But bah! what am I saying?
I am wasting my words.
Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds.
Well, so be it; but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar.
You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar.
O nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar.
Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt.
All salts are withering.
Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death.
That is why diabetes borders on consumption.
Then, do not crunch sugar, and you will live.
I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest, rob each other of your well-beloved without remorse.
Chassez across.
In love there are no friends.
Everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open.
No quarter, war to the death! a pretty woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor.
All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.
Woman is man’s right.
Romulus carried off the Sabines; William carried off the Saxon women; C?sar carried off the Roman women.
The man who is not loved soars like a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy:
“Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it.”
Tholomyes paused.
“Take breath, Tholomyes,” said Blachevelle.
At the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil, struck up to a plaintive air, one of those studio songs composed of the first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all, as destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of the wind, which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are dissipated and take their flight with them.
This is the couplet by which the group replied to Tholomyes’ harangue:—
“The father turkey-cocks so grave
Some money to an agent gave,
That master good Clermont-Tonnerre
Might be made pope on Saint Johns’ day fair.
But this good Clermont could not be
Made pope, because no priest was he;
And then their agent, whose wrath burned,
With all their money back returned.”
This was not calculated to calm Tholomyes’ improvisation; he emptied his glass, filled, refilled it, and began again:—
“Down with wisdom!
Forget all that I have said.
Let us be neither prudes nor prudent men nor prudhommes.
I propose a toast to mirth; be merry.
Let us complete our course of law by folly and eating!
Indigestion and the digest.
Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting, the female!
Joy in the depths!
Live, O creation!
The world is a great diamond.
I am happy.
The birds are astonishing.
What a festival everywhere!
The nightingale is a gratuitous Elleviou.
Summer, I salute thee!
O Luxembourg!