ly stopped, and fixed his eyes upon the heavens.

"The poor fellow has lost his wits!" I thought to myself.

"Sir," I said to him, "it would be pushing my devotion to eclectic
philosophy too far to insert your ideas in my book; they would destroy
it. Everything in it is based on love, platonic and sensual. God forbid
that I should end my book by such social blasphemies! I would rather
try to return by some pantagruelian subtlety to my herd of celibates and
honest women, with many an attempt to discover some social utility in
their passions and follies. Oh! if conjugal peace leads us to arguments
so disillusionizing and so gloomy as these, I know a great many husbands
who would prefer war to peace."

"At any rate, young man," the old marquis cried, "I shall never have to
reproach myself with refusing to give true directions to a traveler who
had lost his way."

"Adieu, thou old carcase!" I said to myself; "adieu, thou walking
marriage! Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work! Adieu, thou
machine! Although I have given thee from time to time some glimpses of
people dear to me, old family portraits,--back with you to the picture
dealer's shop, to Madame de T-----, and all the rest of them; take your
place round the bier with undertaker's mutes, for all I care!"

MEDITATION XXX. CONCLUSION.

A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having
commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in
order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was
accompanied by a crowd which took up so much room on the road that,
prophet as he was, his _amour-propre_ was vastly tickled.

But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that at
the first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new pair
of slippers to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how he had
some specie to negotiate, and off they went.

A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and forgot
the discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the promised land
was the spot where they stood, and the divine word was heard when they
talked to one another.

The fat people, loaded with punches a la Sancho, had been wiping their
foreheads with their handkerchiefs, for the last quarter of an hour, and
began to grow thirsty, and therefore halted beside a clear spring.

Certain retired soldiers complained of the corns which tortured them,
and spoke of Austerlitz,