When a man marries a woman very much younger than himself, people smile maliciously and point their fingers as if to ward off the evil eye, and to show the daring individual that the _Minotaur_ awaits him. In this case the populace cuts not one, but a hundred gordian knots with a brutal and bestial sword. Adultery is a plant that grows in every clime, but more especially where a woman fails in esteem for her companion, and the clever sower and cultivator of these plants is always the husband. I am so convinced of this truth, that if statistics of adultery were possible, I am certain I should find the greatest number amongst the unions of young people: for they also make contracts of buying and selling, of exchange of titles and dollars, in their marriages. If you, with your white hairs, have the courage to marry a young woman, study her character most of all. If she be a thorough lady in education she will be less likely to betray you than if you were young; for she is proud of herself and would not willingly commit a sin toward which the world would be so indulgent; for women also like difficult things, heroic undertakings; because they like to say in their own hearts or throw in the face of their seducer the sublime motto: _noblesse oblige_. ⁂ Then in conclusion: If, with your white hairs, you have the courage to bind your life to blond or brown tresses fragrant with youthfulness, place yourself naked before the mirror in your chamber and look at yourself for some time. Then for a longer time put yourself before that other mirror of conscience which reflects us so inexorably; and, having balanced the accounts of your physical _I_ and your moral and intellectual _me_, see if you are still a possible man, a handsome and strong man; and if you find yourself a young woman who is more an angel than a woman, more woman than female, offer her your hand without too many scruples or false reticences, and who knows but that when you die, you may then be able to say: “The last years of my life have been my happiest. In my youth I knew a hundred women, in my old age I have only known one; and she alone was worth the other hundred. Woman is the benediction _of life_.” ⁂ _A young man and old woman_: Amongst the discordances of age between husband and wife, none astonish us so much, or I ought to say disgust us more, than when an old woman marries a young man. There is the kernel of a great truth at the root of this scorn, which springs from the very heart of nature. A man may be a man even at eighty years of age; and I cannot resist smiling when I remember a lady who complained of the exactions of her companion, a man over seventy. We all remember Fontenelle and the Duke of Richelieu, in whom virility was only extinguished with life: in the first case the life lasting for a century, in the second for more than eighty years.