distinction to the natural sagacity of all.



MEDITATION II.

MARRIAGE STATISTICS.

The administration has been occupied for nearly twenty years in
reckoning how many acres of woodland, meadow, vineyard and fallow are
comprised in the area of France. It has not stopped there, but has
also tried to learn the number and species of the animals to be found
there. Scientific men have gone still further; they have reckoned up
the cords of wood, the pounds of beef, the apples and eggs consumed in
Paris. But no one has yet undertaken either in the name of marital
honor or in the interest of marriageable people, or for the advantage
of morality and the progress of human institutions, to investigate the
number of honest wives. What! the French government, if inquiry is
made of it, is able to say how many men it has under arms, how many
spies, how many employees, how many scholars; but, when it is asked
how many virtuous women, it can answer nothing! If the King of France
took into his head to choose his august partner from among his
subjects, the administration could not even tell him the number of
white lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged to
resort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, and
that would be a laughable event.

Were the ancients then our masters in political institutions as in
morality? History teaches us that Ahasuerus, when he wished to take a
wife from among the damsels of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous