But, O husbands with a past! do you really believe that your own angelic
quietude and the studied austerity of your principles are taken for
anything else than what they really mean--exhaustion?

You wish to rest; well and good; but it is wrong in you to wish everybody
else about you to rest too; to ask for withered trees and faded grass in
May, the lamps turned down and the lamp-shades doubled; to require one to
put water in the soup and to refuse one's self a glass of claret; to look
for virtuous wives to be highly respectable and somewhat wearisome
beings; dressing neatly, but having had neither poetry, youth, gayety,
nor vague desires; ignorant of everything, undesirous of learning
anything; helpless, thanks to the weighty virtues with which you have
crammed them; above all, to ask of these poor creatures to bless your
wisdom, caress your bald forehead, and blush with shame at the echo of a
kiss.

The deuce! but that is a pretty state of things for marriage to come to.

Delightful institution! How far are your sons, who are now five-and-
twenty years of age, in the right in being afraid of it! Have they not a
right to say to you, twirling their moustaches:

"But, my dear father, wait a bit; I am not quite ripe for it!"

"Yes; but it is a splendid match, and the young lady is charming."

"No doubt, but I feel that I should not make her happy. I am not old
enough--indeed, I am not."

And when the young man is seasoned for it, how happy she will be, poor