I will not say that it is imprudent to set forth all those fine things; but when done it should be done with less affectation.  To warn people that there are thorns in the path is all very well; but, hang it! there is something else in married life, something that renders these duties delightful, else this sacred position and these ties would soon be nothing more than insupportable burdens.  One would really think that to take to one’s self a pretty little wife, fresh in heart and pure in mind, and to condemn one’s self to saw wood for the rest of one’s days, were one and the same thing.

Well, my dear sisters, have you any knowledge of those who have painted the picture in these gloomy colors and described as a punishment that which should be a reward?  They are the husbands with a past and having rheumatism.  Being weary and—­how shall I put it?—­men of the world, they choose to represent marriage as an asylum, of which you are to be the angels.  No doubt to be an angel is very nice, but, believe me, it is either too much or too little.  Do not seek to soar so high all at once, but, instead, enter on a short apprenticeship.  It will be time enough to don the crown of glory when you have no longer hair enough to dress in any other fashion.

But, O husbands with a past! do you really believe that your own angelic quietude and the studied austerity of your principles are taken for anything else than what they really mean—­exhaustion?

You wish to rest; well and good; but it is wrong in you to wish everybody else about you to rest too; to ask for withered trees and faded grass in May, the lamps turned down and the lamp-shades doubled; to require one to put water in the soup and to refuse one’s self a glass of claret; to look for virtuous wives to be highly respectable and somewhat wearisome beings; dressing neatly, but having had neither poetry, youth, gayety, nor vague desires; ignorant of everything, undesirous of learning anything; helpless, thanks to the weighty virtues with which you have crammed them; above all, to ask of these poor creatures to bless your wisdom, caress your bald forehead, and blush with shame at the echo of a kiss.

The deuce! but that is a pretty state of things for marriage to come to.

Delightful institution!  How far are your sons, who are now five-and-twenty years of age, in the right in being afraid of it!  Have they not a right to say to you, twirling their moustaches: 

“But, my dear father, wait a bit; I am not quite ripe for it!”

“Yes; but it is a splendid match, and the young lady is charming.”

“No doubt, but I feel that I should not make her happy.  I am not old enough—­indeed, I am not.”

And when the young man is seasoned for it, how happy she will be, poor little thing!—­a ripe husband, ready to fall from the tree, fit to be put away in the apple-loft!  What happiness! a good husband, who the day after his marriage will piously place his wife in a niche and light a taper in front of her; then take his hat and go off to spend elsewhere a scrap of youth left by chance at the bottom of his pocket.