year 1791, I should know nothing of all this. Yes!—man has a vocation for the infinite. There dwells within him an instinct that calls him to God. God is all, gives all, brings oblivion on all, and thought is the thread which he has given us as a clue to communication with himself!” He suddenly stopped, and fixed his eyes upon the heavens. “The poor fellow has lost his wits!” I thought to myself. “Sir,” I said to him, “it would be pushing my devotion to eclectic philosophy too far to insert your ideas in my book; they would destroy it. Everything in it is based on love, platonic and sensual. God forbid that I should end my book by such social blasphemies! I would rather try to return by some pantagruelian subtlety to my herd of celibates and honest women, with many an attempt to discover some social utility in their passions and follies. Oh! if conjugal peace leads us to arguments so disillusionizing and so gloomy as these, I know a great many husbands who would prefer war to peace.” “At any rate, young man,” the old marquis cried, “I shall never have to reproach myself with refusing to give true directions to a traveler who had lost his way.” “Adieu, thou old carcase!” I said to myself; “adieu, thou walking marriage! Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work! Adieu, thou machine! Although I have given thee from time to time some glimpses of people dear to me, old family portraits,—back with you to the picture dealer’s shop, to Madame de T——-, and all the rest of them; take your place round the bier with undertaker’s mutes, for all I care!” MEDITATION XXX. CONCLUSION. A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was accompanied by a crowd which took up so much room on the road that, prophet as he was, his _amour-propre_ was vastly tickled. But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that at the first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new pair of slippers to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how he had some specie to negotiate, and off they went. A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and forgot the discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the promised land was the spot where they stood, and the divine word was heard when they talked to one another. The fat people, loaded with punches a la Sancho, had been wiping their foreheads with their handkerchiefs, for the last quarter of an hour, and began to grow thirsty, and therefore halted beside a clear spring. Certain retired soldiers complained of the corns which tortured them, and spoke of Austerlitz, and of their tight boots. At the second halt, certain men of the world whispered together: “But this prophet is a fool.” “Have you ever heard him?” “I? I came from sheer curiosity.”