At first glance, you will think that this is a paradox, you have so often heard it said that: "There is nothing so good as sleep"; or: "Sleep is so beneficial"; or: "Sleep is the greatest of restorers"; or: "He who sleeps, dines."--I ask your pardon for this last quotation. I am persuaded that you have never experienced its truth. To all this I might reply that the best things have their bad side, and that we must never abuse them. But I will content myself with simply giving you some figures; you are aware that there is nothing so convincing as figures. I take people who go to bed at midnight; many, it is true, go to bed much later; but as there are vast numbers who go to bed earlier, the balance is preserved. You retire at midnight, then, and you get up at eight in the morning; you have slept eight hours, or one-third of your day. Consequently, if you live sixty years, you will have devoted twenty years to sleep. Frankly, doesn't that seem to you too much? Ah! but I can hear you retort: "But, monsieur, one doesn't sleep all night without waking; I never have eight hours' sleep!" Very good; I agree. Instead of twenty years, then, I will charge you with only fifteen; is not even that a good deal of time wasted? "Sleep," says Montaigne, "stifles and suppresses the faculties of our mind." You will say: "Rest is indispensable to mankind"--and to womankind, too, the ladies are so charming when they are asleep!--That is true; but habit is everything in a man's life; with four hours' sleep a day, or a night, you might be in as robust health as Æsculapius. I love to believe that the god of medicine was in robust health; however, I will not take my oath to it. But, to reach that result, you must get into the habit of not sacrificing more than four hours to oblivion of your surroundings. Now, as you adopt a contrary course, the result is that the more you sleep, the more you feel the need of sleep, which, by deadening your faculties, thickens your blood, deprives you of a part of your normal activity, and sometimes makes your mind indolent--that is to say, if you have one; but I am sure that you have. Sleep has another great disadvantage; it tends to produce obesity; and you will agree that you do not wish to be obese. That is a burden with no corresponding benefit. In general, nothing ages a man so quickly as a big paunch. Find me a man who desires one; I am inclined to think that you would search in vain. On the other hand, you will find men by the hundred who do their utmost to compress and abolish what stomach they have; to that end, they often employ means which impede their respiration; they wear corsets, like women; there are some who even go so far as to refrain from satisfying their appetites, who do not eat as their stomach demands, always in the fear that that organ will protrude unduly.