful hours she spends in my shop
he hasn't the slightest inkling either. Without my special license and
sanction a marriage is null and void, anyway - or else an entirely
plebeian affair. Let it be the very moment when they are to meet before
the altar, let her step forward with the very best conscience in the
world that everything was bought in my shop and tried on there - and
now, if I were to rush up and exclaim: "But mercy! gracious lady, your
myrtle wreath is all awry" - why, the whole ceremony might be postponed,
for aught I know. But men do not suspect these things; one must be a
dressmaker to know.



So immense is the power of reflection needed to fathom a woman's thought
that only a man who dedicates himself wholly to the task will succeed,
and even then only if gifted to start with. Happy therefore the man who
does not associate with any woman, for she is not his, anyway, even if
she be no other man's; for she is possessed by that phantom born of the
unnatural interc