nly person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is
Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment
when Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover, I
have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king of
kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with dread
of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence.
In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her
sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I have added a petition
to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint,
to the effect that he would save me from indulging in this sort of
eloquence.

When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely
surmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his left
temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and it
is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in the
strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam of
life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead--and if you
artists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on the stage-coach
and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just examine the
physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you a hundred times
as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic physiognomies, at
least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are open, and you have
some expression in your countenance. Do you know how you looked an hour
before you awoke, or during the first hour of your sleep, when you were
neither a man nor an animal, but merely a thing, subject to the dominion
of those dreams which issue from the gate of horn? But this is a secret
between your wife and God.

Is it for the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that the
Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass?
We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the
elucidation of this point.

Assuredly, the first man who took it into his head, at the inspiration
of the devil, not to leave his wife, even while she was asleep, should
know how to sleep in the very best style; but do not forget to reckon
among the sciences necessary to a man on setting up an establishment,
the art of sleeping with elegance. Moreover, we will place here as
a corollary to Axiom XXV of our Marriage Catechism the two following
aphoris