A V\V\ <j >-
ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY
FOUNDED 1836
WASHINGTON, D.C. 
 
 
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Woman.
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     UNIFORM  WITH  THIS VOLUME,



             And by the same Author,



LOVE     (L  ' A  M  O  U  R ).
                            *


       One Vol., 12mo.  Muslin.  Price $1  oo. 
WOMAN
(2a  gemttte.)
                    From the French of

                M.  J.  MICHELET,

OF THE FACULTY OF LETTERS,  CHIEF IN THE HISTORICAL SECTION OF THE NATIONAL
   ARCHIVES, AUTHOK OF "A HISTORY OF FRANCE," "HISTORY OF THE ROMAN
       REPUBLIC," "MEMOIRS OF LUTHER," "INTRODUCTION TO UNIVERSAL
            HISTORY," " L'lNSECTE," "L'OISEAU," "l'AMOUR,"
                         ETC., ETC., ETC.
       Translated from the last Paris Edition, by

            J.  W.  Palmer,  M.D.
autfjor of " 2Tf)c Neto airti tfce ©IU," " iffip ants ©oton tfje ErrafoatilJi," nt.
                 NEW  YORK!

Rudd  &  Carleton,  130  Grand  Street,

           paris : l.  hachette  et c '<*.

                   M DCCC LX. 

UU
          Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

                          EUDD & CAELETON,'

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
                           District of New York.
    R. CRAIGHEAD,
Stereoiyper and Elecirotyper,
   BEaiton 13uiltiing,
 81, 83, and 85 Centre Street. 
Translator's   Preface.
   IN THE AUTHOE'S OWN WOEDS.
   " This book omits two subjects, the introduction of which
 in LAmour has been so much censured—adultery and pros-
 titution.   I concluded to leave their discussion to the litera*
 ture of  the  day—which  is inexhaustible  on both  those
 themes.  I have demonstrated my problems  by straight
 lines,  and left to other writers  the  complicated illustration
 by curves.  In their books they elaborately pursue the by-
 paths of  love, but never once  strike  out on its grand and
 fertile highway—that impregnation which in more elevated
 passions  endures even unto death.  Our clever novelists
 are in the identical fog that in former times enveloped the
 casuists, who were, moreover, great analysers.  Escobar and
Busenbaum, who met  with the  same success as  Balzac—
fifty editions each, of their works—forgot only one thing
in their  subtile researches; but that was the very founda-
tion of their  doctrine.   So the writers of to-day lose  sight
of marriage, and lay down rules for libertinism. 
vi                     Preface.

  " This book  differs no less from the serious romances of
our great Utopians—Saint-Simon,  Fourier,  and the rest.
They invoke nature, but a very low order of it, in sympa-
thy with the degradation of the times;  and at once they
put their trust in passional attraction, in our very  inclina-
tion  towards that debased nature.   In this age of stupen-
dous effort, of heroic creation, they have tried  to suppress
effort; but with such a being as man, an energetic  creator,
an artist, effort is part of himself, and he is  all the better
for it.  The popular moral instinct perceives this, and that
is why those great thinkers have not succeeded in founding
a school.  Art, labor, and effort rule us all, and what we
call nature in ourselves is, most frequently, of our own
making,  for we create ourselves day by day.  I  felt the
truth of this while pursuing my anatomical studies last year,
especially on the brain.   The brain is manifestly the organ
of work, the incarnation of our daily life.  Hence its intense
expression, and, if I may so say, its eloquence, in  superior
individuals; I do not hesitate  to call it the most perfect
flower, the most touching beauty in nature—affecting  in
the child, and  often sublime in the man.   Let them call
this Eealism; I am quite indifferent.  There are two sorts of
realism: the one vulgar and vacant—the other,  through
the Eeal, attaining the Idea, which  is its essence and  its
highest truth, consequently its inherent nobility.   If pru-
dery  is "shocked" at my poetry of truth,  the only pure
poetry, it is of no consequence to me; when in U Amour I
broke down  the stupid  barrier which separates literature
from the enlightenment of science, I did not ask the advice 
Preface.
vii
of those shame-faces, who would be chaster than Nature,
and purer than God.
   "Woman needs a faith, and expects it from man, in or-
der to bring up her child;  for there can be no  education
without faith.   The day has come when faith may be laid
down in a formula.  Eousseau could not do it; his age was
not ripe for it.   Conscience is the test of truth; but it must
have two controlling influences—history, which  is the con-
science of the human race, and natural history, which is the
instinctive conscience of nature.  Now formerly neither of
these two existed;  they have been born within the last cen-
tury (1760-1860).
   " When Conscience, History, and Natural History accord
—Believe 1" 
 
Contents.
                          -----o-----

                                                             PAQ«
Translator's Preface........             v


                           Introbndion.

  I—Why People do not Marry,......       12
 II.—The Female Operative........       23
IIL—The "Woman of Letters,......            32
IT.—No Life for "Woman without Man,......42


                           |art gust.

                           EDUCATION.
   I.—Sun,  Air, and Light,........53
  II.—The first Exchange of  Glances, and the Beginnings of Faith, .   57
 III.—Play.—The child Teaching its Mother,.....61
 IV.—The Frail and Sacred Child,......        61 
X
Contents.
                                                              FAGS
   V.—Love at Five Years.—The Doll,......*72
  VI.—Woman a Eeligion,.........
 VII.—Love at Ten Years.—Flowers,     ....         .85
VIII — The Little Household.—The Little Garden.....93
  IX.—The Maternities of Fourteen.—The Metamorphosis,     .     .   98
   X.—History as a Basis of Faith,.......l03
  XL—Pallas.—Eeason,   .    ........I13
 XII.— Andrea del Sarto's " Charity,"......117
XIII.—The Revelation of Heroism,.......123


                           §}ook  £5*conb.
                      WOMAN IN  THE FAMILY.
    I.—The Woman who will Love most.—Of a Different Eace, .      13i
   II.—The Woman who will Love most.—Of the Same Eace,  .    .  138
  III.—The Man who will Love best,.......146
  IV—The Proof,..........152
   V.—How She gives her Heart away,......158
  VI.—Thou shalt leave thy Father and thy Mother,  .     .    .    .165
  VII.—The Young Wife.—Her Solitary Thoughts,   .     .    .    .173
 VIII.—She would be his Partner and his Client,     ....  180
  IX.—Arts and Reading.—The Common Faith,.....186
   X.—The great Legend of Africa.—Woman the Goddess of Good-
           ness.     ..........192
  XL—How Woman Excels Man,.......200
  XII.—The Humiliations of Love.—Confession,.....208
 XIII.—The Communion of Love,.......215
 XIV.—The Offices of Nature,........222 
                           Contents.                         xi



                        WOMAN IN SOCIETT.
                      '                                        PAGE
  I.—Woman an Angel of Peace and Civilization,   .     .  ■  .     .230
 II.—Last Love.—Women's Friendships,......234
III.—Woman Protecting Woman.—Caroline Chisholm,    .    .     .   241
IV.—Consolation for Imprisoned Women,.....247
 V.—The Healing Art in Woman........254
VI.—The Simples,..........262
VII.—Children—Light—the Future,.......268
NOTES,............279 
 
Introduction.
0
                          I.

             WHY PEOPLE  DO NOT MARRY.

  We all perceive the capital fact of our time.  From a sin-
gular  combination of circumstances—social,  religious,  and
economical—Man lives apart from "Woman.  And this is be-
coming more and more common.  They are not merely in dif-
ferent and parallel paths; they are as two travellers, starting
from the same point, one at full speed, the other at a sluggish
pace, but following divergent routes.
  Man, however weak he may be morally, is nevertheless on
a train of ideas, inventions,  and discoveries, so rapid that
sparks dart from the burning rail.
  Woman, hopelessly left behind, remains in" the rut of a past
of which she herself knows but little.  She is distanced, to our
sorrow, but either will not or cannot go faster.
  The worst of it is that they do not seem to  desire to come
together.   They seem to have nothing to say to each other—
a cold hearth, a silent table, a frozen couch.
  " One is not bound," they say, " to put himself out in his
own family."  But they do no better in society, where polite- 
14          Why People  do  not Marry.
ness commands it.  Every one knows  how a parlor divides
itself in the evening into two parlors, one of men, and one of
women.   It has not been much noticed, but it may be tested,
that in a friendly reunion of a dozen persons, if the  hostess
msists  with a sort of gentle  violence  that the  two circles
mingle together and the men converse with the women, silence
succeeds; there is  no more  conversation.
  We must state the thing precisely as it is: they have  no
longer  any ideas in common, any  language in common, and
even as to what might interest both parties they do not know
how to speak,  they have too  completely  lost sight of each
other.  Soon, if we do not take care, in  spite of casual meet-
ings, there will no longer be two sexes but two peoples.
  It is not surprising that the book which  combated these
tendencies—* little book of the heart, without literary preten-
sion, has been  on all  sides sharply criticised.  " X'Amour "
threw itself naively into the breach, invoked good-nature, and
said " Love again."
  At these words  sharp cries were uttered ;  for the diseased
core was touched. " No, we will not love,  we will  not be
happy.  There  is something under all this.   Under that reli-
gious form  which deifies woman, he attempts to strengthen, to
emancipate her mind.   He seeks for a  servile  idol,°to  bind
on his altar."
  Thus, at  the  word Union, broke forth all  the evils of the
time—division,  dissolution,  the sad solitary tastes, the desire
for savage life, which brood in the depths of men's minds
  The  women read and wept.  Their directors (priests or
philosophers, no matter which) dictated language to them
Scarcely did  they dare feebly to defend their defender.  But
they did better, they read over again, they devoured, the for
bidden book, they kept it for  their leisure hours, and hid it
under their pillows. 
             Why  People do not Marry.          15

