“What do you mean by that, duchess? And how can you make your remark fit in with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?”
“These women are absolute tyrants!” said the author to himself. “Has the devil again turned up in a mob cap?”
“No, dear, I am not joking,” replied the duchess, “and I shudder with fear for myself when I coolly consider people whom I have known in other times. Wit always has a sparkle which wounds us, and the man who has much of it makes us fear him perhaps, and if he is a proud man he will be capable of jealousy, and is not therefore to our taste. In fact, we prefer to raise a man to our own height rather than to have to climb up to his. Talent has great successes for us to share in, but the fool affords enjoyment to us; and we would sooner hear said ‘that is a very handsome man’ than to see our lover elected to the Institute.”
“That’s enough, duchess! You have absolutely startled me.”
And the young coquette began to describe the lovers about whom all the women of her acquaintance raved; there was not a single man of intellect among them.
“But I swear by my virtue,” she said, “their husbands are worth more.”
“But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands,” the duchess answered gravely.
“Tell me,” asked the author, “is the disaster which threatens the husband in France quite inevitable?”
“It is,” replied the duchess, with a smile; “and the rage which certain women breathe out against those of their sex, whose unfortunate happiness it is to entertain a passion, proves what a burden to them is their chastity. If it were not for fear of the devil, one would be Lais; another owes her virtue to the dryness of her selfish heart; a third to the silly behaviour of her first lover; another still—”
The author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two ladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they smiled and promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air of gaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by saying that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically that women who are entirely virtuous were creatures of reason.