and
monastic austerities, have failed to appease your
disquietudes, others who, like yourself, had been tormented
by the demon of melancholy, while living in the midst of
idle pleasures and luxurious indulgence, have found a remedy
in marriage, and felt themselves cured the moment they
became fathers.' A sentence this full of sound instruction.
It is not, then, because life is devoid of pleasure, that
men are the prey of melancholy. That demon pierced, it is
true, like a gnawing worm, through all the luxuries of the
Roman world; there was no resource against it, either in
beautiful slaves, or Ionian dances, or magnificent repasts,
or the combats of gladiators, or Milesian tales, or the
voluptuous pictures which garnish the walls of Pompeii and
Herculaneum. _Athumia_ poisoned all, and the demon possessed
the voluptuary in the midst even of the debauch. But if,
fatigued with these alternate pleasures and disgusts, he
adopted regular and simple manners, married and had
had children, then, as if by enchantment the demon quitted him.
No more despondency, no more bitterness. The spirit of the
possessed was revived, refreshed, renewed by the caresses of
his children. There is no demon, not even the demon of
melancholy, which dares to encounter the presence of a
little child. There is in the innocent fresh breathing of
these creatures, something mortal to evil spirits, and a
cradled infant in the house is sure talisman against all
demoniac possession.

What is it, in fact, which man requires, in order to escape
from this _athumia_, this exhaustion of the heart? Hope--a
future. He must have a faith in the future. This is the
nourishment of his soul; without it he cannot live, he
despairs and dies. Well, the very charm of children, that
which has ranked them, from of old, amongst the blessings of
God, is this, that they form the future of every family--
that they sustain in every house that sentiment by which the
soul of man lives. Children represent the future, and in a
form the most joyous and attractive. It is this which
constitutes their irresistible fascination--it is this which
sheds around their little heads that light of happiness and
joy which reflects itself on the countenances of the
parents--which warms the heart--wh