“O Monsieur Adolphe!” cried the young lady as she saw her friend with an air of gayety take his seat in the carriage.

“It is nothing, madame, he is one of my friends; we have shaken hands.”

Nevertheless, the next morning, the courageous celibate received a sword thrust which nearly proved fatal, and confined him six months to his bed.  The attentions of the married couple were lavished upon him.  What numerous compensations do we see here!  Some years afterwards, an old uncle of the husband, whose opinions did not fit in with those of the young friend of the house, and who nursed a grudge against him on account of some political discussion, undertook to have him driven from the house.  The old fellow went so far as to tell his nephew to choose between being his heir and sending away the presumptuous celibate.  It was then that the worthy stockbroker said to his uncle: 

“Ah, you must never think, uncle, that you will succeed in making me ungrateful!  But if I tell him to do so this young man will let himself be killed for you.  He has saved my credit, he would go through fire and water for me, he has relieved me of my wife, he has brought me clients, he has procured for me almost all the business in the Villele loans—­I owe my life to him, he is the father of my children; I can never forget all this.”

In this case the compensations may be looked upon as complete; but unfortunately there are compensations of all kinds.  There are those which must be considered negative, deluding, and those which are both in one.

I knew a husband of advanced years who was possessed by the demon of gambling.  Almost every evening his wife’s lover came and played with him.  The celibate gave him a liberal share of the pleasures which come from games of hazard, and knew how to lose to him a certain number of francs every month; but madame used to give them to him, and the compensation was a deluding one.

You are a peer of France, and you have no offspring but daughters.  Your wife is brought to bed of a boy!  The compensation is negative.

The child who is to save your name from oblivion is like his mother.  The duchess persuades you that the child is yours.  The negative compensation becomes deluding.

Here is one of the most charming compensations known.  One morning the Prince de Ligne meets his wife’s lover and rushes up to him, laughing wildly: 

“My friend,” he says to him, “I cuckolded you, last night!”

If some husbands attain to conjugal peace by quiet methods, and carry so gracefully the imaginary ensigns of matrimonial pre-eminence, their philosophy is doubtless based on the comfortabilisme of accepting certain compensations, a comfortabilisme which indifferent men cannot imagine.  As years roll by the married couple reach the last stage in that artificial existence to which their union has condemned them.

MEDITATION XXIX.