impose virtue on mankind! Well, I consider that there
are more parallels than people think between my honest woman and the
budget, and I will undertake to prove this by a short essay on
statistics, if you will permit me to finish my book on the same lines
as those on which I have begun it. Will you grant that a lover must
put on more clean shirts than are worn by either a husband, or a
celibate unattached? This to me seems beyond doubt. The difference
between a husband and a lover is seen even in the appearance of their
toilette. The one is careless, he is unshaved, and the other never
appears excepting in full dress. Sterne has pleasantly remarked that
the account book of the laundress was the most authentic record he
knew, as to the life of Tristram Shandy; and that it was easy to guess
from the number of shirts he wore what passages of his book had cost
him most. Well, with regard to lovers the account book of their
laundresses is the most faithful historic record as well as the most
impartial account of their various amours. And really a prodigious
quantity of tippets, cravats, dresses, which are absolutely necessary
to coquetry, is consumed in the course of an amour. A wonderful
prestige is gained by white stockings, the lustre of a collar, or a
shirt-waist, the artistically arranged folds of a man's shirt, or the
taste of his necktie or his collar. This will explain the passages in
which I said of the honest woman [Meditation II], "She spends her life
in having her dresses starched." I have sought information on this
point from a lady in order to learn accurately at what sum was to be
estimated the tax thus imposed by love, and after fixing it at one
hundred francs per annum for a woman, I recollect what she said with
great good humor: "It depends on the character of the man, for some
are so much more particular than others." Nevertheless, after a very
profound discussion, in which I settled upon the sum for the
celibates, and she for her sex, it was agreed that, one thing with
another, since the two lovers belong to the social sphere which this
work concerns, they ought to spend between them, in the matter
referred to, one hundred and fifty francs more than in time of peace.

By a like treaty, friendly in character and long discussed, we
arranged that there should be a collective difference of four hundred
francs between the expenditure for all parts of the dress on a war
footing, and for that on a peace footing