The needful thing was an examination of the origin of the evil.

It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you see the nail, you see that which is irregular in your life, and you avoid it.

Then the pain stops, without any necessity of stifling it.

Our pain arose from the irregularity of our life, and also my jealousy, my irritability, and the necessity of keeping myself in a state of perpetual semi-intoxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above all, the use of wine and tobacco.

It was because of this irregularity that my wife so passionately pursued her occupations.