Page 114, l. 23. perfekte Köchin: experienced cook.
Page 116, l. 12. "Dienen lerne," etc.:
Early a woman should learn to serve, for that is her calling;
Since through service alone she finally comes to governing,
Comes to the due command that is hers of right in the household.
Early the sister must wait on her brother, and wait on her parents;
Life must be always with her a perpetual coming and going,
Or be a lifting and carrying, making and doing for others.
Happy for her be she accustomed to think no way is too grievous,
And if the hours of the night be to her as the hours of the daytime;
If she find never a needle too fine, nor a labour too trifling;
Wholly forgetful of self, and caring to live but in others!
Page 117, l. 31. "Par une recontre," etc.: "By a strange chance," says Monsieur Taine, "women are more feminine and men more masculine here than elsewhere. The two natures go to extremes, the one to boldness, to a spirit of enterprise and opposition, to a character that is warlike, imperious, and rough; the other to gentleness, self-denial, patience, inexhaustible affection. Here woman yields completely, a thing unknown in foreign lands, especially in France, and looks upon obedience, pardon, adoration as an honour and a duty, without desiring or striving for anything beyond subordinating herself and becoming daily more absorbed in him whom she has chosen of her own accord and for all time. It is this instinct, an old Germanic instinct, that those great delineators of instinct all paint in a high light!... The spirit of this race is at once primitive and serious. Among women simplicity lasts longer than it does elsewhere. They are slower in losing respect, and in weighing values and characters; they are less ready to suspect evil and to analyse their husbands.... They have not the cleverness, the advanced ideas, the assured behaviour, the precocity which with us turns a young girl into a sophisticated woman and a queen of society in six months. A secluded life and obedience are easier for them. More yielding and more sedentary, they are at once more reserved, more self-centred, more disposed to gaze upon the noble dream that they call duty."
Page 118, l. 28. "Voir la peinture," etc.: "Depiction of this character is to be seen in all English and German literature," he says in a footnote. "The closest of observers, Stendhal, thoroughly impregnated with Italian and French ideas and customs, is amazed at sight of it. He understands nothing of this kind of devotion, 'of this slavery which English husbands have had the cleverness to impose upon their wives under the name of duty.' These are 'customs of the seraglio.'"
Page 121, l. 5. lèse majesté: high treason.
Page 124, l. 5. ordentliche Frau: respectable woman.
Page 127, l. 8. "Mir ist ein Greuel": it is a horror for me.
Page 127, l. 23. Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath: Mrs. privy chief counsellor of government.
Page 130, l. 26. dumm: silly, stupid.