Come, ladies, we might say,—a truce to conventional delicacy and sentimentality. Let men suffer themselves to be deceived by our mask, nothing is more natural; but what is the use of playing the farce among women?
M. de Girardin does not really suppress marriage; he changes it in some respects, but leaves it intact in a religious point of view. If his system should be adopted, therefore, you might be married in the presence of the clergymen of your respective faiths, precisely as was done some seventy years ago, and you would have no fewer scruples than your grandmothers, who believed themselves then sufficiently married.
On the other hand, in suppressing civil marriage, the author does not interdict such and such particular stipulations; if therefore you hold in any degree to the religion of the Code, it will be lawful for you to stipulate in your notarial contract:
1. That you will be submissive to your husbands;
2. That you will permit them to manage your fortune, even contrary to your interests and to those of your children;
3. That without authority from them, you will neither go to law, nor undertake anything, nor sell anything, nor receive anything, nor give anything away;
4. That, so long as they shall live, you renounce all authority over your children; that they can, if they please, take them from you, banish you from them, have them reared by whoever they choose, even by their mistress, finally, give them in marriage contrary to your will;
5. That you recognise their right to carry elsewhere their love, their attentions, their fortune and your own; provided that this does not happen under your roof;
6. That, lastly, you grant their right, if, abandoned by them, you attach yourself to another, to drag you before the bar, to dishonor you, to imprison you with thieves and prostitutes; that even in such case you declare them excusable in killing you.
Yes, ladies, you might stipulate all this, for M. de Girardin disputes no one the rights of lacking dignity and being imbecile; of what then do you complain?