The graces of women do not depend on their ignorance; look at the worthy spouses of our village bourgeois, look at the wives of the opulent merchants in England. Affectation is a kind of pedantry; for I call pedantry the affectation of letting myself talk out of season of a dress by Leroy or a novel by Romagnesi, just as much as the affectation of quoting Fra Paolo[(46)] and the Council of Trent à propos of a discussion on our own mild missionaries. It is the pedantry of dress and good form, it is the necessity of saying exactly the conventional phrase about Rossini, which kills the graces of Parisian women. Nevertheless, in spite of the terrible effects of this contagious malady, is it not in Paris that exist the most delightful women in France? Would not the reason be that chance filled their heads with the most just and interesting ideas? Well, it is these very ideas that I expect from books. I shall not, of course, suggest that they read Grotius of Puffendorf, now that we have Tracy's[(47)] commentary on Montesquieu.
Woman's delicacy depends on the hazardous position in which she finds herself so early placed, on the necessity of spending her life in the midst of cruel and fascinating enemies.
There are, perhaps, fifty thousand females in Great Britain who are exempted by circumstances from all necessary labour: but without work there is no happiness. Passion forces itself to work, and to work of an exceedingly rough kind—work that employs the whole activity of one's being.
A woman with four children and ten thousand francs income works by making stockings or a frock for her daughter. But it cannot be allowed that a woman who has her own carriage is working when she does her embroidery or a piece of tapestry. Apart from some faint glow of vanity, she cannot possibly have any interest in what she is doing. She does not work.
And thus her happiness runs a grave risk.
And what is more, so does the happiness of her lord and master, for a woman whose heart for two months has been enlivened by no other interest than that of her needlework, may be so insolent as to imagine that gallant-love, vanity-love, or, in fine, even physical love, is a very great happiness in comparison with her habitual condition.
"A woman ought not to make people speak about her." To which I answer once more: "Is any woman specially mentioned as being able to read?"
And what is to prevent women, while awaiting a revolution in their destiny, from hiding a study which forms their habitual occupation and furnishes them every day with an honourable share of happiness. I will reveal a secret to them by the way. When you have given yourself a task—for example, to get a clear idea about the conspiracy of Fiescho[(48)], at Genoa in 1547—the most insipid book becomes interesting. The same is true, in love, of meeting someone quite indifferent, who has just seen the person whom you love. This interest is doubled every month, until you give up the conspiracy of Fiescho.
"The true theatre for a woman is the sick-chamber." But you must be careful to secure that the divine goodness redoubles the frequency of illnesses, in order to give occupation to our women. This is arguing from the exceptional.
Moreover, I maintain that a woman ought to spend three or four hours of leisure every day, just as men of sense spend their hours of leisure.