tes, or arithmetical estimates for trifles. The illusions of life
are the best things in life; that which is most respectable in life is
our futile credulity. Do there not exist many people whose principles
are merely prejudices, and who not having the force of character to form
their own ideas of happiness and virtue accept what is ready made for
them by the hand of legislators? Nor do we address those Manfreds who
having taken off too many garments wish to raise all the curtains, that
is, in moments when they are tortured by a sort of moral spleen. By
them, however, the question is boldly stated and we know the extent of
the evil.

It remains that we should examine the chances and changes which each man
is likely to meet in marriage, and which may weaken him in that struggle
from which our champion should issue victorious.

MEDITATION V. OF THE PREDESTINED.

Predestined means destined in advance for happiness or unhappiness.
Theology has seized upon this word and employs it in relation to the
happy; we give to the term a meaning which is unfortunate to our elect
of which one can say in opposition to the Gospel, "Many are called, many
are chosen."

Experience has demonstrated that there are certain classes of men more
subject than others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given to
exaggeration and Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attacks
people with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as
gout attacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysis
administrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes of husbands
and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions. Thus they
forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy. If any
reader should be enrolled in one of these aristocratic classes he will,
we hope, have sufficient presence of mind, he or at least his wife,
instantly to call to mind the favorite axiom of Lhomond's Latin Grammar:
"No rule without exception." A friend of the house may even recite the
verse--

"Present company always excepted."

And then every one will have the right to believe, _in petto_, that
he forms the exception. But our duty, the interest which we take in
husbands and the keen desire which we have to preserve young and pretty
women from the caprices and catastrophes which a lover brings in
his train, force us to give notice to husbands that they ought to be
especially on their guard.

In this recapitulation firs