Don't smile. If there is a love absolutely beautiful, almost holy, it is love with white hair. If conjugal tenderness deserves at all the name of love, it is at that time of life when it becomes idealized and purified. If two hearts can, in this world, beat in perfect unison, it is the two hearts of old married couples united by a whole life of tender intimacy. Love, in getting old, does not become repulsive—like an old beau, who, with dyed hair and moustache perfumed, thinks he can pass for a handsome young man. In those kisses, which are no longer given on the lips, but, with sweet reverence, are discreetly given on the hand or on the forehead, in the effusions of an old married couple, I see the most profound and most holy of human tenderness.

They are no more lovers, but they are friends who cannot for a single moment forget that they were lovers, and who spend the winter of their lives in sweet remembrance of the beautiful spring, the glorious summer, and the restful, sober autumn they enjoyed together.

This final sublime love may be rare, but it does exist; it is the reward of concessions made and of faults forgiven; the reward of cheerfulness, the result of long years spent together, sharing the same joys, the same sorrows, and the same dreams. Tactful, refined, they are at this very moment as thoughtful as they ever were before. Each one is the first consideration in the world to the other. The refinement of their courtesy to each other is a constant avowal of the esteem they feel; in their old intimacy they keep the same scruples, the same delicacy as they did in the first days of their married life. They do not call each other 'love,' 'darling,' not even, perhaps, by their Christian names, but 'dear friend'—and they lay on 'dear' an emphasis that shows how sincere the expression is.

I tell you that there is no love in which you can find as much poetry as in the love of those dear couples who for forty or fifty years have walked side by side loving, respecting, helping each other, dreaming, praying, suffering together, and whose actions, words, and thoughts have each added an item to that treasure which they can now count piece by piece. This long community of hearts, this habit of sharing everything, has even established between them a physical likeness which would almost cause you to take them for brother and sister rather than for man and wife.

And how children do love these dear old couples! how they feel attracted toward them! There is a wonderful affinity between very old people and very young children. Both are alike in many ways: the former have lost their strength, the latter have not yet got theirs. The world goes in a circle, and at the end of his career the old man meets the child. They have sympathy for each other, they understand each other, and the past and the future are the best of friends. Old people play with children with their hearts and souls in absolute earnest, without any of those signs of condescension which children are so quick to detect and to resent; and I am not prepared to say that the young children enjoy the play more keenly than do the old ones.

Oh, if people would early prepare to become old, what pleasures would be kept in store for them!

In the peaceful winter of a well-spent life, love with white hair is an evening prayer that soars to the abode of the seraphs.