among a million of Parisian homes happiness is the exception. You will
find perhaps that there are many husbands disposed to abandon their
wives to you; but there is not a single son who will abandon his
mother. Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forth
will suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In a
word, in order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a
first consul at least."

Reason, although it appeared under a form most pleasing to the author,
was not listened to; for in the distance Folly tossed the coxcomb of
Panurge, and the author wished to seize it; but, when he tried to
catch it, he found that it was as heavy as the club of Hercules.
Moreover, the cure of Meudon adorned it in such fashion that a young
man who was less pleased with producing a good work than with wearing
fine gloves could not even touch it.

"Is our work completed?" asked the younger of the two feminine
assistants of the author.

"Alas! madame," I said, "will you ever requite me for all the hatreds
which that work will array against me?"

She waved her hand, and then the author replied to her doubt by a look
of indifference.

"What do you mean? Would you hesitate? You must publish it without
fear. In the present day we accept a book more because it is in
fashion than because it has anything in it."

Although the author does not here represent himself as anything more