reasonable.
Nevertheless, almost all women will risk suffering in the future and
ages of anguish for the ecstasy of one half hour. If the human feeling
of self-preservation, if the fear of death does not check them, how
fruitless must be the laws which send them for two years to the
Madelonnettes? O sublime infamy! And when one comes to think that he
for whom these sacrifices are to be made is one of our brethren, a
gentleman to whom we would not trust our fortune, if we had one, a man
who buttons his coat just as all of us do, it is enough to make one
burst into a roar of laughter so loud, that starting from the
Luxembourg it would pass over the whole of Paris and startle an ass
browsing in the pasture at Montmartre.

It will perhaps appear extraordinary that in speaking of marriage we
have touched upon so many subjects; but marriage is not only the whole
of human life, it is the whole of two human lives. Now just as the
addition of a figure to the drawing of a lottery multiplies the
chances a hundredfold, so one single life united to another life
multiplies by a startling progression the risks of human life, which
are in any case so manifold.

MEDITATION XXVII.

OF THE LAST SYMPTOMS.

The author of this book has met in the world so many people possessed
by a fanatic passion for a knowledge of the mean time, for watches
with a second hand, and for exactness in the details of their
existence, that he has considered this Meditation too necessary for
the tranquillity of a great number of husbands, to be omitted. It
would have been cruel to leave men, who are possessed with the passion
for learning the hour of the day, without a compass whereby to
estimate the last variations in the matrimonial zodiac, and to
calculate the precise moment when the sign of the Minotaur appears on
the horizon. The knowledge of conjugal time would require a whole book
for its exposition, so fine and delicate are the observations required
by the task. The master admits that his extreme youth has not
permitted him as yet to note and verify more than a few symptoms; but
he feels a just pride, on his arrival at the end of his difficult
enterprise, from the consciousness that he is leaving to his
successors a new field of research; and that in a matter apparently so
trite, not only was there much to be said, but also very many points
are found remaining which may yet be brought into the cle