But where do they go? Where is so much light consumed? Who warms himself with all this mighty heat? And where are the ashes of such a fire?
I know not; perhaps biologists and physicists of the future will tell us.
⁂
Another elementary, but most important aid toward the wise choice of a wife, is to see a large number of women before choosing her to whom you wish to give name, heart, and life.
If you have chosen your companion in the narrow circle of a village without leaving it, you may be proud to have gained the prettiest girl among a dozen companions. But woe to you, should you suddenly go to other villages, or still worse to some large city; you may find the comparison odious, most odious, and yet irremediable.
This is why men who have seen and travelled a great deal generally make the best husbands; for making their choice on a larger basis, there is great probability of their choosing well, and perhaps also for another reason, women more easily pardon some former gallantry in their fiancés than a too ingenuous virtue. Don Giovanni has always seemed more pleasing to them than the chaste Joseph.
A woman who knows that she is preferred and chosen as a companion, by one who has seen and known a hundred or a thousand other women, is proud of it, and with reason.
I do not know if all women will share my opinion, but those who know most of the science of love will most certainly think with me. Were I a woman, my ideal of a husband would be a man who had travelled in all the six parts of the world, and had seen and admired all the women there.