  It is well consoled by that, this much-abused book, both for
the insults of enemies and the censures of friends.  Neither
the men of the Middle Ages nor those of Free  Love found
their account in it.  X'Amour sought to lead woman back to
the fireside;  they preferred  the  pavement or the convent for
her.
  "A  book about  marriage,  for the  family?   Scandalous!
Rather write  thirty  romances  about  adultery—something
imaginative, something amusing.  You will be much better
received."
  " Why fortify the family?" says a religious journal.  " Isn't
it perfect already ?  Formerly there was something they called
adultery, but that is no  longer to be  seen."  " Excuse us,"
replies a great political thunderer, in a brilliant and extremely
effective feuilleton,  "we  beg your pardon,—it  is still to be
seen, and everywhere; but there is so little passion in it that
it disturbs no one's comfort; it is a thing inherent in French
marriages, and  almost  an institution.  Every nation has its
own morals, and we are not English."
  Comfort! yes, that is  the evil.   Neither the husband nor
the lover  is troubled by it—nor the wife either; she wishes
to get rid of ennui,  that is all.   But in this lukewarm, blood-
less life, in which we invest so little heart, expend so little art,
in which not one of the three deigns  to  make an effort of
any sort, everybody languishes, yawns, palls with nauseating
comfortableness.
  We all understand that well, and no one is in a hurry to be
married.  If  our laws of succession  did not make women
rich, there would be no more marrying, at  least not in the
large towns.
  In the  country  I heard  a married  man,  father  of  a 
ib          Why  People do not Marry.
family, a man ' well posted,' indoctrinating a young neigh-
bor of his: " If you are to stay here,"  he said,  " you will
have to marry; but if you live in Paris, it is not worth the
trouble, you can dispense with it easily."
  We  all know  the saying which marked the fall  of the
world's most intellectual people, the Athenians: " Ah, if we
could have children without women."  It was much  worse
under the Empire.  All the legal penalties, those Julian laws
which made a man marry d coup de bdton, were unsuccessful
in bringing man and woman together, and it seemed that even
the physical passion—that  fine necessity  which  spurs  the
world along and centuples its energies-^-was extinguished here
below.  So that, never again to see a woman, men  fled even
into the Thebais.
  The motives which  now-a-days not only cause marriage to
be feared, but estrange women from society, are various and
complicated.   The first, indisputably, is the increasing misery
of poor girls, putting them at the  mercy of the world—the
easy appropriation of those victims of hunger.  Hence satiety
and enervation, forgetfulness of any  higher love, and mortal
ennui at having to solicit tediously what may be had so easily
every evening.
  Even  he who  has other needs,  and a taste for  fidelity,
who would  like  to  love  with  a single intensity, infinitely
prefers a dependent, gentle, obedient person, who thinks of
no rights  of her  own, and who, if left  to-morrow, will not
move a step—only wishing to please.
  The strong and brilliant  personality of our girls, which too
often asserts itself the very day after the wedding, frightens
the celibate.  There  is no joke in that—the French woman
is a character.  It affords  a chance for immense  happiness__
but sometimes for unhappiness also.
  Our excellent civil  laws  (which are of the  future,  and to- 
Why People  do  not Marry.          17
tvard which the world is gravitating) have none the less added
to the inherent  difficulties of the national character.  The
French woman is an heir, and she knows it,—has a  dowry,
and she knows it.  It is not as in some other countries, where
a daughter, if she has any dowry, has it only in money (a fluid
which easily runs out in the business of the husband).   Here
she has real estate, and even if, her own brother should desire
to purchase it, the law opposes him,  and keeps her rich in
fixtures, secured by the dotal code or  by  certain stipulations.
Such  fortunes are, almost always enduring.  Land does*not
take wings, houses do not crumble; they remain to afford her
a voice in the matter, a personality scarcely ever possessed by
the English or the German woman.
  The latter, so to speak, are absorbed in the husband ; they
sink into him body and property (if they have any property);
so that they are, I believe, more completely than our women
uprooted from their native family, which would not receive
them again.  The wife is reckoned as dead by her own people,
who rejoice in establishing a daughter so as never again to
have expenses on her account.   Whatever may happen, and
wherever her husband may choose to take her, she will go and
remain.  On such conditions marriage is less  formidable to
the men.
  A curious thing in France, contradictory in appearance but
not in reality, is that marriage is very weak, and the esprit de
famille very strong.  It happens (especially in the provinces,
among the rural bourgeoisie),  that the wife who has been
some  time married, as soon as she has children divides her
soul in two parts, one for her children, the other for her rela-
tives,  for her reawakened first affections. What protection, in
that case, for the husband ?  None, the esprit de famille an-
nuls the marriage.
  One can hardly imagine how wearisome is such a wife, bury-
ino- herself in  a retrograde past, letting herself down  to the 
18          Why People do not Marry.
level of a superannuated but lively mother, all imbued with old
things.  The husband lives on quietly,-but soon sickens oi it—
discouraged,  weary, good for nothing.   He loses the  ideas
and hopes of progress he had acquired in his studies and  in
youthful society.  He is soon killed off by the proprietor, by
the dull stifling of that old family hearth.
  Thus under a dowry of a hundred thousand francs is buried
a man who might perhaps have earned as much every year.
  So says the young man to himself in his time of aspiration
and.of confidence.  But whether he  have  more or less, no mat-
ter ;  if he would take his chance, know what he  is capable of,
he will send the dowry to the devil. For the sake of the little
thing that beats under his left breast, he will not, for five hun-
dred francs, become husband to the queen.
  Bachelors have often told me this.  They have also  told
me another thing;  one evening when I had five  or six  at
my house, men of mark, as I was bantering them about their
pretended  celibacy,  one of them, a distinguished  savant,
uttered these very words to me, and quite seriously:   "Never
believe that, whatever  diversions a  man  may  find  without
it, he is not unfortunate in having no fireside—I mean a wife
who is truly his own.   We all  know that, we feel  it.   There
is no other repose for the heart; and not to have a wife, sir,
be sure is a sombre, cruel, bitter life."
  Bitter! on that word all  the others  also laid  stress, and
spoke as he did.
  "But,"  said he, "one consideration  deters us.  All  who
work in France are poor.  We live by our engagements, by
our patronage.  We live honestly, I earn six thousand francs;
but the wife I should choose would  spend that much  on her
toilet.  Their mothers educate them so.  Suppose one  of these
beautiful creatures were bestowed on me, what would  become
of me the  next day, as she left  her rich abode to find  mine  so 
             Why People  do  not Marry.           19

