And in fact the critic reads the work and considers it revoltingly immoral! The author’s cynicism, his obscenity are beyond words! he uses the word _cuckold_ when he finds it necessary! Did anyone ever hear of such indecency?--To be sure, Molière often used the same word, and some others even stronger, in several of his works; but what a difference! one must be very careful not to print in a novel what one may say on the stage before a large audience!--Make your inversions, ye novelists; go back to the Syntax; adopt a style _ad usum tyronum linguæ Latinæ_; monopolize mythology, astronomy, mineralogy, ornithology, zoology, aye, even conchology; mingle with it all a little ancient and sacred history, much about dreams and ghosts, minstrels, druids, or hermits, according to the scene of your plot; indulge in sonorous phrases, which used to be called fustian, and you will surely have a fashionable success! Some ladies will faint when they are reading you, others after they read you; there will even be some who will not understand you; but you will appear all the nobler to them! To be unintelligible is to be sublime in your kind. Great geniuses wrap themselves in mystery.--Ask Cagliostro rather,--he ought not to be dead, as he was a sorcerer,--or Lord Byron, or Mademoiselle Lenormand. As for you, young authors, who claim to be simple and natural, who seek to arouse laughter or interest with events which may happen any day before our eyes, and who describe them for us in such wise as to be readily understood, away with you to oblivion! or go to see _George Dandin_ and _Le Malade Imaginaire_; those plays are worthy of you; but you will never be read by our vaporish ladies, and you will not cause the hundred mouths of Renown to sound. Despite all this, we have the unfortunate habit of writing as we should speak, and we shall continue so to do; you are at liberty, reader, to drop us here and now if our method does not suit you. So the dancing continued at the Cadran-Bleu; but the fête drew toward its close, to the great satisfaction of Edouard, and doubtless of Adeline, who blushed and smiled whenever her fond husband glanced at her. At last the clock struck the hour to retire; Madame Germeuil herself took her daughter away; they entered a carriage, drove off, and in due time arrived at Boulevard Montmartre, where the young couple were to live, and with them the dear mamma, who did not wish to part from her Adeline, who, she hoped, would close her eyes. A dainty apartment was all arranged. Madame Germeuil embraced her daughter lovingly, then went to her own room, not without a sigh. That was quite natural; the rights of a mother cease when those of a husband begin! But what do rights matter when hearts remain the same? Nature and love easily find lodgment in a sensitive heart, and have no power over a cold and selfish one. Men make the laws, but the feelings are not to be commanded.