the rich hues of silk, under the fairy patterns of lace, the
partner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck
in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What
advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our
existence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to
have instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of an
upholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twin
beds] robs our love of all its illusions, strips it bare of the
majestic company of its delights and gives it in their stead nothing
but what is ugliest and most odious? For this is the whole history of
the two bed system.

LXIII.
That it shall appear either sublime or grotesque are the alternatives
to which we have reduced a desire.

If it be shared, our love is sublime; but should you sleep in twin
beds, your love will always be grotesque. The absurdities which this
half separation occasions may be comprised in either one of two
situations, which will give us occasion to reveal the causes of very
many marital misfortunes.

Midnight is approaching as a young woman is putting on her curl papers
and yawning as she did so. I do not know whether her melancholy
proceeded from a headache, seated in the right or left lobe of her
brain, or whether she was passing through one of those seasons of
weariness during which all things appear black to us; but to see her
negligently putting up her hair for the night, to see her languidly
raising her leg to take off her garter, it seemed to me that she would
prefer to be drowned rather than to be denied the relief of plunging
her draggled life into the slumber that might restore it. At this
instant, I know not to what degree from the North Pole she stands,
whether at Spitzberg or in Greenland. Cold and indifferent she goes to
bed thinking, as Mistress Walter Shandy might have thought, that the
morrow would be a day of sickness, that her husband is coming home
very late, that the beaten eggs which she has just eaten were not
sufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs to
her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you may
suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile
arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting,
has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots,
leaves his stockin