That the conversation of these women exhausts, enervates the men who are not there?
That these women prefer the old, ugly and wicked men, or the pretty, mincing puppets, who are not at their disposal?
If the woman of your thesis is the one who has not been subjected to masculine influence, why do you take the women whom you attack from among those who have been subjected to it?
Your contradictions, Master, are genuine and fair contradictions. For you as for us, there is but one woman: she who lives in the society of man, who has, like him, faults and vices, and who influences him as much as she is influenced by him: the other has never existed except in the brain of mystics and of victims of hallucination.
But we will leave this.
I have been told that you have spoken of love: it would seem to me impossible, did I not know your audacity.
PROUDHON. I have spoken of it, as well as of Marriage.
AUTHOR. Well! let us make a little excursion into these two territories. We will first speak of Love.
V.
PROUDHON. Love!... It wearies and annoys me greatly. I have never yet been able to make my ideas agree on this subject.