grew to perfection, unfostered, in the fields of thought.  Each phase of the work which had been condemned by others took root and gathered strength, surviving like the slight branch of a tree which, flung upon the sand by a winter’s storm, finds itself covered at morning with white and fantastic icicles, produced by the caprices of nightly frosts.  So the sketch lived on and became the starting point of myriad branching moralizations.  It was like a polypus which multiplies itself by generation.  The feelings of youth, the observations which a favorable opportunity led him to make, were verified in the most trifling events of his after life.  Soon this mass of ideas became harmonized, took life, seemed, as it were, to become a living individual and moved in the midst of those domains of fancy, where the soul loves to give full rein to its wild creations.  Amid all the distractions of the world and of life, the author always heard a voice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of things at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced, smiled, or talked.  Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that terrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him:  “Do you notice that enchanting smile?  It is a grin of hatred.”  And then the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies of Hardy.  He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory.  And then like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and would trace on the street-wall a word which might serve as a pendant to the “Drink!” which was the only oracle obtainable from the heavenly bottle.  This literary Trilby would often appear seated on piles of books, and with hooked fingers would point out with a grin of malice two yellow volumes whose title dazzled the eyes.  Then when he saw he had attracted the author’s attention he spelt out, in a voice alluring as the tones of an harmonica, Physiology of Marriage!  But, almost always he appeared at night during my dreams, gentle as some fairy guardian; he tried by words of sweetness to subdue the soul which he would appropriate to himself.  While he attracted, he also scoffed at me; supple as a woman’s mind, cruel as a tiger, his friendliness was more formidable than his hatred, for he never yielded a caress without also inflicting a wound.  One night in particular he exhausted the resources of his sorceries, and crowned all by a last effort.  He came, he sat on the edge of the bed like a young maiden full of love, who at first keeps silence but whose eyes sparkle, until at last her secret escapes her.

“This,” said he, “is a prospectus of a new life-buoy, by means of which one can pass over the Seine dry-footed.  This other pamphlet is the report of the Institute on a garment by wearing which we can pass through flames without being burnt.  Have you no scheme which can preserve marriage from the miseries of excessive cold and excessive heat?  Listen to me!  Here we have a book on the Art of preserving foods; on the Art of curing smoky chimneys; on the Art of making good mortar; on the Art of tying a cravat; on the Art of carving meat.”