computation should be included: (1) the expense of expeditions into
the country; (2) the pharmaceutical expenses, occasioned by the colds
caught from walking in the damp pathways of parks, and in leaving the
theatre, which expenses are veritable presents; (3) the carrying of
letters, and law expenses; (4) journeys, and expenses whose items are
forgotten, without counting the follies committed by the spenders;
inasmuch as, according to the investigations of the committee, it had
been proved that most of a man's extravagant expenditure profited the
opera girls, rather than the married women. The conclusion arrived at
from this pecuniary calculation was that, in one way or another, a
passion costs nearly fifteen hundred francs a year, which were
required to meet the expense borne more unequally by lovers, but which
would not have occurred, but for their attachment. There was also a
sort of unanimity in the opinion of the council that this was the
lowest annual figure which would cover the cost of a passion. Now, my
dear sir, since we have proved, by the statistics of our conjugal
calculations [See Meditations I, II, and III.] and proved
irrefragably, that there exists a floating total of at least fifteen
hundred thousand unlawful passions, it follows:

That the criminal conversations of a third among the French population
contribute a sum of nearly three thousand millions to that vast
circulation of money, the true blood of society, of which the budget
is the heart;

That the honest woman not only gives life to the children of the
peerage, but also to its financial funds;

That manufacturers owe their prosperity to this _systolic_ movement;