“Well, tell me, are you happy now?” asked Pamphilius. “Have you found in marriage what the stranger promised you?”
“Happy?” repeated Julius. “What is being happy? If you mean by that word full satisfaction of my desires, then of course I am not happy. I am conducting my trade with success, men are beginning to respect me, and in both of these respects I find some satisfaction. Although I see many men who are richer and more regarded than I, yet I foresee the possibility of equaling them and even of excelling them. This side of my life is full; but my marriage, I will say frankly, does not satisfy me. I will say more: I am conscious that this same marriage, which ought to have given me joy, has not done so, and that the joy I experienced at first has kept growing less and less, and has at last vanished, and in its place, where joy had been, out of marriage arose sorrow. My wife is beautiful, intellectual, well educated, and good. At first I was perfectly happy. But now—this you can’t know, having no wife—there have arisen causes of discord between us, at one time because she seeks my caresses when I am indifferent toward her, at another time the case is reversed. Moreover, for love, novelty is necessary. A woman less fascinating than my wife fascinates me more at first, but afterward becomes still less fascinating than my wife. I have already experienced this. No, I have not found satisfaction in matrimony. Yes, my friend,” said Julius, in conclusion, “the philosophers are right; life does not give what the soul desires. This I have experienced in my marriage. But the fact that life does not give that happiness which the soul desires does not prove that your fraudulent practices can give it,” he added with a smile.
“In what do you see we are fraudulent?” asked Pamphilius.
“Your fraud consists in this: that in order to free men from the evils connected with the facts of life, you repudiate all the facts of life—life itself. In order to free yourselves from disenchantment, you repudiate enchantment, you repudiate marriage itself.”