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282 drama, discovers too late, that she has only been employed as a factor in an arithmetical calculation. When both parties to the marriage possess about the same amount of fortune and position in life, these are counted, compared and measured beforehand. In such a case no trouble is taken to disguise or conceal in the slightest, the true motives of the marriage and the real comprehension of its significance. Two fortunes, two positions, two influences, are united. The man wants a wife to get his dinner for him or sew on his buttons, or else to wear a silk dress with elegance and preside at the head of his table; the woman wants a husband who will work for her, or else make it possible for her to go to balls and receptions and receive society in her own home. This open acknowledgment of the motives is not allowed in marriages between unequal fortunes and positions. Then one or other of the contracting parties must lie. The poor girl pretends affection for the money-bag, the wooer makes a false display of love for the gold fish he has caught. Nature and truth can celebrate at least one melancholy victory: that the corrupt egotism which has diverted marriage from its natural goal, recognizes and accepts its real moral and physiological significance, by assuming in its wooing the mask of love.

What is the fate of the men and women who have become united in matrimony after this fashion? The "degenerates," the morally decayed offspring of parents who were married in obedience to the command of material interests, conceived and born without love, brought up without tenderness, they become finally entirely incapable of love and can grow old without ever having perceived, even for one moment, the impoverishment of their inner life. The husband cultivates his palate and stomach, he becomes a connoisseur in wines and