fter having
smoked all the tobacco in it--when you see that nothing is left but some
ashes?"

"It is true."

"Well, there are two pleasures in which your senses have certainly
nothing to do, but I want you to guess the third, and the most
essential."

"The most essential? It is the perfume."

"No; that is a pleasure of the organ of smelling--a sensual pleasure."

"Then I do not know."

"Listen. The principal pleasure derived from tobacco smoking is the sight
of a smoke itself. You must never see it go out of the bowl of your
pipe,--but only from the corner o your mouth, at regular intervals which
must not be too frequent. It is so truly the greatest pleasure connected
with the pipe, that you cannot find anywhere a blind man who smokes. Try
yourself the experiment of smoking a pipe in your room, at night and
without a light; you will soon lay the pipe down."

"It is all perfectly true; yet you must forgive me if I give the
preference to several pleasures, in which my senses are interested, over
those which afford enjoyment only to my soul."

"Forty years ago I was of the same opinion, and in forty years, if you
succeed in acquiring wisdom, you will think like me. Pleasures which give
activity to our senses, my dear son, disturb the repose of our soul--a
proof that they do not deserve the name of real enjoyments."

"But if I feel them to be real enjoyments, it is enough to prove that
they are truly so."

"Granted; but if you would take the trouble of analyzing them after you
have tasted them, you would not find them unalloyed."

"It may be so, but why should I take a trouble which would only lessen my
enjoyment."

"A time will come when you will feel pleasure in that very trouble."

"It strikes me, dear father, that you prefer mature age to youth."

"You may boldly say old age."

"You surprise me. Must I believe that your early life has been unhappy?"

"Far from it. It was always fortunate in good health, and the master of
my own passions; but all I saw in my equals was for me a good school in
which I have acquired the knowledge of man, and learned the real road to
happiness. The happiest of men is not the most voluptuous, but the one
who knows how to choose the highest standards of voluptuousness, which
can be found, I say again, not in the pleasures which excite our senses,
but in those which give greater repose to the soul."

"That is the voluptuousness which you consider unalloyed."

"Yes, and s