y heart."

The number of those rare women who, like the Virgins of the Parable,
have kept their lamps lighted, will always appear very small in the eyes
of the defenders of virtue and fine feeling; but we must needs exclude
it from the total sum of honest women, and this subtraction, consoling
as it is, will increase the danger which threatens husbands, will
intensify the scandal of their married life, and involve, more or less,
the reputation of all other lawful spouses.

What husband will be able to sleep peacefully beside his young and
beautiful wife while he knows that three celibates, at least, are on
the watch; that if they have not already encroached upon his little
property, they regard the bride as their destined prey, for sooner or
later she will fall into their hands, either by stratagem, compulsive
conquest or free choice? And it is impossible that they should fail some
day or other to obtain victory!

What a startling conclusion!

On this point the purist in morality, the _collets montes_ will
accuse us perhaps of presenting here conclusions which are excessively
despairing; they will be desirous of putting up a defence, either for
the virtuous women or the celibates; but we have in reserve for them a
final remark.

Increase the number of honest women and diminish the number of
celibates, as much as you choose, you will always find that the result
will be a larger number of gallant adventurers than of honest women; you
will always find a vast multitude driven through social custom to commit
three sorts of crime.

If they remain chaste, their health is injured, while they are the
slaves of the most painful torture; they disappoint the sublime ends of
nature, and finally die of consumption, drinking milk on the mountains
of Switzerland!

If they yield to legitimate temptations, they either compromise the
honest women, and on this point we re-enter on the subject of this book,
or else they debase themselves by a horrible intercourse with the five
hundred thousand women of whom we spoke in the third category of the
first Meditation, and in this case, have still considerable chance of
visiting Switzerland, drinking milk and dying there!

Have you never been struck, as we have been, by a certain error of
organization in our social order, the evidence of which gives a moral
certainty to our last calculations?

The average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the average age
at which his passio