[199] Byron has already been mentioned in this volume as one who also detected women as the creators of this tinsel of false sentiment. Michelet and Alphonse Daudet were among the Frenchmen who saw eye to eye with Byron on this point. Daudet said: “La femme deteste l’ironie qui la déconcerte et qu’elle sent être l’antagoniste des enthusiasmes et des rêveries de l’amour.”
[200] See Havelock Ellis, Op. cit., p. 196: “Whenever a man or a woman are found under compromising circumstances, it is nearly always the woman who with ready wit audaciously retrieves the situation. Every one is acquainted with instances from life or from history of women whose quick and cunning ruses have saved lover or husband or child. It is unnecessary to insist on this quality, which in its finest forms is called tactfulness.” See also Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. II., p. 358. See as a magnificent poetic representation of this power in women Byron’s Don Juan, Canto I, stanzas CXLII to CLXXVIII. The latter stanza is worth quoting in full. It is as follows:—
“A hint, in tender cases is enough;
Silence is best; besides, there is a tact—
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact)—
Which keeps, when push’d by questions rather rough,
A lady always distant from the fact:
The charming creatures lie with such a grace,
There’s nothing so becoming to the face.”