“I think that since all these duties make up one-third of the public revenues, we should be seriously embarrassed if—­”

So that, my excellent model husband, if no one got drunk, or gambled, or smoked, or hunted, in a word if we had neither vices, passions, nor maladies in France, the State would be within an ace of bankruptcy; for it seems that the capital of our national income consists of popular corruptions, as our commerce is kept alive by national luxury.  If you cared to look a little closer into the matter you would see that all taxes are based upon some moral malady.  As a matter of fact, if we continue this philosophical scrutiny it will appear that the gendarmes would want horses and leather breeches, if every one kept the peace, and if there were neither foes nor idle people in the world.  Therefore impose virtue on mankind!  Well, I consider that there are more parallels than people think between my honest woman and the budget, and I will undertake to prove this by a short essay on statistics, if you will permit me to finish my book on the same lines as those on which I have begun it.  Will you grant that a lover must put on more clean shirts than are worn by either a husband, or a celibate unattached?  This to me seems beyond doubt.  The difference between a husband and a lover is seen even in the appearance of their toilette.  The one is careless, he is unshaved, and the other never appears excepting in full dress.  Sterne has pleasantly remarked that the account book of the laundress was the most authentic record he knew, as to the life of Tristram Shandy; and that it was easy to guess from the number of shirts he wore what passages of his book had cost him most.  Well, with regard to lovers the account book of their laundresses is the most faithful historic record as well as the most impartial account of their various amours.  And really a prodigious quantity of tippets, cravats, dresses, which are absolutely necessary to coquetry, is consumed in the course of an amour.  A wonderful prestige is gained by white stockings, the lustre of a collar, or a shirt-waist, the artistically arranged folds of a man’s shirt, or the taste of his necktie or his collar.  This will explain the passages in which I said of the honest woman [Meditation II], “She spends her life in having her dresses starched.”  I have sought information on this point from a lady in order to learn accurately at what sum was to be estimated the tax thus imposed by love, and after fixing it at one hundred francs per annum for a woman, I recollect what she said with great good humor:  “It depends on the character of the man, for some are so much more particular than others.”  Nevertheless, after a very profound discussion, in which I settled upon the sum for the celibates, and she for her sex, it was agreed that, one thing with another, since the two lovers belong to the social sphere which this work concerns, they ought to spend between them, in the matter referred to, one hundred and fifty francs more than in time of peace.