poor.  If I loved her (and I am quite capable of that), imagine
the misery, the wickedness  into which I might be tempted, to
become a little richer, and so displease her a little less.
  " I shall  always remember how being once in a small town
of the South, to which it was the fashion to send sick people,
I saw a startling apparition pass by a place where the mules
were winding  along in a cloud of dust.   It was  a very beau-
tiful woman, clothed like a courtesan—a woman, not a girl__
twenty-five years old,  puffed  out,  distended in  a  fresh and
charming silk robe of blue, clouded with white (a master-piece
of Lyons),  which she  dragged abominably through the  dirt-
iest spots.  She seemed not to rest on the earth.  Her blonde
and  pretty head  tossed back her  jaunty Amazonian hat,
which gave her the air of a piquant young page,  her whole
appearance said,' I jest at everything.'   I felt that this  idol,
monstrously in love with • herself, for all her pride, belonged,
from first to last, to those who flattered her, that they mocked
her,  and that she did not even know what a scruple was.   I
called  Solomon to mind.   lM terpens os  suum dixit: non
sum operata malum.''   This vision remained with me.  It was
not a person, it was not a thing, but it was the fashion, and
the manners of the time, I  saw;  it will always inspire me
with a true terror of marriage."
  " As for me," said a younger bachelor, " the obstacle, the
insuperable scruple, is not crinoline, but religion."
  We  laughed :   but he, becoming  animated,  protested ;
" Yes, religion.  Women are educated in dogmas which are
not ours.  Mothers who  are so desirous to  have their daugh-
ters  married,  give  them an education exactly calculated to
produce divorce.
  " What are the  dogmas  of France ?   If France  herself
does not know, Europe does very well;  its hatred perfectly
reveals  them.  An  enemy, a  very retrograding foreigner, 
20          Why People  do  not  Marry.
once described them to me thus: ' What renders your France
hateful to us,' he  said,  ' is that beneath its  apparent muta-
tions it never changes.'  It is like a lighthouse in eclipse, with
revolving lights.   It  shows  or conceals the flame, but the
focus is always the same.  What focus ?  The wit of Voltaire
(long previous to  Voltaire)  ; in the second  place  ('89), the
grand laws  of the Revolution ;  and in the third place, the
canons of your scientific pope, the Academy of Sciences.'
  " I  disputed it.   He  insisted; and I now see  that  he was
right.  Yes, whatever new  questions  may arise, '89  is the
faith even  of those who  postpone  '89, and refer it to the
future.  It is the faith  of all France, and that is why foreigners
condemn us altogether, and without distinction of parties.
  " Well, the daughters of France  are carefully educated to
hate and contemn what all France loves and believes in.  Thrice
they have embraced,  weakened, killed  the  Revolution; first,
in the sixteenth century, in the matter of  liberty of  con-
science; then, at the end of the eighteenth,  in the question of
political liberty.   They have devoted themselves to the past,
not knowing what indeed that is.  They like to listen to those
Avho say with Pascal:  ' Nothing is sure ; therefore, believe in
the absurd.'  Women are rich in France; they have much
wit, and every means  of instruction.  But they will not learn
anything, nor create a faith for themselves.  Let  them meet a
man of serious faith, a man of heart, who  believes  and loves
established  truths,  and  they say with a smile :  ' That  man
doesn't believe in anything.' "
  There was  a momentary pause.   This rather violent sally
had nevertheless, I perceived, won  the assent  of all present.
I said to them: " If what you have just advanced  be admit-
ted, I believe we must say it has been often just the same in
other ages, and people have married,  nevertheless.   Women
loved dress and luxury, and were conservative, but the men 
Why People  do  not Marry.          21
of those times were doubtless more daring; they faced those
perils, hoping that their influence, their energy, above all their
love, the master  and conqueror of conquerors, would effect
happy  changes in their favor.   Intrepid Curtii, they  threw
themselves boldly into the gulf of uncertainties, and very
happily for us.  For, gentlemen, but for the audacity of our
fathers, we had never been born.
  " Now, will you permit a friend older than you to speak with
frankness ?  Then I shall venture to tell you that if you were
truly alone, if you endured with out consolation the  life  you
find so bitter, you would make haste to change it, you would
say: Love is strong and can do whatever it will. The greater
will be the glory of converting these absurd and charming
beauties  to reason.   With a great, resolute, and  persevering
purpose, well-chosen means, and skilfully calculated circum-
stances, one may do  much.   But  it  is necessary to love, to
love intensely, and  love a  single object.  No coldness.   The
cultivated and coveted woman infallibly belongs to the man.
If the  man of this age complains that he does not reach her
soul, it is because he has not what  subdues the soul, viz.  con-
centrated strength of desire.
  " Now, to speak  only  of the obstacle  first alleged, of the
unrestrained pride of women, their madness for the toilet, etc.:
it seems to me that this applies especially to the upper classes,
to rich ladies, or to those who mingle with wealthy people.
There are two or three hundred thousand of these.   But do
you know how many women there are in France?   Eighteen
millions, and eighteen hundred thousand  marriageable.
  "It would be great injustice to accuse them all of the wrongs
and follies of  ' our  best  society.'  If they imitate it at a dis-
tance,  it is   not  always  from  choice.  Ladies,  by  their
example, often by their contempt or their ridicule, cause great
misfortunes  in this way.  They impose an impossible luxury 
22          Why People  do  not Marry.
on poor  creatures who sometimes would not care for it, but
who by their position, involving serious interests, are forced to
be brilliant; and to be so, they plunge into great extravagance.
  " Women who  have their own peculiar world and so many
secrets in common, ought certainly to love each other a little,
and sustain each other, instead of  warring among themselves.
They inflict mutual injury, in  a  thousand eases, indirectly.
The  wealthy dame whose luxury changes the costume of the
poor girl, does the latter a great wrong—she  prevents her
marriage; for no workman cares to marry a doll, so  expen-
sive  to dress.   If she remains a maiden, she is, perhaps, an
office or a shop  girl, but even  in  that capacity the lady still
harms her; she prefers to deal with a clerk, in a black coat, a
flatterer,  and finds him more womanly than the woman.  The
shopkeepers have  thus been led to substitute, at great ex-
pense, the clerk for the girl, who cost much less.
  " What will become of her ?   If she is pretty, twenty years
of age, she will  be 'protected,' and will pass  from hand  to
hand.  Soon fading, before thirty,  she will become a seam-
stress, and work for her ten sous a day.  She has no means of
living save by earning her bread every night in shame.  Thus
the woman of wealth, depreciating her own sex, goes on mak-
ing celibacy more and more economical, and marriage unpro-
fitable, until, by a terrible retribution, her  own daughter will
never be  able to marry.
  "Do you wish me, gentlemen, to briefly portray the lot
of woman in France?  No one  has  yet  done it with sim-
plicity.  This picture, if I  do  not deceive myself, will touch
your hearts, and perhaps enlighten you,  and  will prevent
you  from confounding very different classes in the same ana-
thema.''
•0' 
The  Female  Operative.
23
                           II.

                THE  FEMALE OPERATIVE.

