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the law requires, the revolt will be only the more prompt and vehement. From that moment the married life will become odious to the unhappy victim, and criminal hopes will arise in her heart, the chains which bind her will seem too cumbersome to wear, and she will secretly long for the death of her superannuated husband. In fact, the amours of old men are ridiculous and hideous, as we have already stated, and the poor creature condemned to witness, but above all to endure them, can hardly be sufficiently commiserated. When one reflects upon this revolting subject he cannot resist a sensation akin to that inspired by the idea of incest. All is in strong contrast, physically as well as morally, and chastity is necessarily banished from those embraces where the brutality of the senses is not moderated and poetized, so to speak, by the passionate transports of the heart. So it is altogether natural, the restraints of religion apart, that the young creature should violently rupture the hated bonds, or endeavor to fill the void in her heart by adulterous love. Sometimes, indeed, by an heroic practice of Christian fortitude, she resigns herself to her fate, and then her sad and cheerless life is one perpetual martyrdom.
Such is the sombre picture of those sacrilegious unions which set at defiance the most respectable instincts, the most noble thoughts, and the most legitimate hopes. Such are the terrible penalties reserved for the improvident and foolish pride of those dissolute old men who expend their last breath of life in the quest of perfidious pleasures. We shall not review the dangers which we have already sufficiently exposed, inherent to the exercise of the genital sense in advanced age. It is true that these dangers are only for the man, but they are so much the more imminent, as the young wife is the more capable of arousing the
