You will not
have galloped at full speed for half a league before you dismount to
mend a trace or to breathe your horses. What is the good of blowing
the trumpet before victory?"
Ah! my dear pantagruellists, nowadays to claim success is to obtain
it, and since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of
little ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only
for the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in
swallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without making
one little definition.
Reader, if from time to time you meet in this work the terms virtue or
virtuous, let us understand that virtue means a certain labored
facility by which a wife keeps her heart for her husband; at any rate,
that the word is not used in a general sense, and I leave this
distinction to the natural sagacity of all.
MEDITATION II.
MARRIAGE STATISTICS.
The administration has been occupied for nearly twenty years in
reckoning how many acres of woodland, meadow, vineyard and fallow are
comprised in the area of France. It has not stopped there, but has
also tried to learn the number and species of the animals to be found
there. Scientific men have gone still further; they have reckoned up
the cords of wood, the pounds of beef, the apples and eggs consumed in
Paris.
Pages:
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37