The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table on which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected with remarkable intelligence.  I, the insignificant secretary of the meeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to take down a report of the meeting.

“Gentlemen,” said an old man, “the first question upon which we have to deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of a letter.  The letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Anspach, by the widow of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, mother of the Regent:  ’The Queen of Spain has a method of making her husband say exactly what she wishes.  The king is a religious man; he believes that he will be damned if he touched any woman but his wife, and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous temperament.  Thus the queen obtains her every wish.  She has placed castors on her husband’s bed.  If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away.  If he grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits him into hers.  And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes -----’ I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of the German princess might in this assembly be charged with immorality.”

Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors?  This is the problem which we have to solve.

The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of the assembly.  I was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if two married people slept on two separate beds in the same room the beds ought not to be set on castors.

“With this proviso,” put in one of the members, “that the present decision should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the best arrangement of the beds of married people.”

The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which was contained the original edition, published in 1788, of the letters of Charlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of Louis XIV, and, while I was transcribing the passage already quoted, he said: 

“But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses the notification in which the second question is stated.”

“I rise to make an observation,” exclaimed the youngest of the jealous husbands there assembled.

The president took his seat with a gesture of assent.

“Gentlemen,” said the young husband, “are we quite prepared to deliberate upon so grave a question as that which is presented by the universally bad arrangement of the beds?  Is there not here a much wider question than that of mere cabinet-making to decide?  For my own part I see in it a question which concerns that of universal human intellect.  The mysteries of conception, gentlemen, are still enveloped in a darkness which modern science has but partially dissipated.  We do not know how far external circumstances influence the microscopic beings whose discovery is