That would be a mournful way of solving the difficulty!

Should we make the conjecture that certain honest women act in
dividing up the celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely,
in that case, half at least of our altars would become whited
sepulchres!

Ought one to suggest for the honor of French ladies that in the time
of peace all other countries should import into France a certain
number of their honest women, and that these countries should mainly
consist of England, Germany and Russia? But the European nations would
in that case attempt to balance matters by demanding that France
should export a certain number of her pretty women.

Morality and religion suffer so much from such calculations as this,
that an honest man, in an attempt to prove the innocence of married
women, finds some reason to believe that dowagers and young people are
half of them involved in this general corruption, and are liars even
more truly than are the celibates.

But to what conclusion does our calculation lead us? Think of our
husbands, who to the disgrace of morals behave almost all of them like
celibates and glory _in petto_ over their secret adventures.

Why, then we believe that every married man, who is at all attached to
his wife from honorable motives, can, in the words of the elder
Corneille, seek a rope and a nail; _foenum habet in cornu_.

It is, however, in the bosom of these four hundred thousand honest