end the exact point in the scale of civilization to which each of
our remarks is severally applicable.

Would it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that we
should in the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous women who
are to be found among these adorable creatures? Is not this a question
of marito-national importance?

MEDITATION IV. OF THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN.

The question, perhaps, is not so much how many virtuous women there are,
as what possibility there is of an honest woman remaining virtuous.

In order to throw light upon a point so important, let us cast a rapid
glance over the male population.

From among our fifteen millions of men we must cut off, in the first
place, the nine millions of bimana of thirty-two vertebrae and exclude
from our physiological analysis all but six millions of people. The
Marceaus, the Massenas, the Rousseaus, the Diderots and the Rollins
often sprout forth suddenly from the social swamp, when it is in a
condition of fermentation; but, here we plead guilty of deliberate
inaccuracy. These errors in calculation are likely, however, to give all
their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate what we are forced to
deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.

From the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude three millions
of old men and children.

It will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a remainder
of four millions in the case of women.

This difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accounted
for.

The average age at which women are married is twenty years and at forty
they cease to belong to the world of love.

Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his
penknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal
will tell you.

On the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at any
other age. It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys an experience
dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he will ever require.
The passions by which his course is directed being the last under whose
scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined, like the man
carried away by a current who snatches at a green and pliant branch of
willow, the young nursling of the year.

XIV.
Physically a man is a man much longer than a woman is a woman.

With regard to marriage, the difference in duration of the life of love
wit