dwell if it were possible to remain there. With diflBculty does he accustom himself to the idea that the high pre- rogative of procreation is almost withdrawn from him, and he declines to admit to himself to the latest moment the state of decay with which nature has stricken him. This new existence seems, as it were, reproachful and de- grading ; since there are very few persons capable of accept- ing old age without weakness of mind and derangement of reason. Time whitens their heads without disenchant- ing their spirit. Besides, a man of good constitution, whom age has not yet overpowered, still experiences per- fidious and tempting reminiscences; all seems young in him except the date of his birth. His years are expended, but not his strength. He admits to himself that desire is not as pressing as formerly; that he no longer feels that excess of life, that fire, that ardor, which once inflamed his blood and his heart, but he does not deem himself an athlete so disarmed that he ought entirely to abandon the contest and the triumph. As Fenelon says *The young man has not yet been killed in him.' Many old madcaps, loaded with years, are recognized in this picture. I only ask them to be sincere. Is not this the humiliating portion of certain superannuated coxcombs, whose disgraces in love are contemptible, and whose successes are perfectly ridiculous? Sometimes the evil is rooted in the habits, and, as a thinker of our time has said, 'the punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them always.'
"It is only repeated defeats, formidable diseases, the swift and precipitous advance of old age, which at length teach the imprudent being what he should have long since known, that comfort and health consist — above all in the decline of life — in the proper accord of a rem-
