"For this, and only this, I'll trust a woman,
That if you take life from her she will die;
And, being dead, will come to life no more.
In all things else I am an infidel."
Thus Antiphanes, who died twenty-two hundred years before Gavarni was born. Menander justifies the gods for tormenting Prometheus, though his crime was only stealing a spark of fire.
"But, O ye gods, how infinite the mischief!
That little spark gave being to a woman,
And let in a new race of plagues to curse us."
The well-known epigram of Palladas upon marriage expresses a thought which has been uttered by satirists in every form of which language is capable:
"In marriage are two happy things allowed—
A wife in wedding garb and in her shroud.
Who, then, dares say that state can be accurst
Where the last day's as happy as the first?"
She. "Now, understand me. To-morrow morning he will ask you to dinner. If he has his umbrella with him, it will mean that he has not got his stall at the theatre. In that case, don't accept. If he has no umbrella, come to dinner."
He. "But (you know we must think of every thing) suppose it should rain to-morrow morning?"
She. "If it rains, he will get wet—that's all. If I don't want him to have an umbrella, he won't have one. How silly you are!"—Gavarni, Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846.