ndition of fixity;
and happiness alone is permanent, and consists in absolute tranquillity,
in the regularity with which eating and sleeping succeed each other, and
the sluggish organs perform their functions.

"This is horrible!" I cried; "I am young and full of life! Perish all
the books in the world rather than my illusions should perish!"

I left my laboratory and plunged into the whirl of Paris. As I saw the
fairest faces glide by before me, I felt that I was not old. The first
young woman who appeared before me, lovely in face and form and dressed
to perfection, with one glance of fire made all the sorcery whose spells
I had voluntarily submitted to vanish into thin air. Scarcely had I
walked three steps in the Tuileries gardens, the place which I had
chosen as my destination, before I saw the prototype of the matrimonial
situation which has last been described in this book. Had I desired to
characterize, to idealize, to personify marriage, as I conceived it
to be, it would have been impossible for the Creator himself to have
produced so complete a symbol of it as I then saw before me.

Imagine a woman of fifty, dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino,
holding in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of
an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man
in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically
turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its
sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of
his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it could be seen above the
turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This couple assumed the stately
tread of an ambassador; and the husband, who was at least seventy,
stopped complaisantly every time the terrier began to gambol. I hastened
to pass this living impersonation of my Meditation, and was surprised to
the last degree to recognize the Marquis de T-----, friend of the Comte
de Noce, who had owed me for a long time the end of the interrupted
story which I related in the _Theory of the Bed_. [See Meditation XVII.]

"I have the honor to present to you the Marquise de T-----," he said to
me.

I made a low bow to a lady whose face was pale and wrinkled; her
forehead was surmounted by a toupee, whose flattened ringlets, ranged
around it, deceived no one, but only emphasized, instead of concealing,
the wrinkles by which it was deeply furrowed. The lady was slightly