  When the English manufacturers, enormously enriched by
new machinery, complained to Pitt, saying : " We cannot go
on,  we do not make money enough,"  he gave them a terrible
answer, a stain on his memory:  " Take the children."
  How much more guilty are those who took women, who
opened to the wretchedness of the city girl, to the blindness of
the  peasant, the fatal resource of an exterminating labor, and
the  promiscuity of factories!  He who takes the woman, takes
also the child;   for in every one*that perishes, a family  is
destroyed,  many children, and  the hope of generations to
come.
  Barbarism of our West!  Woman  is no  longer esteemed
fur  the love and  happiness of man, still less for maternity and
the  power of reproduction—but as an operative.
  Operative! an impious,  sordid word,  which no language
ever had, which  no period could have ever understood before
this iron age, and which  alone would  counterbalance all our
pretended progress.
  Here comes the close band of economists, doctors  of the
net proceeds.  " But,  sir," they say, " the high economic and
social necessities!   Industry would be  obstructed, stopped.
In the name of these same poor classes," etc., etc.
  The first necessity is to live, and palpably, we are perishing.
The population no longer increases, and its quality is degene-
rating.  The peasant  girl dies of labor, the  female operative
of hunger.  What children can we expect from them ?  Abor-
tions, more and more.
  " But a people does not perish !"  Many  peoples, even of
those which still figure on  the  map, no longer  exist.  The
Scottish Highlanders  have disappeared.  Ireland  no  longer
presents a  race.  Wealthy, absorbing England, that prodi- 
24             The Female Operative.
gious blood-sucker of the world, does not succeed  in renew-
ing itself by the most enormous alimentation.   The race is
changing and growing weak  there, has recourse to stimu-
lants, to  alcohol, and is more and more enfeebled.  Those
who saw it in 1815 di<Lnot recognise it in 1830, and  how
much less to-day !
  What can the State do for this ?  Very little  in England,
where the industrial life swallows up everything,  the whole
country being now but one factory.  But an infinite good in
France, where we as yet have  so few laborers, comparatively.
  How many things that were impossible, have  nevertheless
been done !  It was impossible to abolish lotteries ; they are
abolished.  We would have  sworn it was  impossible  to
demolish  Paris  in order to re-build it:  but that was  easily
done by a brief clause in the code (Appropriation  for Public
Improvements).
  I see two peoples in our cities :
  The  one dressed in woollen—that is man,—the other in
wretched cotton, and that too, even in winter.
  By the former I mean the lowest operative, the  least paid
bungler—a servant of operatives.  This man, however, eats
meat in the morning (a Bologna sausage, or something else).
In the evening he enters a cookshop, and has a dish of meat,
and even drinks some bad wine.
  The woman of the same condition takes a sou's worth of
milk in the morning, some bread at noon, and some bread at
night, and very rarely a bit of cheese.  Do you deny that ?
It is certain ;  I will prove it presently.  Her day's  income is
ten sous, and cannot be  eleven,  for  a reason  which I  will
explain.
  Why is it  so ?   The man  no longer wishes  to  marry, no
longer wishes to protect the woman.  He lives greedily alone.
   Can it be said that he  leads an abstinent  life ?   No.  He 
The Female Operative.
25
deprives himself of nothing.  Besotted  on Sunday night,
he will find without  seeking some hungry shadow of a wo
man, and will outrage the dead creature..
  One blushes at being a man.
  " I make too little money,"  says he ;  four or five times
more than  the  woman, in most trades.  He earns  forty or
fifty sous, and she ten, as we shall see.
  The poverty of the male operative would  be wealth, abun
dance, luxury, to  the female.
  The former complains  much the more; and, as soon as he is
in want at all, he wants many more things.  We may say of
them what has been said of the Englishman and the Irishman :
" The Irishman is hungry  for  potatoes, the Englishman is
hungry for  meats, sugar, tea, beer, liquors, etc."
  In the budget of the  workman's necessities I  have  over-
looked two things in which he indulges at any price, and of
which the workwoman never thinks: tobacco and beer.  In
most  cases  these  two articles absorb more money than a
family.
  The pay  of the men has, I know, sustained a rude shock,
chiefly from  the  effect  of the  precious  metal crisis, which
changed the value of  silver.  Their wages will rise again, but
slowly; time is needed to restore the equilibrium.   But, allow-
ing for this, the difference still exists; the woman is much the
more affected.  It is meats and wine  that  he must give up :
with her, it is bread itself.  She cannot economize;  one step
lower, and  she dies.
  " It is their own fault,"  says the economist.   " Why are
they so mad as to leave their fields, and come to die of hunger
in towns?  If it is not the workwoman herself,  it was  her
                           9 
26             The Female Operative.
mother Avho came, and instead of a peasant became a domes-
tic.  She did not fail, though unmarried, to have a child, Avhich
child is the operative."
  My dear Sir, do you know Avhat country life is in France—
How terrible,  excessive, severe the labor is ?  Women do not
till in England; they are very miserable,  but yet they have
sheds to protect  them from the Avind and rain.  Germany,
Avith its forests and its prairies,  Avith its very slow labor, and
national gentleness, does not crush out Avoman as Ave do.   The
dunes arator of the poet has his reality scarcely anywhere
but  here.  Why?  He is a proprietor—proprietor of little
or nothing, and in debt.    By a  furious, blind  labor, and
unskilful agriculture, he  struggles  Avith the  vulture;   the
land threatens to escape from him.  Rather than that should
happen, he Avill bury himself in it, if need be ;  but, first, cer-
tainly, his Avife.   It is for this that  he marries,  in order to
have a Avorkman ; in the Antilles, they buy a negro; in France,
we marry a Avife.
  She  is preferred who has a small appetite, a lithe and slen-
der  figure—from an idea that  she  will eat  less (a historic
fact).
  She has a great heart, this poor French woman, and does as
much or more than is required.  She drives the ass (in light
soils),  and the man holds the plough.  In any case, she has
the hardest part.  He prunes the vine at his ease—she scrapes
and digs. He has respites—she  none.   He has festive  occa-
sions and friends.  He  goes alone  to  the tavern—she goes
for a moment to church, and there falls asleep.   If he returns
at night intoxicated, she is beaten, and often, which is worst,
when she is enceinte. Then she endures for a year her double
suffering, in heat and cold, chilled by the Avind, drenched by
the rain, daily.
  Most  of them die of consumption, especially in the north
(see the statistics).  No constitution can withstand their mode 
The  Female  Operative.             27
of life. Then forgive the mother if she desires her daughter to
suffer less, if she sends her to the factory, there at least  she
will have a roof over her head; or makes her a domestic in
town, Avhere she Avill partake of the amenities  of the bour-
geoisie.  The girl is only too eager for that; every woman
has in fancy little needs of  elegance, finery, and aristocracy.
  She is at once punished for it.  She no longer  sees the sun.
Her mistress is often very hard, especially if the girl be pretty.
She is immolated to spoiled  children, vicious monkeys, and
cruel  little cats, who make her their plaything;  or else she is
blamed, scolded, teased, abused.  Then she would be glad to
die, home-sickness takes possession of her; but  she  knows
that her father would never receive her.  She groAvs pale and
wastes away.
  Only the master is good to her.  He would console her if he
dared. He clearly sees that in her desolate state, in Avhich  she
has never a word of kindness, the little one is in the power of
any one  who will evince the least friendship for her.  The
opportunity soon arrives, madame being in the country.  The
resistance is not great;  he is her  master,  and  he is strong.
She is enceinte, and a  great  storm folloAvs.  The husband,
ashamed, shrugs his shoulders.  She is driven  out of doors,
and Avithout bread, lives in the streets till  she can go to  the
hospital for her accouchement.   (This is the almost invariable
story.  See  the confessions noted by physicians.)
  What  will be  her life, great God,  Avhat  struggles, what
difficulties, if she has so good a heart, so much courage, as to
wish to rear her ckild !
  Let  us notice the  condition of Avoman  thus burdened, m
circumstances comparatiATely favorable.
  A young Protestant Avidow, of very austere morals, laborious,
economical,  temperate,  exemplary in every sense, agreeable
also, in  spite of all  she  has suffered,  lives  behind the Hotel- 
28             The  Female  Operative.
Dieu, in an unhealthy street, loAver than the wharf.   She has
a sickly child, Avho is always trying to go to school, always
falling ill, and cannot get on. Her rent is raised, less than many
others, from  one hundred  and  twenty to one hundred  and
sixty francs.  She  said to two excellent ladies, " When I can
go out by the day, they will give me twenty sous, even twenty-
five; but that happens scarcely more than two or three times
a Aveek.  If you had not had the goodness to aid me Avith my
rent, by giving me five francs a  month, I must have done like
the others, and, to support my child, have Avalked the streets
in the evening."
  The poor  Avoman Avho thus  Avalks the streets trembling,
alas !  to offer herself up, is immeasurably  above the coarse
man, Avhom  she must address.  Our work-women Avho  have
so much wit, taste, and tact, are usually jmysically favored,
graceful, and delicate.  What is the difference between them
and the ladies of the higher classes ?   The foot ?  No.  The
figure ? No.  The hand alone  constitutes the difference, be-
cause  the poor operative, forced to wash often, passing the
Avinter in her little room Avith  a simple  foot-stove, has her
hands, her only means of labor and of life, swollen grievously,
bursting Avith chilblains.  With almost only that exception
the same woman, if a little dressed, is  Madame la Comtesse,
as much as  any in the grand Faubourg.   She has not the
jargon of the world; she is much more romantic, more lively.
Let but a gleam of happiness fall on her,  and she will eclipse
them all.
  AVe do not sufficiently remark Avhat an aristocracy Avomen
form; there is no populace among them.
  As I Avas driving down the street, a young woman Avith a
gentle, feminine countenance,  Avorn, but delicate, pretty, and
distinguished, followed the carriage addressing me in vain  for
I did not understand English.  Her beautiful supplicating blue
eyes seemed profoundly sorrowful under her little straw hat 
The  Female  Operative.             29
  " Sir," said I to my neighbor, Avho understood  French,
" can you tell me Avhat that charming person is saying to me,
she Avho  has the air of a duchess, and Avho for some reason
persists in  folloAving the carriage."   " Sir," said  he,  politely,
" I  am  inclined to believe that she is an operative  Avithout
Avork, who  is  begging in violation of the law."  ,
  Two important events have changed the lot of Avoman in
Europe, in these latter years.
  She has only tAvo great trades,  spinning and seAving.  The
others  (embroidery,  flowers,  etc.) scarcely  deserve to  be
counted. Woman is a spinner, Avoman is a seamstress.  It has
been her business in all times: it  is her universal history.
  Well, it is no longer so;  it has just been changed.  The
loom has suppressed the spinner.   It is not only her earnings,
but a Avhole Avorld  of habits that she  has lost.   The peasant
used to  spin  as she Avatched her  children and fire; she spun
in the watches of the night; she  spun as she Avalked, driving
her cow or her sheep.
  The seamstress Avas the operative of towns; she Avrought at
home, either continuously, the  livelong day, or divided the
labor with her household cares.   For all important purposes,
this no  longer exists. First, convents and prisons presented
a terrible competition to the isolated seamstress;  noAV the
seAving-machine comes to annihilate her.
  The achievements of the two machines, cheapness and good
Avork, will make their products prevail everywhere.  There
is  nothing to  be said  against  them, nothing to  be done.
Indeed, these great inventions will, in the end, be advantage-
ous to the human race ;  but their  effects  are  cruel in the
period of transition.
  How  many women in Europe, and elsewhere, will be de-
voured  by these tAvo terrible ogres, the brazen spinner and
the iron sewer ?  Millions—but it can never be calculated. 
30             The  Female  Operative.
  The needle-Avomen were so suddenly famished in England,
that many societies are occupied in promoting their emigra-
tion to Australia.  The sum advanced is seven  hundred and
twenty francs, but the  emigrant  can, after  the  first year,
return half of it (Blosseville).  In that country, whore the
males are infinitely the more numerous, she marries Avithout
difficulty, fortifying with new families that powerful colony,
more stable than the Indian empire.
  What becomes of ours ?  They do not  make much noise.
They do not, like the conspiring and sturdy laborers, masons,
carpenters,  make  a formidable  strike, and  dictate terms.
They die of hunger, and that is all. The fearful mortality of
1854 fell especially on them.
  Since that time, their condition has been sorely aggraAated.
Ladies' gaiters are seAved by machinery.  FloAver-makers are
paid much less.
  To inform myself on this sad subject, I spoke  of it to many
persons, especially to my venerable friend  and associate, Dr.
Villermi  and M. de Guerry, whose excellent works are  so
highly esteemed, and to a young statistician whose  vigorous
method I had  much admired, Dr. Bertillon.  He had the
extreme kindness to make a serious task1 of it, combining with
the data  furnished by the laboring classes, others communi-
cated by public officers.   I wish he would complete and pub-
lish it.
  I will give but one line of his statement:  "In the great trade
which occupies all women  (except a very feAv), needlework,
they can earn but ten sous a day."
  Why ?  " Because machinery, which is still dear  enough,
does the labor  for  ten  sous.   If the  woman  demanded
eleven, the machine would be preferred."
  And hoAV does  she make up the loss?  "She Avalks the
street at night."
  That is Avhy the number of files  publiques, registered and
numbered, does not increase in Paris, and, I believe, diminishes
a little. 
The  Woman  of Letters.            31
  Man  does not content himself with inventifig machines
Avhich suppress the two great trades of woman, he takes pos-
session  directly of the secondary industries by which  she
lived, and descends  to all the avocations of weakness.  Can
the Avoman,  at her  will, rise to the  trades  that demand
strength, and assume those of men?  By no means.
  The Nonchalant and lazy ladies,  buried in  divans,  may
say as  much as they like: "Woman is not  an invalid."
That which  is nothing, Avhen one may be nursed tAvo or three
days, becomes overwhelming to her Avho has no repose,  and
she becomes ill at once.
  In  fact, woman cannot labor long,  either standing or sit-
ting.  If she is always sitting, the blood rises, the breast is
irritated, the stomach embarrassed, the head clogged.  If she
stands,  like  the laundress, or the compositor,  she has other
sanguineous accidents.  She can labor long only by vary-
ing her position, as-  she  does in her  household,  going and
corning.
  A household she ought to have, she ought to  be married.




                           III.

                THE  WOMAN  OF LETTERS.

