he expense of expeditions into the
country; (2) the pharmaceutical expenses, occasioned by the colds caught
from walking in the damp pathways of parks, and in leaving the theatre,
which expenses are veritable presents; (3) the carrying of letters,
and law expenses; (4) journeys, and expenses whose items are forgotten,
without counting the follies committed by the spenders; inasmuch as,
according to the investigations of the committee, it had been proved
that most of a man's extravagant expenditure profited the opera girls,
rather than the married women. The conclusion arrived at from this
pecuniary calculation was that, in one way or another, a passion costs
nearly fifteen hundred francs a year, which were required to meet
the expense borne more unequally by lovers, but which would not have
occurred, but for their attachment. There was also a sort of unanimity
in the opinion of the council that this was the lowest annual figure
which would cover the cost of a passion. Now, my dear sir, since we have
proved, by the statistics of our conjugal calculations [See Meditations
I, II, and III.] and proved irrefragably, that there exists a floating
total of at least fifteen hundred thousand unlawful passions, it
follows:

That the criminal conversations of a third among the French population
contribute a sum of nearly three thousand millions to that vast
circulation of money, the true blood of society, of which the budget is
the heart;

That the honest woman not only gives life to the children of the
peerage, but also to its financial funds;

That manufacturers owe their prosperity to this _systolic_ movement;

That the honest woman is a being essentially _budgetative_, and active
as a consumer;

That the least decline in public love would involve incalculable
miseries to the treasury, and to men of invested fortunes;

That a husband has at least a third of his fortune invested in the
inconstancy of his wife, etc.

I am well aware that you are going to open your mouth and talk to me
about manners, politics, good and evil. But, my dear victim of the
Minotaur, is not happiness the object which all societies should set
before them? Is it not this axiom that makes these wretched kings give
themselves so much trouble about their people? Well, the honest woman
has not, like them, thrones, gendarmes and tribunals; she has only a bed
to offer; but if our four hundred thousand women can, by this ingenious
machine, make a million