celibates happy, do not they attain in a
mysterious manner, and without making any fuss, the end aimed at by a
government, namely, the end of giving the largest possible amount of
happiness to the mass of mankind?

"Yes, but the annoyances, the children, the troubles--"

Ah, you must permit me to proffer the consolatory thought with which one
of our wittiest caricaturists closes his satiric observations: "Man is
not perfect!" It is sufficient, therefore, that our institutions have
no more disadvantages than advantages in order to be reckoned excellent;
for the human race is not placed, socially speaking, between the good
and the bad, but between the bad and the worse. Now if the work, which
we are at present on the point of concluding, has had for its object the
diminution of the worse, as it is found in matrimonial institutions,
in laying bare the errors and absurdities due to our manners and our
prejudices, we shall certainly have won one of the fairest titles that
can be put forth by a man to a place among the benefactors of humanity.
Has not the author made it his aim, by advising husbands, to make
women more self-restrained and consequently to impart more violence
to passions, more money to the treasury, more life to commerce and
agriculture? Thanks to this last Meditation he can flatter himself that
he has strictly kept the vow of eclecticism, which he made in projecting
the work, and he hopes he has marshaled all details of the case, and yet
like an attorney-general refrained from expressing his personal opinion.
And really what do you want with an axiom in the present matter? Do you
wish that this book should be a mere development of the last opinion
held by Tronchet, who in his closing days thought that the law of
marriage had been drawn up less in the interest of husbands than of
children? I also wish it very much. Would you rather desire that this
book should serve as proof to the peroration of the Capuchin, who
preached before Anne of Austria, and when he saw the queen and her
ladies overwhelmed by his triumphant arguments against their frailty,
said as he came down from the pulpit of truth, "Now you are all
honorable women, and it is we who unfortunately are sons of Samaritan
women." I have no objection to that either. You may draw what conclusion
you please; for I think it is very difficult to put forth two contrary
opinions, without both of them containing some grains of truth. But the
book has not been