  The  well-educated girl, as she is called who can teach, be-
comes governess in a family, or " professor" of  certain arts-
does she fare any better in her business ?   I wish I could say
yes.  Those gentle offices do not the less cause her an infini-
tude of risks, altogether a troubled life, an abortive and some-
times tragical destiny.   Everything is difficult for the solitary
Avoman, everything a barrier or a precipice.
  Fifteen years ago I received a visit from a young and amiable
girl, sent by her parents from a provincial place to Paris.   She
was directed to a friend of  her family, Avho might aid her to 
32             The Woman of Letters.

gain a livelihood by procuring pupils for her.  I expressed
my astonishment at their imprudence.   Then she told me all.
They had sent her into this peril to avoid another; she had at
home a  lover, entirely  worthy,  Avho  wished to  marry her.
He  Avas a most excellent man, a man of talent; but, alas! he
was poor.  " My parents  esteem, love him," said she, " but
they fear we Avould die of hunger."
  I told her Avithout hesitation :  " It is better to die of  hun-
ger than  to run the gauntlet of Paris pavements.  I bid you,
miss, return—not to-morroAV, but to-day—to  your  parents.
Every  hour  that you remain  here you will  lose a fortune.
Alone, inexperienced, AAdiat Avill become of you ?"
  She folloAved my advice.  Her parents consented, and she
Avas married.  Her life  Avas a hard one, full of trials, but ex-
emplary and honorable,  sharing her time between the care of
her children and the  intelligent aid she afforded her husband
in his labors—I can still  see her running in the winter to the
libraries, Avhere she  took notes  for him.  With all these mise-
ries, and the grief I felt  at not  being able to help their proud
poverty,  I never regretted the counsel I gave her.   She en-
joyed much in her heart, suffered  only in her fortune;  there
was never a happier household.  She died, beloved, pure, and
respected.
  The worst destiny for woman is to live alone.
  Alone !  the very word is sad to utter.   And Iioav can there
be on earth a Lone Woman ?
  What!  Are there no  more  men ?  Are  Ave in the last
days of the  world ?  Does the consummation of all things,
the approach of the final judgment, render us so selfish that
we shut ourselves up in fear of the future, and in the shame
of solitary pleasures ?
  We recognise the Lone Woman at the first glanee.  Take her
in her OAvn neighborhood, or  anyAvhere Avhere she is  known 
The  Woman  of Letters.
33
and she has the disengaged, free, elegantly lightsome  air pe-
culiar to the Avomen of France.
  But in a place where  she  thinks herself less observed, and
lets herself oat, Avhat sadness, Avhat visible dejection!   I met
some of these last Avinter, still young, but in the decay of their
bloom, fallen from the hat to the  bonnet, grown a little thin
and pale—Avith ennui and anxiety—with bad and innutritions
food, perhaps.  To make them again beautiful  and charming,
a very little would have sufficed: hope, and three months  of
happiness.
  What obstacles  present themselves to the solitary woman !
She can scarcely go out in the evening; she Avould be taken
for a  " girl."  There  are  a  thousand places Avhere only men
are seen, and  if anything should bring her there, they are
surprised,  and laugh sillily.  For example, suppose  she  is
belated on  the skirts of Parjs,  and hungry,  she dare not
enter a restaurant.  She would cause a sensation, make her-
self a sight;  every  eye  Avould be fixed  upon  her,  and she
would hear reckless  and unpleasant conjectures.  She has a
whole league to return, and, having arrived late, kindles her
fire, prepares her slight repast.  She avoids making-a noise,
because a curious neighbor—some stupid student, or young
clerk, perhaps—might  apply his eye to the keyhole, or  ab-
ruptly enter to offer his services.  The vexatious indiscrimi-
nateness,  or rather the slavishness of our vast and abominable
barracks, Avhich we call houses, make her tremble  at  a thou-
sand  things, and hesitate at every step.   All is  embarrassing
for her, and free to a  man.  Hoav cautiously,  for example,
does  she shut herself  in, Avhen on Sunday her  young and
noisy neighbors have Avhat they call a repas de garfons.
   Let us  examine this house.
   She lives in the fourth story, and makes so little noise that
 the occupant of the third believed  for some  time that there
 was  no  one*above   him.  He   is  scarcely less unfortunate
 than  she — a man  Avhom  delicate  health  and a  modest
 income have induced to be  idle.  Without being  old, he  has
                             2* 
34            The Woman  of Letters.
already the prudent habits of a man Avho is for ever occupied
in taking care of himself.  A piano which wakes him a  little
sooner than he would like, has revealed the solitary Avoman;
then,  once, he detected on the stairway a charming Avoman,
rather pale,  but of  fragile elegance,  and his curiosity  is
aroused.  Nothing is easier than to gratify it;  the porters
are not dumb, and her life is  so transparent.   Except Avium
she is giving her lessons, she is ahvays at home, and  always
studying ; she is preparing for  examination, preferring to be a
governess, in order to have the protection of a family.  In
fact, they speak so Avell of her, that he  begins to  reflect.
" Ah !  if I Avere not poor!"  says he.   " It is very pleasant to
have the society of a pretty Avoman who understands every-
thing ; saves you from passing your evenings at the theatre
or the  cafe.  But Avhen, like me, a man has only ten  thousand
livres income,  he cannot  marry."
  He then calculates and adds up, but, as usual in such cases,
makes  the account double, combining  the probable  expenses
of a married man, and those of the bachelor Avho keeps up the
cafe and the  theatre.   It was thus that one of my friends,
one of the most brilliant journalists of Paris, discovered that
to support two, without a domestic,  in a tiny house in the
suburbs, an  income of thirty thousand livres Avould  be
necessary.
  This lamentable  life of honorable  solitude and desperate
ennui,  is that Avhich is led by those wandering shades, called
in England members of clubs.   The system is beginning also
in France.  Very Avell catered to, very Avell warmed, in splen-
did establishments, having at hand all the journals, and choice
libraries, living together like well-educated and polished dead
men,   they  progress  in spleen,  and prepare  themselves
for suicide.  Everything is so well organized that  speech  is
useless; there is no  need even of signs.  On certain days of
the year, a tailor presents himself and takes measures, Avithout
speaking.  There is not a Avoman in the house, nor Avould they
go to the houses  of Avomen.  But once a Aveek a o-irl will 
               The  Woman  of Letters.            35

