The reader will be grateful to me for not wearying him longer with other sketches taken from real life revealing the matrimonial purgatory. Hell is awful, but it has its dramatic emotions and these offer some compensation for all there is of monstrous, sanguinary, or horrible. Purgatory instead is very small, mean, and deplorably vulgar. There are no ocean storms, but bogs which submerge us inch by inch; no tiger bites, but mosquito stings; no lion’s claws, but the puncture of the flea; no delirium or crime, but secret sobs and silent tears; the continual itching of a scab which heals, forms a crust, and is again broken; an exudation of malignant humours which leak out drop by drop from the marrow of the bones through the tissues, to the skin, and there they remain viscid, fetid, and contagious. This is a true but not very enticing picture of the purgatory of marriage, a hundred times worse than the purgatory of the Catholic Church, which after a longer or shorter time leads to heaven. This other only leads through a long, sorrowful life, to death at the last. CHAPTER XI. PARADISE. They had been seated near each other for some time on the same sofa, not in the voluptuous atmosphere of desire, but in a calm and ingenuous admiration of each other. They had no desires, for all were satisfied, but they were not indifferent nor were they weary, for the light of love shown eternally in their heaven; twilights of laughing morn or melancholy sundowns, but never night. True faithful love knows no darkness. When the planetary sun sinks in the west there are lighted for true lovers the many-coloured lamps of an electric beacon, which, like an iridescent rainbow, joins sundown to dawn. On her knees, as if in a sweet doze, a volume of Musset was lying half open, and her right hand was more than pressed, it was grasped, in his left. She had read several pages of the great poet aloud, as only she knew how to read, pointing those immortal verses with the passionate accent of one who reading loves, and loving reads. At that inspired reading he had been always silent, but low and frequent sighs told her that through those hands closed in such close embrace there crept a tremor of high and perfect happiness. The current of her touch said to him softly: “Listen, dear, how beautiful it is!” And his answered hers with a tremor: “Thank you, dearest!” Then all at once, without her having said, “I am tired!” or his having said, “That is enough!” the book had fallen on her knees and they gazed into each other’s eyes.