avarice, of gaming, of ambition, of fanaticism.  These passions have something virile in them; these sentiments are imperishable; they make sacrifices every day, such as love only makes by fits and starts.  But,” he went on, “suppose you abjure love.  At first there will be no disquietudes, no anxieties, no worry, none of those little vexations that waste human life.  A man lives happy and tranquil; in his social relations he becomes infinitely more powerful and influential.  This divorce from the thing called love is the primary secret of power in all men who control large bodies of men; but this is a mere trifle.  Ah! if you knew with what magic influence a man is endowed, what wealth of intellectual force, what longevity in physical strength he enjoys, when detaching himself from every species of human passion he spends all his energy to the profit of his soul!  If you could enjoy for two minutes the riches which God dispenses to the enlightened men who consider love as merely a passing need which it is sufficient to satisfy for six months in their twentieth year; to the men who, scorning the luxurious and surfeiting beefsteaks of Normandy, feed on the roots which God has given in abundance, and take their repose on a bed of withered leaves, like the recluses of the Thebaid!—­ah! you would not keep on three seconds the wool of fifteen merinos which covers you; you would fling away your childish switch, and go to live in the heaven of heavens!  There you would find the love you sought in vain amid the swine of earth; there you would hear a concert of somewhat different melody from that of M. Rossini, voices more faultless than that of Malibran.  But I am speaking as a blind man might, and repeating hearsays.  If I had not visited Germany about the year 1791, I should know nothing of all this.  Yes!—­man has a vocation for the infinite.  There dwells within him an instinct that calls him to God.  God is all, gives all, brings oblivion on all, and thought is the thread which he has given us as a clue to communication with himself!”

He suddenly stopped, and fixed his eyes upon the heavens.

“The poor fellow has lost his wits!” I thought to myself.

“Sir,” I said to him, “it would be pushing my devotion to eclectic philosophy too far to insert your ideas in my book; they would destroy it.  Everything in it is based on love, platonic and sensual.  God forbid that I should end my book by such social blasphemies!  I would rather try to return by some pantagruelian subtlety to my herd of celibates and honest women, with many an attempt to discover some social utility in their passions and follies.  Oh! if conjugal peace leads us to arguments so disillusionizing and so gloomy as these, I know a great many husbands who would prefer war to peace.”

“At any rate, young man,” the old marquis cried, “I shall never have to reproach myself with refusing to give true directions to a traveler who had lost his way.”