xamination of these three methods of
living together, which must necessarily have different influences upon
the happiness of husbands and wives, we must take a rapid survey of
the practical object served by the bed and the part it plays in the
political economy of human existence.

The most incontrovertible principle which can be laid down in this
matter is, _that the bed was made to sleep upon_.

It would be easy to prove that the practice of sleeping together was
established between married people but recently, in comparison with
the antiquity of marriage.

By what reasonings has man arrived at that point in which he brought
in vogue a practice so fatal to happiness, to health, even to
_amour-propre_? Here we have a subject which it would be curious to
investigate.

If you knew one of your rivals who had discovered a method of placing
you in a position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those who
were dearest to you--for instance, while you had your mouth crooked
like that of a theatrical mask, or while your eloquent lips, like the
copper faucet of a scanty fountain, dripped pure water--you would
probably stab him. This rival is sleep. Is there a man in the world
who knows how he appears to others, and what he does when he is
asleep?

In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power
which seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest
shapes; some have a sleep which is intellectual, while the sleep of
others is mere stupor.

There are some people who slumber with their mouths open in the
silliest fashion.

There are others who snore loud enough to make the timbers shake.

Most people look like the impish devils that Michael Angelo
sculptured, putting out their tongues in silent mockery of the
passers-by.

The only person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is
Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment
when Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover,
I have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king
of kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with
dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of
Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse
snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I
have added a petition to the special litany which I address to
Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would