condition of fermentation; but, here we plead guilty of deliberate
inaccuracy. These errors in calculation are likely, however, to give
all their weight to our conclusion and to corroborate what we are
forced to deduce in unveiling the mechanism of passion.

From the six millions of privileged men, we must exclude three
millions of old men and children.

It will be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a
remainder of four millions in the case of women.

This difference at first sight seems singular, but is easily accounted
for.

The average age at which women are married is twenty years and at
forty they cease to belong to the world of love.

Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his
penknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal
will tell you.

On the other hand, a man at fifty-two is more formidable than at any
other age. It is at this fair epoch of life that he enjoys an
experience dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he will
ever require. The passions by which his course is directed being the
last under whose scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined,
like the man carried away by a current who snatches at a green and
pliant branch of willow, the young nursling of the year.