bring gloves, and such things, paid for in advance, and noise-
lessly depart in five minutes.
  I have  sometimes, in an  omnibus, met a young  girl, mo-
destly attired, always Avearing a hat, whose  eyes  were fixed
on a book, and never once raised.  Seated close to  her, I have
observed it without staring.
  Most frequently, the book was some  grammar, or  one  ol
those manuals of examination.  Little books, thick and com-
pact, in which all the sciences are concentrated in a dry, un-
digested form, as if they were flint.   Nevertheless, she put it
all into her stomach, that young victim.  Certainly, she Avas
eager to absorb as much as  possible.  She devoted  her days
and nights to it, even the  moments of repose the omnibus
afforded, between the lessons she gave and those she received
at the tAvo ends of Paris.  That inexorable idea pursued her.
She never thought of raising her eyes.  Fear of that  exami-
nation weighed heavily on her.
  We hardly know how alarmed they are. I have seen some
Avho, for several weeks beforehand, did not sleep, and scarcely
breathed,  but only wept.
  We must have compassion.
  Observe, that in the present state of our  morals, I am a
strong  partisan  of these examinations, Avhich facilitate an
honorable existence,  somewhat more free.  I  do not ask that
they be  simplified,  that  the field  of  required  studies be
narroAved; yet, I would like a different  method:  in history,
for example, a small number  of great cardinal facts, Avith their
circumstances  and details, and no tables of contents.   I sub-
mit this reflection to my learned colleagues and friends, Avho
are  the judges in these examinations.
  I would like, moreover, to  see their timidity humored; that
the  examinations should be public only to ladies, and that no
men but the relates of the girls be admitted.  It is hard that 
36            The  Woman  of Letters.
 they should be compelled to submit to such a trial before a
 curious audience, Avith a sprinkling  of jesting young men.
 To each, also, should be left  the  choice of the day for  her
 examination.  To many, the trial is terrible, and Avithout this
 precaution might endanger their lives.
   Eugene Sue, in a feebly executed romance, but marked by ad-
 mirable observation {LaGouvernante), presents a true picture
 of the life of a girl suddenly installed in the house of a stranger,
 Avhose children she is to educate.  Equal, or superior, by  her
 education,  modest in her position and in her character, she is
 only too interesting.   The  father is  much  touched by her;
 the son declares himself in love; the servants are  jealous of
 the attentions of Avhich she is the  object, and  scandalize her.
 But how many  things  are to be  added ?   Hoav incomplete
 has Sue left the sad Iliad of Avhat she has to suffer, even  the
 dangers she has to fear ?   We might cite  astonishing, incre-
 dible facts: here, the passion of the father,  rising even  to
 crime, attempting to frighten a virtuous girl, cutting her linen
 and her dresses, even burning her curtains!  There, a corrupt
 mother, Avishing to gain time,  and  to marry  her son as late as
 possible, finds it  convenient to amuse and detain him Avith  the
 ruin of a poor young woman of no consequence, Avho has
 neither parents  nor protector.   She flatters, caresses  the
 credulous girl, and, Avithout  appearing to  do so, arranges
 opportunities and contrives  accidents.  On the other hand  I
 have sometimes seen the mistress of a house  so violent and so
jealous, making the life of the unhappy creature so bitter, that
 from the excess of her sufferings, she justly sought relief under
 the protection of the husband.
  To a young soul, proud and  pure, and  courageous against
fate, the temptation  is  natural to  escape from  individual
dependence by addressing herself to the community, to make
the public her protector, and to believe that she can live by 
The  Woman  of Letters.            37
the fruits of her OAvn thought.  Would that women  might
here make their revelations;  one only, I believe, has ven-
tured to do so,—in a Aery powerful romance, the defect  of
which is, that  it is so short that the  situations do not  attain
their full effect.  This book (Une fausse Position) appeared
fifteen years ago, and disappeared at once.  It  is the exact
itinerary, the guide-book of a poor literary woman, the sche-
dule of the tolls, town-dues, turnpike rates, admission charges,
etc., Avhich are demanded  of her for the privilege of going
anywhere ;  a  record of the churlishness  and vexation her
resistance causes all about her,  so that she is surrounded with
obstacles, I might almost say Avith murderous obstacles.
   Did you ever see the children in Provence conspire against
an insect Avhich they  consider dangerous?  They arrange
straws or dry  twigs around it, and then light them, so that to
whatever side the poor  creature  turns, it encounters the
flame, is cruelly burned, and falls back ;  it repeats this several
times, and persists in  its efforts  with an obstinate courage, but
always in vain.  It cannot  pass that circle of fire.
   You see the same  thing in the theatre.  An energetic and
beautiful Avoman, very  strong of heart,  says to  herself:  "In
literature I must  submit  to the critics, Avho create  public
opinion.  But on the stage, I am in person before my  judge,
the public, and I  plead my own cause.   I do not need that
any one should say:  ' She has talent!'   But  I  say:  ' See
for yourself!'"
   What a terrible mistake!  The croAvd  decides much less
by what it sees, than by  Avhat somebody affirms to be  the
 judgment of  the crowd.   The  audience may be touched by
an actress, but the individual hesitates to say so.  Each will
wait, fearing  the ridicule that  attaches  to extravagant enthu-
siasm.   The  authorized censors, those  professional jesters,
must give the signal for admiration.   Then the public  breaks
out, and dares  to  admire, overstepping indeed all  that  the
emotion of the individual Avould have alloAved.
   But merely to reach this day of judgment for which  she 
38            The  Woman  of Letters.
 has  everything  to  fear, how disgraceful the preliminaries !
 What interested, suspicious, indelicate men, have  the  sove-
 reignty of her fate !
   By  Avhat wire-pulling and Avhat  trials have  debuts been
 made  successful ?  How has she conciliated those who intro-
 duce and recommend her—first, the manager, to whom she is
 presented ; then the popular author, who is to create a role for
 her; and finally, the critics.   And I do not allude here to  the
 great organs of the  press, Avhich are supposed to  have some
 respect for themselves, but to the most obscure and insignifi-
 cant.  It is enough that some green employe, Avho passes
 his life in  an office,  making  pens, has scribbled a few satirical
 lines,—that  a  contemptible  journal prints them, and distri-
 butes them between the acts.  Animated and encouraged by
 the first applause, the  artiste reappears on the stage, full of
 hope, but  she  does  not recognise the house.  The charm is
 broken, the audience chilled; they  look at each  other and
 smile.
  I Avas young Avhen I Avitnessed a very impressive scene, at
 the remembrance of Avhich I am still indignant.  I am glad to
 think that noAv-a-days things are changed.
  At the house of one of these terrible critics, Avith Avhom I
 Avas  acquainted, I  saw a slight girl  enter, very simply clad,
 with a sweet and winning countenance, but already wearied
 and a little faded.  She said, to the point, that she  had come
to ask a favor, to beg him at least to tell her why he did not
let a day pass without  attacking, crushing her.   He  replied
boldly,—not that she performed poorly, but that she Avas dis-
 courteous,—that to his first somewhat  favorable article she
 should have responded  by a  token of gratitude, a substantial
 souvenir.  " Alas !  Sir, I am so poor ! I earn almost nothing,
 and I must  support  my mother."—"What of that!  take "a
lover."—" But  I am not  pretty ;   and,  besides,  I  am  so
 Avretched.  Only lively Avomen are loved."—" No, you cannot
 make  me believe  that.   You  are  pretty,  Miss,  but  your
 temper is bad.  You aro proud, but that will avail you  no 
The  Woman  of Letters.            39
thing.  You must do like the others, and take a lover."   He
stuck to that.
  I have never been  able to understand  hoAV a man could
have the courage to hiss a woman.   The individual man is per-
haps good enough, but  they are cruel as a public.   This  is
Avhat sometimes occurs in a  provincial toAvn:  to force the
manager to expend more than he is able, and impoit the best
talent, they every night kill off some unfortunate actress, Avho,
Avhatever her talent may be, loses her  Avits before such impla-
cable animosity, such a  shameful punishment.  She  Avavers,
stammers, and knows not what she is saying ;  then she Aveeps
and  stands mute, Avith imploring  eyes.  But still they laugh,
and they hiss.   So she becomes indignant, and revolts against
such barbarism.  But then the tempest grows so horrible and
ferocious, that she prostrates  herself before them, and prays
for pardon.
  Accursed be the man who breaks down a woman, Avho takes
from her her pride, her courage, and her soul!  In Une fausse
Position this moment.is indicated so tragically and truly, that
we feel it is nature itself, and taken from  the life.  Camille,
the  literary Avoman,  ingeniously  surrounded by  the circle
of fire, having no escape, Avished but to die.  She is prevented
only by an unforeseen chance, an inevitable, imperious chance,
still to do something good.  Softened by charity, she loses the
strength that pride had lent to her despair.  A savior comes
to her,  and she yields.  She is humbled, disarmed by the
great dilemma that so bothers the mystics :  " If vice  is'a sin,
pride is a greater  sin."  Suddenly she, who had carried her
head so high, becomes good, docile, and obedient.   She makes
the Avoman's confession: "Ineed a master—command, direct
me—I Avill do Avhatever you will."
  Ah! as soon  as she  is a woman again, as soon as she is gen-
tle, and no longer proud, all is  kindly, all is smooth.  The 
40            The Woman  of Letters.
saints are pleased that she is humbled, and the worldly have
good hopes of her.  The  doors of literature and the theatre
are opened to her, all strive and combine for her.  The more
dead her heart is, the better is she established in life.   Every-
thing looks Avell  again ;  those Avho made war upon the artist,
upon the laborious  and independent woman, now side with
the submissive woman—and henceforth she has a support.
  The author of this romance tortures, but saves the heroine
in the end.   In her heart is the burning fire of true love.   She
yields  and  subdues her spirit before she is degraded.   Few
have  that happiness; most haAre suffered  too  much,  fallen
too low, to feel so vividly;  they submit to their fate, and are
slaves—fat and flourishing slaves.
  Slaves  to  whom? you ask.  Slaves to that uncertain  and
unknoAvn being, as frivolous as he is irresponsible,  Avithout
consideration or pity.  His name ?  It is Nemo—the  name
under which Ulysses escaped from the Cyclop.   Here, it is the
Cyclop himself, the devouring Minotaur.    It is nobody, every-
body.
  I said  she was a slave—more  miserably a  slave than the
planter's  negro,  or  the  registered prostitute in the gutter.
How so ?   Because these Avretched sufferers have at  least  no
anxieties, they fear  no loss of work, they are fed by their
masters.  The poor camellia, on the  contrary, is  sure  of
nothing.  She may be turned adrift any day, and left to die
of hunger.   She seems  gay and careless; it is her trade to
smile ; so she smiles, and says : " Starved to-morroAv, perhaps,
and for a home a milestone ! "
  Even in  her secret thought, she tries to be gay—afraid of
being ill, and growing thin.  It is atrocious to be unable to
be sad; but she Avell  knows that notwithstanding the  some-
what ironical regard her friends express for her, they Avould
never forgive her a day of languor, or the least alteration 
The  Woman  of Letters.            41
A certain  hue of suffering, a- slight sickly paleness,  which
would embellish the fine lady and make her lover mad for her,
is the ruin of the dame au camellia.  She is bound  to  be
brilliantly fresh, or glowing rather.   There is  no let-up  for
her.
   A very excellent physician, Avhom one of these had called
in, as he Avas passing through her street, a week afterwards,
Avith no other motive than pity, went  in to ask how she Avas.
"You see I am always alone," said she.   "He scarcely  comes
once  a Aveek.  If I happen  to be  suffering on that day, he
says: ' Good  night, I am going to the ball' (that is, to find a
Avoman), dryly leaving me to understand that I am good  for
nothing, that I do not  earn my bread."
   The manner in Avhich the relation is annulled is the Avorst
of it.  M. Bouilhet, in his fine drama of Ilelene Peyron,  has
put  on the  stage Avhat may be seen daily.  Her gentleman
does  not like to fling the bargain  in  her face exactly; but it
is so arranged that the abandoned girl, Avithout a resource for
the morroAV  perhaps,  too  credulously  accepts  the  suit of
a perfidious  friend, Avho of course  tells, and so the lover is
free to accuse her of betraying him.
  In an  immortal poem, of inexpressible tenderness, Virgil
has described the bitterness, the fathomless sea of soitoavs,
into Avhich the lover of Lycoris was plunged.   Those servile
courtesans, Avhom an avaricious master hired and  sold, have
drawn heart-rending verses from the unfortunate muse -of
Propertius,  Tibullus,  and  their  successors.    They   Avere
instructed, graceful, and true ladies, more like  our dame au
camellia than the Manon Lescauts of the old regime—so
naively corrupt, a simple source of pleasure, Avho felt nothing
and knew nothing.
  There is  very  great danger here ;  the surest  Avay is to
keep far away from it.   One day, one of my friends, a distin- 
42      No Life  for Woman without  Man.

guished thinker, charitable enough, but Avith the manners of
the time, told me that by such  light relations, of no  conse-
quence, by avoiding any serious engagement, he had been
able to reserve himself for  study,  and  solitary intellectual
exercise.  I said to him :  " What! you think that of no con-
sequence?  .... Is  it not rather a great peril?  By what
philosophic effort of forgetfulness and abstraction can you see
an  unfortunate girl  thus crushed by  misery, by treachery
perhaps, without having your heart  torn by her horrible lot ?
And if this poor creature, a  plaything of fate, should happen
to Avin your heart, you Avould be lost!"—" I!" said he, smiling
(but with so sad a smile), "that cannot be.  My  parents pro-
vided against  that;  they fastened the door that leads  to the
great folly.  Before I knew I had a heart, they rid me of it.
They killed all love in me."
  This funereal remark made me shudder.   I thought  of the
saying of the sophistical emperor,  on the last day of the
Roman  empire:  "Love  is a convulsion."   Next day  every-
thing crumbled, not by the invasion of barbarians, but by that
of celibacy  and premature death.

