PROBLEM OF POPULATION *. THE, ROSE AND THE CARP. 335 
joyment of sensations, while it diverts from the tendencies to ex- 
cess, and fortifies the too sensitive nerves. Except through luxury 
(at once active and passive), except through general riches, no 
salvation ! 
But if you refuse to believe the double rose upon its word, vis- 
count, I refer you to the opinion of the well conditioned cow and 
mare, who will tell you the same things, absolutely the same thing? 
as the double rose. Finally, if this imposing unanimity of testi- 
mony should not yet suffice to establish an unalterable conviction, I 
call you in last appeal before the authority of the carps of So- 
logne. Ask the proprietor of the ponds there, how they manage 
in regard to the multiplication of the carp ; they will answer you 
that the ponds of Sologne are so favorable to the growth of carps, 
that the rapid. development of their size (luxury), renders them 
quite barren, and that they, the proprietors, are obliged, in order 
to 'preserve the breed of their fish, to have carp ponds of misery^ 
where they keep the carps exclusively destined for reproduction. 
These special ponds for breeding are narrow channels of water, 
where the female carps are crowded together by myriads, and die 
of hunger. Being unable to get fat, these carps lay eggs ; and 
these prolific carps have been baptized in Sologne with the signif- 
icant name of {peinards) sufferers. Do you understand, viscount, 
the analogy which exists between the carp and the women of the 
people whose fecundity justly alarms you ! Those households piled 
upon each other in the narrow carperies of industrial cities — those 
brats swarming in the nether parts of our own societies — there is 
the human peinard, I asked of you the prize of twelve hundred 
francs for the double rose ; I retract, let it be equally distributed 
between the double rose and the peinard of Sologne. How happy 
the people would be, were their governments analogists ! 
Transcendent politics, or transcendent astronomy, it is all one to 
analogy. The firmanent is no heavier than society in its hand. 
The double rose and the peinard have given the solution of the 
problem of Malthus ; now see the passional character of the No. 4 
and the No. 7 coming to give us the clue of an inscrutable enig- 
ma, which has puzzled the astronomers for ages. Why, these 
baffled wiseacres anxiously ask, has the Creator accorded but four 
