These women are not all bad; oh, no! they are like sheep, that is all. If it were fashionable to be virtuous, very likely they would be so. If it were chic to be devout, no doubt they would pass their life on their knees. But, as it is, they know that a flavour of vice is as necessary to their reputation as great ladies, as sorrel-leaves to soup à la bonne femme. They affect a license if they take it not.
They are like the barber, who said, with much pride, to Voltaire, "Je ne suis qu'un pauvre diable de perruquier, mais je ne crois pas en Dieu plus que les autres."
They may be worth very little, but they are desperately afraid that you should make such a mistake as to think them worth anything at all. You are not likely, if you know them. Still, they are apprehensive.
Though one were to arise from the dead to preach to them, they would only make of him a nine days' wonder, and then laugh a little, and yawn a little, and go on in their own paths.
Out of the eater came forth meat, and from evil there may be begotten good; but out of nullity there can only come nullity. They have wadded their ears, and though Jeremiah wailed of desolation, or Isaiah thundered the wrath of heaven, they would not hear,—they would go on looking at each other's dresses.
What could Paul himself say that would change them?
You cannot make sawdust into marble; you cannot make sea-sand into gold. "Let us alone," is all they ask; and it is all that you could do, though the force and flame of Horeb were in you.
It is very curious, but loss of taste in the nobles has always been followed by a revolution of the mob. The décadence always ushers in the democracy.