he says to him, "I cuckolded you, last night!"

If some husbands attain to conjugal peace by quiet methods, and carry
so gracefully the imaginary ensigns of matrimonial pre-eminence, their
philosophy is doubtless based on the _comfortabilisme_ of accepting
certain compensations, a _comfortabilisme_ which indifferent men cannot
imagine. As years roll by the married couple reach the last stage in
that artificial existence to which their union has condemned them.

MEDITATION XXIX. OF CONJUGAL PEACE.

My imagination has followed marriage through all the phases of its
fantastic life in so fraternal a spirit, that I seem to have grown old
with the house I made my home so early in life at the commencement of
this work.

After experiencing in thought the ardor of man's first passion; and
outlining, in however imperfect a way, the principal incidents of
married life; after struggling against so many wives that did not belong
to me, exhausting myself in conflict with so many personages called up
from nothingness, and joining so many battles, I feel an intellectual
lassitude, which makes me see everything in life hang, as it were, in
mournful crape. I seem to have a catarrh, to look at everything through
green spectacles, I feel as if my hands trembled, as if I must needs
employ the second half of my existence and of my book in apologizing for
the follies of the first half.

I see myself surrounded by tall children of whom I am not the father,
and seated beside a wife I never married. I think I can feel wrinkles
furrowing my brow. The fire before which I am placed crackles, as if in
derision, the room is ancient in its furniture; I shudder with sudden
fright as I lay my hand upon my heart, and ask myself: "Is that, too,
withered?"

I am like an old attorney, unswayed by any sentiment whatever. I never
accept any statement unless it be confirmed, according to the poetic
maxim of Lord Byron, by the testimony of at least two false witnesses.
No face can delude me. I am melancholy and overcast with gloom. I know
the world and it has no more illusions for me. My closest friends have
proved traitors. My wife and myself exchange glances of profound meaning
and the slightest word either of us utters is a dagger which pierces
the heart of the other through and through. I stagnate in a dreary
calm. This then is the tranquillity of old age! The old man possesses
in himself the cemetery which shall soon possess him. He is growing