hich
absorbs half of the life of a woman without permitting her to feel that
she is alive. For my part, I have formed the project of dexterously
leading my wife along, up to her fortieth year, without letting her
think of adultery, just as poor Musson used to amuse himself in leading
some simple fellow from the Rue Saint-Denis to Pierrefitte without
letting him think that he had left the shadows of St. Lew's tower."

"How is it," I said, interrupting him, "that you have hit upon those
admirable methods of deception which I was intending to describe in
a Meditation entitled _The Act of Putting Death into Life!_ Alas! I
thought I was the first man to discover that science. The epigrammatic
title was suggested to me by an account which a young doctor gave me of
an excellent composition of Crabbe, as yet unpublished. In this work,
the English poet has introduced a fantastic being called _Life in
Death_. This personage crosses the oceans of the world in pursuit of a
living skeleton called _Death in Life_--I recollect at the time very
few people, among the guests of a certain elegant translator of English
poetry, understood the mystic meaning of a fable as true as it was
fanciful. Myself alone, perhaps, as I sat buried in silence, thought of
the whole generations which as they were hurried along by life, passed
on their way without living. Before my eyes rose faces of women by the
million, by the myriad, all dead, all disappointed and shedding tears
of despair, as they looked back upon the lost moments of their ignorant
youth. In the distance I saw a playful Meditation rise to birth, I heard
the satanic laughter which ran through it, and now you doubtless are
about to kill it.--But come, tell me in confidence what means you have
discovered by which to assist a woman to squander the swift moments
during which her beauty is at its full flower and her desires at their
full strength.--Perhaps you have some stratagems, some clever devices,
to describe to me--"

The viscount began to laugh at this literary disappointment of mine, and
he said to me, with a self-satisfied air:

"My wife, like all the young people of our happy century, has been
accustomed, for three or four consecutive years, to press her fingers on
the keys of a piano, a long-suffering instrument. She has hammered out
Beethoven, warbled the airs of Rossini and run through the exercises of
Crammer. I had already taken pains to convince her of the excellence of
musi