ay we reach a moment when we long for sleep, and, although it be
the very likeness of non-existence, can anyone deny that sleep is a
pleasure? No, at least it seems to me that it cannot be denied with
consistency, for, the moment it comes to us, we give it the preference
over all other pleasures, and we are grateful to it only after it has
left us.

"Those who say that no one can be happy throughout life speak likewise
frivolously. Philosophy teaches the secret of securing that happiness,
provided one is free from bodily sufferings. A felicity which would thus
last throughout life could be compared to a nosegay formed of a thousand
flowers so beautifully, so skillfully blended together, that it would
look one single flower. Why should it be impossible for us to spend here
the whole of our life as we have spent the last month, always in good
health, always loving one another, without ever feeling any other want or
any weariness? Then, to crown that happiness, which would certainly be
immense, all that would be wanted would be to die together, in an
advanced age, speaking to the last moment of our pleasant recollections.
Surely that felicity would have been lasting. Death would not interrupt
it, for death would end it. We could not, even then, suppose ourselves
unhappy unless we dreaded unhappiness after death, and such an idea
strikes me as absurd, for it is a contradiction of the idea of an
almighty and fatherly tenderness."

It was thus that my beloved Henriette would often make me spend
delightful hours, talking philosophic sentiment. Her logic was better
than that of Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations, but she admitted that
such lasting felicity could exist only between two beings who lived
together, and loved each other with constant affection, healthy in mind
and in body, enlightened, sufficiently rich, similar in tastes, in
disposition, and in temperament. Happy are those lovers who, when their
senses require rest, can fall back upon the intellectual enjoyments
afforded by the mind! Sweet sleep then comes, and lasts until the body
has recovered its general harmony. On awaking, the senses are again
active and always ready to resume their action.

The conditions of existence are exactly the same for man as for the
universe, I might almost say that between them there is perfect identity,
for if we take the universe away, mankind no longer exists, and if we
take mankind away, there is no longer an universe; who cou