death: each seems inevitable; each is a great Perhaps, and a
leap into the dark, for which, when a man is in the blue
devils, he has specially to harden his heart. That splendid
scoundrel, Maxime de Trailles, took the news of marriages much
as an old man hears the deaths of his contemporaries. "C'est
desesperant," he cried, throwing himself down in the arm-chair
at Madame Schontz's; "c'est desesperant, nous nous marions
tous!" Every marriage was like another gray hair on his head;
and the jolly church bells seemed to taunt him with his fifty
years and fair round belly.

The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our
ancestors, and cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or
not to marry. Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and
forlorn old age. The friendships of men are vastly agreeable,
but they are insecure. You know all the time that one friend
will marry and put you to the door; a second accept a
situation in China, and become no more to you than a name, a
reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter, very laborious
to read; a third will take up with some religious crotchet and
treat you to sour looks thence-forward. So, in one way or
another, life forces men apart and breaks up the goodly
fellowships for ever. The very flexibility and ease which
make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make
them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a
few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so
wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base
his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate - a
death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's
bright eyes - he may be left, in a month, destitute of all.