about the year 1791, I should know nothing of
all this. Yes!--man has a vocation for the infinite. There dwells
within him an instinct that calls him to God. God is all, gives all,
brings oblivion on all, and thought is the thread which he has given
us as a clue to communication with himself!"

He suddenly stopped, and fixed his eyes upon the heavens.

"The poor fellow has lost his wits!" I thought to myself.

"Sir," I said to him, "it would be pushing my devotion to eclectic
philosophy too far to insert your ideas in my book; they would destroy
it. Everything in it is based on love, platonic and sensual. God
forbid that I should end my book by such social blasphemies! I would
rather try to return by some pantagruelian subtlety to my herd of
celibates and honest women, with many an attempt to discover some
social utility in their passions and follies. Oh! if conjugal peace
leads us to arguments so disillusionizing and so gloomy as these, I
know a great many husbands who would prefer war to peace."

"At any rate, young man," the old marquis cried, "I shall never have
to reproach myself with refusing to give true directions to a traveler
who had lost his way."

"Adieu, thou old carcase!" I said to myself; "adieu, thou walking
marriage! Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work! Adieu, thou
machine! Although I have given thee from time to time some glimpses of
people dear to me, old family portraits,--back with you to the picture
dealer's shop, to Madame de T-----, and all the rest of them; take
your place round the bier with undertaker's mutes, for all I care!"

MEDITATION XXX.

CONCLUSION.

A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having
commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in
order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was
accompanied by a crowd which took up so much room on the road that,
prophet as he was, his _amour-propre_ was vastly tickled.

But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that
at the first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new
pair of slippers to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how
he had some specie to negotiate, and off they went.

A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and
forgot the discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the
promised land was the spot where they stood, and the di