The majority of such cases consists of old attachments interrupted by unsurmountable obstacles, favoured again by some fortunate circumstance. The two who had loved and hoped for each other in their youth, find themselves free and their own masters, and all at once, at a single glance, have called up from the depths a bright panorama of fond visions, which for some time seemed to have disappeared in that abyss which buries and consumes all. _Do you remember, dear?_ _Yes, indeed I do!_ I seem to see you still at your window on that Sunday, when, after looking at me so long, you threw me a kiss across the street, when I believed I was hidden by the convolvulus on my balcony. Ah, yes, yes; that kiss was the beginning of a long idyl which I seem to see rising from the mists of the past as though by enchantment———— And from remembrance to remembrance a living and speaking world appears before those two once more, but more beautiful and more rose-coloured in semblance than it was in reality; enlarged by fancy, the first of artists, gilded by distant reminiscence, which is ever optimist. The old couple have some wrinkles on their faces and some threads of silver in their hair, but they see each other as they were twenty years ago; and if desires are indolent, and the clasp of the hands does not set the heart beating; if at night ardent dreams no longer disturb the peace of the passions, an odour of loving friendship surrounds them and binds them closer to each other day by day, and grows hourly more like love and less like friendship. They have so many remembrances in common. They have twenty years of life to recount to each other, and relating the sad and joyful events they alternately recount their recollections as though they had in reality lived together all the while, so that mine becomes thine and then ours, and without declaration or trepidation the happy day arrives when, without any necessity of finishing the phrase or dotting the _i_, the two right hands find themselves clasped together, the lips join between a sigh that questions and one that answers: _Really you wish————?_ _And why not?_ And the _why not_ becomes _because I do_ on the morrow, and the man and woman become husband and wife; and almost without agitation, without accident, they reach in safety the port of sure and tranquil happiness. I recall two such marriages with emotion, those of Stuart Mill and Hillebrandt. To these serene and tranquil unions children are not necessary, but if they come they brighten and bless the house, bringing with them a nosegay of flowers and an odour of spring which makes those two happy mortals young once more. ⁂ _Two old people._ Add some ten years to the arithmetical combination just studied and you will have a lower temperature, but still less danger to the happiness of the two beings who, defying ridicule and prejudice, wish to consecrate an old friendship upon the _altar_ of matrimony.