us on the subject of love, arms us
celibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seeking
whom we may devour.

Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search
his memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love
of one woman only!

How, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all the
peoples, the problem which results from the fact that three millions
of burning hearts can find no more than four hundred thousand women on
which they can feed? Should we apportion four celibates for each woman
and remember that the honest women would have already established,
instinctively and unconsciously, a sort of understanding between
themselves and the celibates, like that which the presidents of royal
courts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in each
chamber enter successively after a certain number of years?

That would be a mournful way of solving the difficulty!

Should we make the conjecture that certain honest women act in
dividing up the celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely,
in that case, half at least of our altars would become whited
sepulchres!

Ought one to suggest for the honor of French ladies that in the time
of peace all other countries should import into France a certain
number of their honest women, and that these countries should mainly
consist of England, Germany and Russia? But the European nations would
in that case attempt to balance matters by demanding that France
should export a certain number of her pretty women.

Morality and religion suffer so much from such calculations as this,
that an honest man, in an attempt to prove the innocence of married
women, finds some reason to believe that dowagers and young people are
half of them involved in this general corruption, and are liars even
more truly than are the celibates.

But to what conclusion does our calculation lead us? Think of our
husbands, who to the disgrace of morals behave almost all of them like
celibates and glory _in petto_ over their secret adventures.

Why, then we believe that every married man, who is at all attached to
his wife from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elder
Corneille, seek a rope and a nail; _foenum habet in cornu_.

It is, however, in the bosom of these four hundred thousand honest
women that we must, lantern in hand, seek for the number of the
virtuous women in France! As a matter of fact, we have by our