whole life, so that we have in accordance with the statistical method
taken the average. Now if the number of celibates be multiplied by the
number of their excesses in love the result will be three millions of
adventures; to set against this we have only four hundred thousand
honest women!

If the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds does
not make a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless because
so little success attended the first.

Here then we have a people, a society which has been sifted, and you
see the result!


XVI.
Manners are the hypocrisy of nations, and hypocrisy is more or less
perfect.


XVII.
Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.


Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all
the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so
regular as at the table.

A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any
man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of
gastronomy.