"Nor is there."
"That is foolishness. There are as many good men in the world as good women; probably more."
"The foolishness, my poor little English girl, is yours. You simply do not know. You simply do not know what men are. They are our masters, and we are their slaves. They gorge themselves on the pleasures of life, and leave to us the sorrows. With the bourgeoisie and the peasants it is the same. The girl brings her little dot, for him to spend in the cafés and on gaming and vice; she brings her health for him to ruin, her self-respect for him to steal, her body for him to befoul. Her father will sell her to any filthy jaundiced old roué whom he thinks a good enough 'party'—he would be a good deal more careful in matching his mares and sows. If there is poverty to be faced or shame to be suffered, who bears the burden? When in one of the villages there is an unwedded peasant girl who gives birth to a baby, which of them ought to suffer, and which does? The girl is turned away from every honest door, trampled under: the man, who will naturally have a poor wife of his own, laughs, pays nothing, forgets, and seduces another. That is the law of the Empire, that is justice, that is 'the way of the world.' Once when I helped a poor drab out of my own pocket—'Remember your position,' said dear Mamma. Bah! position. Why, in our class it is worse: we must sit at home and simper and embroider and maintain the great traditions of the lady of France, while Monsieur obeys only his pleasure, squanders our wealth, gambles, haunts Paris, and keeps his woman. We smirk and say nothing. 'Such a happy marriage,' they say. Ah, their filthy politeness, their ducking and bowing and fawning, picking up fans, opening doors, kissing our hands:—every time mine is kissed, which isn't often I assure you, I feel there is a hole burned in my flesh. Ah their beautiful woman, their adorable sex! The moment our backs are turned, at once their voices become low and greasy, they are all winks and leers and sniggers and bawdy tales. It makes me vomit—"
"Elise!"
"Don't stop me, don't dare! No other French girls are as I am: till now I never found any human soul whom I could tell what I feel: I must have my way, and you must listen. Do you deny it—the injustice, the cruelty and the foulness? Oh why is the world so cruelly made that while women know how to love, men only know how to lust?"
All through this tirade I was conscious of an instinct within me that answered to its bitterness, an instinct of sex-hatred for men as men, a savage half-sadistic hope that women would one day get even, would triumph, would trample! But as her bitterness waxed, mine waned, and the remembered male faces of my heart put this evil instinct to flight.
"It is not true. I hate this wickedness with the selfsame horror as you, but though I know nothing of the world, I know down in my own soul—I know as I know God, I know as I know myself—that they are not all like that. God did not make one sex all good, the other all bad. I know there are men who love as-purely and passionately as we do. You would believe it if there was one such who loved you. Suppose a man did love you, then what?"
"Ah, suppose, suppose!" She savagely ripped open her blouse and vest, caught my hands and placed them on her bare body, on a poor flat cold bosom. "Ha, ha, ha!" She laughed like a madwoman.
Such is the egotism of the human heart that even in that moment of purest pity, when I would have given my right hand to help her and ease her sorrow, even in that moment, and against my will and against a loathing for myself and my selfishness that accompanied (but could not stifle) the joy, there coursed through my veins a high triumphal joy that I was not as she. In an involuntary gesture I threw back my head, and my bosom heaved with pride; a hundred half-glimpsed notions of delight tore through my soul.
"Ah, suppose, suppose!" she was mocking, "how I pine for that dear supposed one.—No, dear, I had but one love, my little sister, and a man has taken her away. She was not worthy, but I loved her. Now I have no one, and no one will ever love me. It is cruel and all the universe is cruel. God is cruel to let the world be so:—oh, I forgot, He is a Man, and had no daughter, but a Son. Oh my little Suzanne that I loved—oh no, no, I cannot hear it!"