re courting the most inconstant
of women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the following
reflection:

"More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her
life, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to
love, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails
crookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy with a
button."

One of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from his wife
the real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fancies and
caprices as generous celibates are wont to do.

Then the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish which
superhuman courage is required, is to exercise the most complete control
over the ass of which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be as submissive
as a serf of the thirteenth century was to his lord; to obey and be
silent, advance and stop, at the slightest word.

Even when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the lists
with scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runs the
risk of becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.

"And why!" will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whose
horizon is limited to the tip of their nose, "why is it necessary to
take so much pains in order to love, and why is it necessary to go
to school beforehand, in order to be happy in your own home? Does the
government intend to institute a professional chair of love, just as it
has instituted a chair of law?"

This is our answer:

These multiplied rules, so difficult to deduce, these minute
observations, these ideas which vary so as to suit different
temperaments, are innate, so to speak, in the heart of those who are
born for love; just as his feeling of taste and his indescribable
felicity in combining ideas are natural to the soul of the poet, the
painter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue in
putting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are
naturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection
which exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter of
fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war has
its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and philosophy its Descartes.

This last observation contains the germ of a true answer to the question
which men from time immemorial have been asking: Why are happy marriages
so very rare?

This phenomenon of the mor