The Marriage Contract
THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT BY HONORE DE BALZAC Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley DEDICATION To Rossini.
have ever occurred in the history of the universe, or that ever will
transpire till the close of time. The creation of the world; its
government by a universal Providence; its redemption by the death
of Christ; its conversion by the power of the Holy Ghost; the
immortality of the soul; the resurrection of the body; the certainty
of an eternal existence; the secrets of the unseen state; subjects,
all of them of the loftiest and sublimest kind, which have engaged
the inquiries of the profoundest intellects, are the matter of
contemplation to real piety. What topics are these for our reason,
under the guidance of religion, to study: what an ocean to swim in,
what a heaven to soar in: what heights to measure, what depths to
fathom. Here are subjects, which, from their infinite vastness, must
be ever new, and ever-fresh; which can be never laid aside as dry or
empty. If novelty is the parent of pleasure, here it may be found;
for although the subject itself is the same, some new view of it,
some fresh discovery of its wonders, is ever bursting upon the mind
of the devout and attentive inquirer after truth.
"How then can religion be otherwise than pleasant, when it is the
exercise of the noble faculties of the mind, upon the sublimest
topics of mental investigation; the voluntary, excursive, endless
pursuits of the human understanding in the region of eternal truth.
Never was there a more interesting or important inquiry than that
proposed by Pilate to the illustrious Prisoner at his bar; and if
the latter thought it not proper to answer it, it was not to show
that the question was insignificant, but to condemn the light and
THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT BY HONORE DE BALZAC Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley DEDICATION To Rossini.