And we believe that this
is the very worst way for youth to be misled, since the miasma thus
pervades the whole man, and he is corrupted in head and heart at once,
without one strengthening effort at resistance.
Were it necessary, we might substantiate what we say by quoting from
the _Courrier_ within the last fortnight, jokes and stories such
as are not to be found so _frequently_ in the prints of any
other nation. There is the story of the girl Adelaide, which, at
another time, we mean to quote, for its terrible pathos. There is a
man on trial for the murder of his wife, of whom the witnesses say,
"he was so fond of her you would never have known she was his wife!"
Here is one, only yesterday, where a man kills a woman to whom he was
married by his relatives at eighteen, she being much older, and
disagreeable to him, but their properties matching. After twelve
years' marriage, he can no longer support the yoke, and kills both her
and her father, and "his only regret is that he cannot kill all who
had anything to do with the match."
Either infidelity or such crimes are the natural result of marriages
made as they are in France, by agreement between the friends, without
choice of the parties.
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