                      ------o------

                           IV.

         NO  LIFE FOR  WOMAN WITHOUT MAN.

  An ever laborious  life enriches us, as we advance, Avith neAV
ideas, before  unknown to us.  Very lately, only last a\ inter
(1858-59), I found in my heart the meaning of little children.
I have  always loved them,  but  I did  not understand  them.
I Avill hereafter  relate  the charming revelation I had from a
German lady; to her, certainly,  belongs the best of what is
contained in iny first  chapters on  education, to Avhich you will
come presently.
   In entering upon this branch of study, I believe it necessary 
No  Life for  Woman  without Man.
first to understand the child's  anatomy.  My  friend,  Dr.
Beraud, Hospital Surgeon, and ex-demonstrator at  Clamart
(still a young man, but well  known  by the fine treatise on
physiology, in which he is the author-colleague  of our  illus-
trious Rolin), Avished to dissect  several children before my
eyes, in his cabinet  at Clamart.  He Avisely reminded me that
the study of the  child is usefully illustrated by that of the
adult.  Thus, under his auspices, I was launched into anatomy,
Avith which I Avas previously familiar only through plates.
  An admirable study,  because,  independently  of its many
practical advantages, it is  fundamentally highly moral;  it
tempers the character—Ave  are men only by the firm eye Ave
keep on life and death.   And, what is not less true, although
less known,  is that it humanizes the heart, not by feminine
sensibility, but by informing us of the many natural offices Ave
owe to humanity.   An  eminent anatomist said to me : " It is
very painful to me to  see  a Avater-carrier under her weight
of buckets which overburden  her and cut her shoulders.   If
people only knew hoAv delicate these  muscles are in  women,
how Aveak the nerves of motion, how tender the nerves of
sensation!"
  My own  impression  Avas analogous  to that, Avhen, after
observing the organization Avhich renders the child  a being
fatally alive, on Avhom nature imposes the need of constant
change, I thought of the inferno  of immobility his school life
inflicts on him.   So much the  better did I  like the good
German method (children's Avorkshops and gardens), in which
the teacher provides just Avhat nature  calls for, that is, motion
—developing that creative activity Avhich is the true genius of
man.
  As long as  you have not seen  and  touched these realities,
you hesitate about all this, you debate, and lose time in listen-
ing to praters.   Dissect,  and, in a moment, you will understand
and feel it all.  It is death Avhich  most of all teaches  you to
respect  life, to economize,  and  not  ovenvork  the  human
race. 
44
No  Life for  Woman  without Man:
  If I could doubt the  moral influence of anatomy, it would
be  enough for me to remember that the best men I have
known Avere great physicians.   At  the very time when  I
was studying at  Clamart,  I saAV there a celebrated English
surgeon, Avho, at the advanced age of eighty-four years, crosses
the sea every year to visit  this scientific capital,  and inform
himself of the happy novelties which its inventive genius con-
stantly discovers for the solace of humanity.   I Avas especially
interested in the  anatomy  of the brain.  I  studied a  great
number of them, of both  sexes, of every age, and Avas sur-
prised to see how naively the lower side of the brain answers,
in its physiognomy, to the expression of the countenance.  I
speak of the loAver and not the upper part, Avhich is covered
Avith veins, a circumstance  to Avhich  Gall evidently attached
too much  importance.  It is far from the bony box, but at
the large bases of the brain, full of arteries, rising into more
or less rich Aolutes, according to the development of intel-
ligence, that  the character reveals itself   even as in the
face.  The latter,  a coarse  surface, exposed to the air, and a
thousand shocks, deformed  by grimaces, Avould speak, if there
Avere  no eyes,  much  less clearly than  this  interior face, so
Avell-guarded, so delicate, so marvellously shaded.
  In common women avIio were known to have had coarse occu-
pations, the brain was very simple in form, as though in a rudi-
mentary state.  These would have exposed me to the grave
error of concluding that women in general, in this essential
centre of the organization, are inferior to men.  Happily other
femmine  brains disabused  me—especially that of  a  Avoman
who,  presenting a  singular  case in  a  pathological respect,
obliged M. Beraud to inform himself of her malady and her
antecedents.   Here,  then,  I had what was  Avantino- in the
other cases—the history of  a life and a destiny.
  This remarkably rare singularity Avas a stone of considera-
ble size found in  the Avomb.  This organ, now so ordinarily
affected,Jbut in no other case perhaps to such a degree, revealed
a very extraordinary state..   That in the sanctuarv of o-enerat- 
No  Life  for  Woman without  Man.
ing life and fruitfulness—should be found this cruel destroyer,
this desperate atrophy, an Arabia Deserta I may say, a flint—
that the unfortunate one should have been, as it Avere, changed
into stone—immersed me in an ocean of sombre thoughts.
  Nevertheless the other organs Avere not changed as much as
one might have supposed.   The head A\'as very expressive.  If
the brain Avas not as large, strong,  puissant, as those of some
men I had studied, it was  as varied, as  rich in convolutions—
little Avavy volutes, marked by an infinite detail, lately occupied,
I felt, by a crowd of ideas and delicate  shades, a Avorld of Avo-
man's dreams.   All had a  story  to tell, and as  I had  had
under my eyes a moment  before brains of little expression—
dumb, I Avas going to say—this at the  first glance  made me
understand iis language.  As I approached it I seemed  still
to hear through my eyes the echo of its sighs.
  The hands, soft and rather delicate, Avere hoAvever not ele-
gantly elongated like  those of the idle lady.  They Avere
moderately short, made for use.  She had doubtless  held little
objects, Avhich do not  deform the  hand but curb  its groAvth.
She must have been a Avorking girl—in  linen materials,  per-
haps,  or flowers.  That  Avas the  natural conjecture.   She
may have been twenty-eight years of age.   Her eyes of a
blueish  grey, surmounted  by rather heavy black eyebroAvs,
and the peculiar quality of her complexion, revealed a woman
of the West, neither Norman nor  Breton, but of an  interme-
diate region,  and yet not of the South.
   The countenance Avas severe, if not  proud.   The highly
arched but not  elliptical eyebroAvs indicated a worthy  and
undegraded person, Avho had preserved her purity, and strug-
gled on even to the death.
   The body, already opened at  the hospital, shoAved that an
inflammation of the breast had carried  her off.  She had died
on the 21st of March, Avithin twelve days of Shrove-Tuesday.
We were tempted to believe she Avas one of the  numerous
victims  of the balls of that season—a cruel season, Avhich  sud-
denly croAvds the hospitals, and  presently the cemeteries.  It 
+6
No  Life for  Woman  without  Man.
might justly be called the feast of the Minotaur.  For how
many Avomen does it not devour alive ?
  AVhen Ave, think of the  mortal ennui, the profound mono-
tony, the  disinherited, dry, and  empty  life  the  operative
leads, especially the  seamstress, Avith her  eternal dry bread,
alone in her cold attic, Ave are but little astonished if she
yields to the young fool at her side, or to some older and more
calculating fiend.  But what always gives me a painful twinge
is, that he who seduces her has so little heart, that he affords so
little protection to the poor giddy girl, nor cares to know (he
so Avarmly robed with cloaks)  whether she returns clothed,
whether she has fire  and other  necessaries, even anything to
eat to-morrow.   Alas! to cast forth into the frozen night  the
unfortunate,  Avhose  last caresses  you have  just  enjoyed.
Savages !  you pretend there is only levity in all this.  Not so.
It is deliberate;  you are  cruel and avaricious ; you fear to
know too much about it; you prefer  to be ignorant of the
consequences, whether life or death.
  To return; in  spite of the  season, I doubted,  from  the
countenance  of this woman,  that she was an  etudiante, a
habituee of those balls.  That  Avorld  is  easily known.  She
Avould  never have succeeded in it.  Her severely cut nose,
her firm chin, her delicate  and precise lips,  her certain air
of reserve, would have made her too much respected there.
  The final inquest proved that I had judged rightly.  She
was  a provincial girl, of a  trading boiergeois  family, who, in
a city peopled for the most part by bachelors and clerks, had
been unable, in spite  of her  natural goodness, to defend her-
self against infinite assaults, a pursuit every hour.   Under
promise of marriage she had loved, and had a child.   De-
ceived, Avith no other resource than her fingers and needle,
she had left her native city, in Avhich, of all France, Avomen
are the least embarrassed,  for they there earn Avhatever  they
are  equal  to.  She  preferred  to  come and hide herself in
Paris, and die of hunger.  She  brought her child Avith her, a
grave obstacle; she  could be neither chambermaid nor shop- 
           No  Life for Woman without  Man.      47

