If this season is
presented to us as a nymph crowned with fresh flowers, caressing as a
siren, it is because in it is unhappiness personified and unhappiness
generally comes during the indulgence of folly.
The married couple who intend to love each other during their whole
life have no notion of a honeymoon; for them it has no existence, or
rather its existence is perennial; they are like the immortals who do
not understand death. But the consideration of this happiness is not
germane to our book; and for our readers marriage is under the
influence of two moons, the honeymoon and the Red-moon. This last
terminates its course by a revolution, which changes it to a crescent;
and when once it rises upon a home its light there is eternal.
How can the honeymoon rise upon two beings who cannot possibly love
each other?
How can it set, when once it has risen?
Have all marriages their honeymoon?
Let us proceed to answer these questions in order.
It is in this connection that the admirable education which we give to
girls, and the wise provisions made by the law under which men marry,
bear all their fruit. Let us examine the circumstances which precede
and attend those marriages which are least disastrous.
The tone of our morals develops in the young girl whom you make your
wife a curiosity which is naturally excessive; but as mothers in
France pique themselves on exposing their girls every day to the fire
which they do not allow to scorch them, this curiosity has no limit.
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