Science teaches that no force in the world is lost, no energy consumed, but that force and energy transform themselves one into the other without loss at all. Then I ask myself—but all the desires that men and women breathe out in the streets, in society, in theatres, or wherever they meet, where do they end? All those glances of the eyes which carry fire enough in their rays to burn and consume the whole planetary system; all those heart beatings which make the face burn and attract two beings, two organisms, two lives to each other; when (as in most cases) they pass like meteors without fructifying the earth, where do they go? Those terrible energies, the fruit of the most intricate and sublime mechanism of our brains and nerves; into what do they transport themselves when they produce neither words, tears, lust, crime, matrimony, nor sin? And yet these desires are many; they meet day and night in the crowded streets, in the whirl of railway carriages, in the dense crowd, in the solitary mountain paths; they plough through space, and if we were able to see them we should see the air lighted up by them as by the convulsive lightning of a tropical tempest. But where do they go? Where is so much light consumed? Who warms himself with all this mighty heat? And where are the ashes of such a fire? I know not; perhaps biologists and physicists of the future will tell us. ⁂ Another elementary, but most important aid toward the wise choice of a wife, is to see a large number of women before choosing her to whom you wish to give name, heart, and life. If you have chosen your companion in the narrow circle of a village without leaving it, you may be proud to have gained the prettiest girl among a dozen companions. But woe to you, should you suddenly go to other villages, or still worse to some large city; you may find the comparison odious, most odious, and yet irremediable. This is why men who have seen and travelled a great deal generally make the best husbands; for making their choice on a larger basis, there is great probability of their choosing well, and perhaps also for another reason, women more easily pardon some former gallantry in their fiancés than a too ingenuous virtue. Don Giovanni has always seemed more pleasing to them than the chaste Joseph. A woman who knows that she is preferred and chosen as a companion, by one who has seen and known a hundred or a thousand other women, is proud of it, and with reason. I do not know if all women will share my opinion, but those who know most of the science of love will most certainly think with me. Were I a woman, my ideal of a husband would be a man who had travelled in all the six parts of the world, and had seen and admired all the women there.