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 with a man and with a woman is fifteen years. This period is
equal to three-fourths of the time during which the infidelities of
the woman can bring unhappiness to her husband. Nevertheless, the
remainder in our subtraction from the sum of men only differs by a
sixth or so from that which results in our subtraction from the sum of
women.

Great is the modest caution of our estimates. As to our arguments,
they are founded on evidence so widely known, that we have only
expounded them for the sake of being exact and in order to anticipate
all criticism.

It has, therefore, been proved to the mind of every philosopher,
however little disposed he may be to forming numerical estimates, that
there exists in France a floating mass of three million men between
seventeen and fifty-two, all perfectly alive, well provided with
teeth, quite resolved on biting, in fact, biting and asking nothing
better than the opportunity of walking strong and upright along the
way to Paradise.

The above observations entitle us to separate from this mass of men a
million husbands. Suppose for an instant that these, being satisfied
and always happy, like our model hus