You see now that the dreadful stories I was telling a short time ago have something to do with you, and that it is a good thing to be warned beforehand. And now tell me, when a hundred people—or I ought to say, a hundred manufactories of carbonic acid—are crowded together for a whole evening, sometimes for a whole night, in a space just big enough to allow them to go in and come out; tell me, I say, if that is a sort of thing which can be beneficial to the health of little girls whose blood flows so fast, and who require so much oxygen; and whether, on the contrary, it is not one's duty to keep them away from such scenes?
There may be amusement there, I know; but the best pleasures are those for which one does not pay too dearly. I have seen the very wax lights faint and turn pale all at once, in the very midst of those murderous assemblies, as if to warn the imprudent guests that there was only just time to open the windows.
And this reminds me of a point I had nearly forgotten. Wax-candles arc like ourselves. In order to burn, they must have oxygen, and, like us, they are extinguished by carbonic acid. But like us also—and indeed to a greater extent, because they consume much more charcoal at once—they manufacture carbonic acid. Hence that very illumination which affords the company so much pleasure and pride is plainly an additional cause of danger. Each of those wax-lights which is spread around with such a prodigal hand, the only fear being that there may not be enough of them, is a hungry intruder employed in devouring with all his might the scanty amount of oxygen provided for the consumption of the guests.
From each of those cheerful flames—the suns, as it were, of the festive assembly—shoots out a strong jet of carbonic acid, contributing by so much to swell out the already formidable streams of poisoned gas, exhaled to the utmost extent by the dancers. And wait—there is still something else I was forgetting. You dance. And I told you last time at what cost you have to dance. You have to make the fire burn much quicker than usual, that is, to consume a great deal more oxygen at once, and so you double and treble the activity of the carbonic acid manufacture: and this just at the moment when it would be so convenient that it should go on as slowly as possible! After this, you need not be surprised that people should look fagged and exhausted next morning. What astonishes me is that they are not obliged to lie in bed altogether, after treating their poor lungs to such an entertainment. And even if you have spared your legs, you are not much better off, as you are sure to find out in time, especially if the thing is repeated too often.
When I told you just now that the dance of labor was worth as much as the dance of the ball-room, was I right or wrong? What do you say yourself?
I could repeat the same of theatres—places of entertainment specially adapted for impoverishing the blood, and ruining the health of the happy mortals who go there, evening after evening, to purchase at the door the right of filling their lungs with carbonic acid, not to speak of other poisons. You must see clearly that such places as those are not fit for little lungs as dainty as yours; and this may help you to submit with a good grace when you see people going there without you. Grown-up people escape moreover, because the human machine possesses a strange elasticity, which enables it to accommodate itself—one scarcely knows how—to the sometimes very critical positions in which its lords and masters place it without a thought. But to do this, it is well that it should be thoroughly formed and established; for you run a risk of injuring it for ever, if you misuse it too early in life. Tell this to your dear schoolboy brother, when he wants to smoke his cigar like a man. If his lungs could speak, they would call out to him that it was very hard upon them, at their age, to be so treated, and that he ought at any rate to wait till they had passed their examinations!
But I must not get into a dispute with so important an individual, by throwing stones into a garden which is not under my care. For you, my dear child, the moral of this day's lesson—which to my mind is much more alarming than a hobgoblin tale, since it concerns the realities of every-day life—is clear; and it is this:
Seek your amusements as far as possible in the fresh air. In the summer, when the lamp is lit, bid your mamma a sweet good-night, and go to bed. In the winter do not wait till there is a great quantity of carbonic acid in the room where the grown-up people are sitting, before you retire to your own like a reasonable girl, anxious not to do mischief to that valuable and indefatigable servant, the poor blood! Not to mention that if she were to injure him too much, she would have to bear his grumbling for the rest of her life. We cannot change him as we change other servants.