accustomed to the chill of the tomb. Man, according to philosophers,
dies in detail; at the same time he may be said even to cheat death; for
that which his withered hand has laid hold upon, can it be called life?

Oh, to die young and throbbing with life! 'Tis a destiny enviable
indeed! For is not this, as a delightful poet has said, "to take away
with one all one's illusions, to be buried like an Eastern king, with
all one's jewels and treasures, with all that makes the fortune of
humanity!"

How many thank-offerings ought we to make to the kind and beneficent
spirit that breathes in all things here below! Indeed, the care which
nature takes to strip us piece by piece of our raiment, to unclothe the
soul by enfeebling gradually our hearing, sight, and sense of touch, in
making slower the circulation of our blood, and congealing our humors so
as to make us as insensible to the approach of death as we were to the
beginnings of life, this maternal care which she lavishes on our frail
tabernacle of clay, she also exhibits in regard to the emotions of man,
and to the double existence which is created by conjugal love. She first
sends us Confidence, which with extended hand and open heart says to us:
"Behold, I am thine forever!" Lukewarmness follows, walking with languid
tread, turning aside her blonde face with a yawn, like a young widow
obliged to listen to the minister of state who is ready to sign for her
a pension warrant. Then Indifference comes; she stretches herself on the
divan, taking no care to draw down the skirts of her robe which Desire
but now lifted so chastely and so eagerly. She casts a glance upon the
nuptial bed, with modesty and without shamelessness; and, if she longs
for anything, it is for the green fruit that calls up again to life the
dulled papillae with which her blase palate is bestrewn. Finally the
philosophical Experience of Life presents herself, with careworn and
disdainful brow, pointing with her finger to the results, and not
the causes of life's incidents; to the tranquil victory, not to the
tempestuous combat. She reckons up the arrearages, with farmers, and
calculates the dowry of a child. She materializes everything. By a touch
of her wand, life becomes solid and springless; of yore, all was fluid,
now it is crystallized into rock. Delight no longer exists for our
hearts, it has received its sentence, 'twas but mere sensation, a
passing paroxysm. What the soul desires to-day is a co