squirt out nothing but fun for the bachelors and weariness for the
married men. It is everlasting morality. A million printed pages would
have no other matter in them.

In spite of this, here is my first proposition: marriage is a fight to
the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven,
because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love;
the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty,
remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.

Undoubtedly. But do you see in this a fresh idea?

Well, I address myself to the married men of yesterday and of to-day;
to those who on leaving the Church or the registration office indulge
the hope of keeping their wives for themselves alone; to those whom
some form or other of egotism or some indefinable sentiment induces to
say when they see the marital troubles of another, "This will never
happen to me."

I address myself to those sailors who after witnessing the foundering
of other ships still put to sea; to those bachelors who after
witnessing the shipwreck of virtue in a marriage of another venture
upon wedlock. And this is my subject, eternally now, yet eternally
old!

A young man, or it may be an old one, in love or not in love, has
obtained possession by a contract duly recorded at the registration
office in heaven and on the rolls of the nation, of a young girl with
long hair, with black liquid eyes, with small feet, with dainty
tapering fingers, with red lips, with teeth of ivory, finely formed,