which so many
catastrophes are hatched, and from which issue so many young girls
incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the honest man
who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained opulence; young
girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of our laws, ignorant
of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their beauty yields
them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the genuine
utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to the buzzing of
flattery.

This Meditation should plant in the memory of all who read it, even
those who merely open the book for the sake of glancing at it or
distracting their mind, an intense repugnance for young women educated
in a boarding school, and if it succeeds in doing so, its services to
the public will have already proved considerable.

MEDITATION VII. OF THE HONEYMOON.

If our meditations prove that it is almost impossible for a married
woman to remain virtuous in France, our enumeration of the celibates and
the predestined, our remarks upon the education of girls, and our
rapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife
will explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, after
indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is
laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the laws,
in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of our
minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A single
point still claims our observation, and that is the first onslaught of
the evil we are confronting.

We reach this first question on approaching the high problems suggested
by the honeymoon; and although we find here the starting point of all
the phenomena of married life, it appears to us to be the brilliant
link round which are clustered all our observations, our axioms, our
problems, which have been scattered deliberately among the wise quips
which our loquacious meditations retail. The honeymoon would seem to be,
if we may use the expression, the apogee of that analysis to which
we must apply ourselves, before engaging in battle our two imaginary
champions.

The expression _honeymoon_ is an Anglicism, which has become an idiom in
all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial season which is
so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness and rapture;
the expression survives as illusions and errors survive