ures, which have seen so many
things. What have they seen during the three centuries since they were
first put up?

"Here is a young woman lying on this bed. From time to time she sighs,
and then she groans and cries out; her mother is with her, and presently
a little creature that makes a noise like a cat mewing, and which is all
shriveled and wrinkled, comes from her. It is a male child to which she
has given birth, and the young mother feels happy in spite of her pain;
she is nearly suffocated with joy at that first cry, and stretches out
her arms, and those around her shed tears of pleasure; for that little
morsel of humanity which has come from her means the continuation of the
family, the perpetuation of the blood, of the heart, and of the soul of
the old people, who are looking on, trembling with excitement.

"And then, here are two lovers, who for the first time are flesh to
flesh together in that tabernacle of life. They tremble; but transported
with delight, they have the delicious sensation of being close together,
and by degrees their lips meet. That divine kiss makes them one, that
kiss, which is the gate of a terrestrial heaven, that kiss which speaks
of human delights, which continually promises them, announces them, and
precedes them. And their bed is agitated like the tempestuous sea, and
it bends and murmurs, and itself seems to become animated and joyous,
for the maddening mystery of love is being accomplished on it. What is
there sweeter, what more perfect in this world than those embraces,
which make one single being out of two, and which give to both of them
at the same moment the same thought, the same expectation, and the same
maddening pleasure, which descends upon them like a celestial and
devouring fire?

"Do you remember those lines from some old poet, which you read to me
last year? I do not remember who wrote them, but it may have been
Rousard:

"When you and I in bed shall lie,
Lascivious we shall be,
Enlaced, playing a thousand tricks,
Of lovers, gamesomely.

"I should like to have that verse embroidered on the top of my bed,
where Pyramus and Thisbe are continually looking at me out of their
tapestry eyes.

"And think of death, my friend; of all those who have breathed out their
last sigh to God in this bed. For it is also the tomb of hopes ended,
the door which closes everything, after having been the one which lets
in the world. What cries, what anguish, what s