The usual fault is to treat woman as a kind of man, but more generous, more changeable and with whom, above all, no rivalry is possible. It is only too easy to forget that there are two new and peculiar laws, which tyrannise over these unstable beings, in conflict with all the ordinary impulses of human nature—I mean:—
Feminine pride and modesty, and those often inscrutable habits born of modesty.
[1] See the Travels of Bougainville, Cook, etc. In some animals, the female seems to retract at the moment she gives herself. We must expect from comparative anatomy some of the most important revelations about ourselves.
[2] Shows one's love in a new way.
[3] See the admirable picture of these tedious manners at the end of Corinne; and Madame de Staël has made a flattering portrait.
[4] The Bible and Aristocracy take a cruel revenge upon people who believe that duty is everything.
[5] I am advised to suppress this detail—"You take me for a very doubtful woman, to dare tell such stories in my presence."
[6] Modesty is one of the sources of taste in dress: by such and such an arrangement, a woman engages herself in a greater or less degree. This is what makes dress lose its point in old age.
A provincial, who puts up to follow the fashion in Paris, engages herself in an awkward way, which makes people laugh. A woman coming to Paris from the provinces ought to begin by dressing as if she were thirty.