“What do they mean, darling—­those crazy fools—­by saying that happiness is not lasting, and how do they understand that word?  If they mean everlasting, immortal, unintermitting, of course they are right, but the life of man not being such, happiness, as a natural consequence, cannot be such either.  Otherwise, every happiness is lasting for the very reason that it does exist, and to be lasting it requires only to exist.  But if by complete felicity they understand a series of varied and never-interrupted pleasures, they are wrong, because, by allowing after each pleasure the calm which ought to follow the enjoyment of it, we have time to realize happiness in its reality.  In other words those necessary periods of repose are a source of true enjoyment, because, thanks to them, we enjoy the delight of recollection which increases twofold the reality of happiness.  Man can be happy only when in his own mind he realizes his happiness, and calm is necessary to give full play to his mind; therefore without calm man would truly never be completely happy, and pleasure, in order to be felt, must cease to be active.  Then what do they mean by that word lasting?

“Every day we reach a moment when we long for sleep, and, although it be the very likeness of non-existence, can anyone deny that sleep is a pleasure?  No, at least it seems to me that it cannot be denied with consistency, for, the moment it comes to us, we give it the preference over all other pleasures, and we are grateful to it only after it has left us.

“Those who say that no one can be happy throughout life speak likewise frivolously.  Philosophy teaches the secret of securing that happiness, provided one is free from bodily sufferings.  A felicity which would thus last throughout life could be compared to a nosegay formed of a thousand flowers so beautifully, so skillfully blended together, that it would look one single flower.  Why should it be impossible for us to spend here the whole of our life as we have spent the last month, always in good health, always loving one another, without ever feeling any other want or any weariness?  Then, to crown that happiness, which would certainly be immense, all that would be wanted would be to die together, in an advanced age, speaking to the last moment of our pleasant recollections.  Surely that felicity would have been lasting.  Death would not interrupt it, for death would end it.  We could not, even then, suppose ourselves unhappy unless we dreaded unhappiness after death, and such an idea strikes me as absurd, for it is a contradiction of the idea of an almighty and fatherly tenderness.”

It was thus that my beloved Henriette would often make me spend delightful hours, talking philosophic sentiment.  Her logic was better than that of Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations, but she admitted that such lasting felicity could exist only between two beings who lived together, and loved each other with constant affection, healthy in mind and in body, enlightened, sufficiently rich, similar in tastes, in disposition, and in temperament.  Happy are those lovers who, when their senses require rest, can fall back upon the intellectual enjoyments afforded by the mind!  Sweet sleep then comes, and lasts until the body has recovered its general harmony.  On awaking, the senses are again active and always ready to resume their action.