Madame Leverdet—And why not, if you please?
De Ryons [smiling]—It would interfere severely with my studies.
Madame Leverdet—What sort of studies?
De Ryons—My studies of—woman.
Madame Leverdet—Really! I don't understand you.
De Ryons—What! Do you not know that I am making women my particular, my incessant study, and that I am reckoning on leaving some new and very interesting documents dealing with that branch of natural history?—a branch very little understood just at present, in spite of all that has been written on the topic. My friend, I cannot sacrifice the species to the individual; I belong to science. It is quite impossible for me to give myself wholly and completely—as one certainly should do when he marries—to one of those charming and terrible little carnivora for whose sake men dishonor themselves, ruin themselves, kill themselves; whose sole preoccupation, in the midst of the universal carnage that they make, is to dress themselves now like umbrellas and now like table bells.
Madame Leverdet [scornfully]—So you really think you understand women, do you?
De Ryons—I rather think I do. Why, just as you see me this instant, at the end of five minutes' study or conversation I can tell you to what class a woman belongs,—whether to the middle class, to women of rank, artists, or whatever you please; what are her tastes, her characteristics, her antecedents, the state of her heart,—in a word, everything that concerns my special science.
Madame Leverdet—Really! Will you have a glass of water?
De Ryons—Not yet, thank you.