{ without children. Widow and widower { { { of the man. { with children { of the woman. { of both. Widower { without children. { with children. Widow { without children. { with children. These various combinations are so many algebraical formulæ in which one may find snares, dangers to happiness, and rancour without end. If you are a widower and you marry a widow, and neither of you have children, no danger hangs over you. Liberty on both sides, no right nor pretext for intervention; marriage presents itself almost in the guise of an union between two young people. You may indeed incur the danger of your wife making comparisons, and these not to your advantage. An old proverb says, _Comparisons are odious_, but I should like to make a correction and add that for him to whom they are unfavourable they are odious, but flattering to him who gains by them. Perhaps you may excel your predecessor, and your companion will be happy to find it so. In any case, if you have your weak side inquire about the public and private virtues of the first husband, and put the results into the balance which must weigh the pros and cons of the marriage. A widow and a widower may both have children, or one only may have them. The dangers in these cases are very different. It is better for the wife to have them, for if the husband really loves her he will also love her children; and besides, being a man, he is less at home, and paternity is always an episode in his life and not the whole life, as maternity is with the woman. Then if the man has the good fortune not to have children he will often end by loving his wife’s as much as though they were his own. In the case of there being children on both sides the balance may prove of advantage, because it is equal in weight and measure, and the two married people have cause to reproach themselves and to suffer for the same things. The worst case is that of a widower with children to whose number the new wife adds; he must be an angel, his wife and children angels also, if no civil war breaks out in his house. Think of it well, think a hundred times. Do not complicate the marriage, already fraught with so many dangers, by imprudence and temerity. In marriages between a widow and a widower the greatest danger arises from the children, who fear or see their future threatened, and who in their love for their lost parent believe the new marriage to be an outrage to the memory of the dear one. It is in these cases that we see all that a man has of venom and baseness come up and soil and cover everything with defilement and poison; all the brutal possibilities of human egotism covered, it may be, with varnish but still the skeleton underlying every thought and feeling. ⁂