   girl, and sewing yielded her nothing.  She tried to iron, but
   in sickly condition, aggravated by grief, charcoal fumes pro-
'  duced cruel headaches, and she could not stand all day Avith'
   out  the greatest  pain.   Her sister-workers knew  nothing
   of that, and thought her lazy; the Parisian Avomen  are full
   of ridicule, and they did  not  spare the poor provincial;
   nevertheless, out of their good hearts they  lent her money
   in her trouble.
     Her sad robes of faded calico, which  I have seen, showed
   that ir\ her extreme misery she did not have recourse to Avhat
   remained of her beauty.   Such a garment makes  one old, it
   left no chance of guessing hoAV young and perfect her person
   still was.  SorroAv  and misery make one gaunt, but they do
   not wither, like excesses and enjoyments, and she, Arery plainly,
   had had little  to do with the joys of life.
     The mistress who  employed  her to  iron had  charitably
   allowed her to sleep in a great loft, Avhich  served  as a work-
   shop—a place strongly impregnated by vapors of charcoal,
   and which, moreover, had to  be cleared in the morning for
   work.  However she might suffer, she could not remain in
   bed, not for one day.  The other women  arrived early, and
   ridiculed her as an idler, and a good-for-nothing.
     On the first of March she was worse; had some fever, and a
   slight cough.   That would have been nothing if she had only
   had a home, but not having  one, she .was obliged to leave
   her little girl to the kindness of the mistress to go  to the
   hospital.
     She was received into one of our large old  hospitals, where
   at that time  there were many cases of typhoid fever. The
   skilful physician at once perceived that her fever Avould assume
   that character.  She was asked if her general health Avas good.
   She said, modestly,  "Yes;"  concealing her short  internal
   pangs, and dreading a painful  examination.
     In those great halls Avherein so much of suffering is gathered,
   where agony and death surround each patient, the gloom often
   increases the malady.  Relatives are admitted on certain days, 
48      No  Life for  Woman  without Man.

but how  many have  no relatives;  how  many die alone!
She was visited once by her kind mistress ; but the good wo-
man Avas frightened by the typhoid  fever, and did not return.
  The necessary ventilation is still, as formerly,  procured by
means of huge Avindows, and great cifrrents of air.   The need
of a better  plan is now seriously agitated.  These currents
chill the patients,  Avho are  but slightly protected  by  their
curtains;  and so her slight  cough became, first,  a violent
bronchitis, and then an inflammation of the lungs. Exhausted
by Aveak nourishment long continued, she had not the strength
to react.  She Avas Avell taken care  of, but she died in  three
Aveeks.
  Her little  daughter (a charming child, already full of intel-
ligence) Avas sent to the Enfants trouves.
  Her body, unclaimed, was removed to Clamart, and, I ven-
ture to  say, very usefully, since it  has  instructed  science on
a point  from which fruitful inferences may be drawn.  This
simple recital will  also have been useful if it strongly com-
mands the attention of benevolent  minds.   Woman dies if
she has no hearth and no protection.  If this person had only
had a shelter, a bed for  one Aveek^  her illness Avould have
passed aAvay, in all probability,  and  she would still be alive.
  She should have  enjoyed for  a time the hospitality of a
Avoman.  How  easy it Avould often be for an intelligent lady,
at certain critical times, to save a creature whom misfortune
has thus  engulfed.  Suppose such a lady,  traversing a public
garden, near the hospital, had seen her seated on a bank, with
her little parcel, resting for a moment,  before entering, after
her long  journey.   The lady, seeing her so  pale, and  struck
with her excellent  countenance, Avhich has  an almost distin-
guished expression, in spite of the extreme poverty of her dress,
takes a seat by her  side, and draws her into conversation.
  "What is the matter with you, young lady?"  "I have a 
        No Life  for  Woman  without Man.      49

fever, madam—I am quite ill."   "Let me see.   I understand
fevers.  Oh, it is a trifle yet.   At present, the  prevailing
epidemic abounds in the hospitals.  You would be very likely
to catch it.  A little quinine Avould probably set you on your
feet again in a couple of days.  I shall have plenty  of ironing
to do.  For these tAvo  days,  at least, come to my  house;
when you are well  again, you shall have my work."  That
would have saved her life.
  Two days Avould not have done it; but in a week she would
have been restored.   The lady appreciating the good  charac-
ter,  so plain in her countenance, would  doubtless have kept
her longer.  Partly servant, partly young lady, better clad,
beautified again by  a few months  of  happier life,  she would
have touched many hearts with her pensive grace.   The mis-
fortune of having been deceived, and of possessing that pretty
child, redeemed by  her prudent conduct,  her economical and
industrious habits, would scarcely  have checked the love of
those around her.  I have several times had occasion to  ob-
serve the tender and generous magnanimity of  worthy Avork-
men in this kind  of adoption.   I have known one such admi-
rable household.  The  woman loved, I dare say adored,  her
husband; and the child, by a mysterious  instinct, attached
itself to  him even  more than to  a father: he always left it
Aveeping, and, if he-was late, it wept for his return.
   We too easily imagine that a person is irremediably ruined.
In our good old France they ^id not use to think so.  For
example,  every  woman  who emigrated  to  Canada, Avas re-
garded as purified of every fault and misfortune by the bap-
tism of the  sea.  This Avas no vain notion; for they clearly
proved the  justice  of  it, and became admirable  wives and
excellent mothers.
   But the best  of  all  emigrations for those, who, Avhile  yet
scarcely more than children, have been cast by chance upon a
frivolous life, is to rise courageously by labor and  privations.
So one of our first thinkers insisted, in a severe letter he wrote
to one of our poor Amazons, brilliant and wretched,  who asked 
5°
No  Life for Woman without  Man.
him hoAV she might  escape from the  gulf before her.  The
letter, very harsh in  expression, but in spirit very kind and
wise, told her that she could expiate her  guilt by misery,
refine herself by labor and  accepted  suffering, and become
Avorthy and  pure, again.  He Avas quite right;  the  soul  of a
Avoman, much more  mobile, more fluid-like, than  that  of a
man, is never profoundly corrupted.   When  once she has
seriously resolved to return to virtue, Avhen she once has fairly
begun  to  live by struggles,  sacrifices, and  reflection, she is
already regenerate.   She is like the stream, Avhich was turbid
yesterday, but fresh waters have come in, and it is clear to-
day.   If the Avoman, thus changed, forgetting the bad dream
of her involuntary sins, in Avhich her heart was never involved,
succeeds in finding that heart again, if once she loves—all is
Avell.  The best man in the world may find happiness in her,
and be honored by her still.
  I intended to add  nothing to this mournful story.  My
friends were affected,  and rose.  But with a word I recalled
them to what had preceded it:
  My dear sirs, the reason for  Avhich you  will marry, the
strongest motive for your hearts, is, as I told you, that:
   Woman cannot live without man.
  No more  than the  child without  Avoman.  All foundlings
die; and  does man live without woman?  You yourselves
have just said: Your life  is sombre and  bitter.  In the
midst of amusements  and vain feminine shadows, you possess
neither  wife, nor happiness, nor repose.  You have not the
sure foundation, the harmonious equilibrium, so favorable  to
productiveness.
  Nature has bound up life Avithin a triple and absolute tie:
man, Avoman, and child.  Separately, they are  sure to perish,
and are only saved together.
  All the disputes about the  two sexes, and  their opposing 
        No Life  for  Woman without Man.      51

peculiarities, go for nothing; we should put an end to them ;
Ave must not imitate Italy, Poland, Ireland, and Spain, Avhere
the Aveakening of family ties, and solitary egotisms, have con-
tributed so much to destroy the State.  In the only book of
the age that contains a  great poetic conception (the poem of
the Last Man), the author supposes the earth exhausted and
the world about to come to an end.  But there is one sublime
obstacle:
  The world cannot  come  to  an end  while one  man still
loves.
  Have pity on this weary earth, which, without love, would
no longer have a reason  for living.   Love somebody; for the
salvation of the globe.
  If I  have rightly understood you,  you would gladly love,
but  apprehensions  restrain  you.  Frankly, you are afraid
of Avomen.   If woman  Avere only a  thing, as once she Avas,
you  Avould  marry.  But in  that  case,  my  dear  friends,
there Avould be no marriage ; for marriage is a  union of two
persons; and is  therefore just beginning  to  be possible,
because Avoman to-day is a person and a soul.
  But  seriously, are you men ?  Shall the poAver you noAV
exercise  over nature by  your  irresistible inventions—shall
that fail you?   Shall the  single being, who sums up all
nature, and is  all happiness,  be beyond  your reach?   By
your science you attain the sparkling beauties of the milky
Avay; is  it  because the  sparkling beauties of  earth,  more
independent of you, send you back (as the Venetian girl sent
Rousseau) to mathematics ?
  Your grave objection, about  the opposition of faiths, and
the difficulty of bringing Avomen to your OAvn, does not seem
very strong to the man Avho looks at the difficulty coolly and
practicably.
  Fusion will be completely effected only by two marriages,
two successive generations. 
52       No Life  for  Woman  without Man.
  The- true woman for a Avife is  she  Avhose portrait I have
painted in my Book of Love—she who, simple and loving, hav-
ing as yet received no definite impress, shall least repel  the
modern thought, shall not beforehand be an enemy to science
and to truth.  I prefer that she should be poor, and isolated,
Avith few  family connexions—her  position  and education  are
secondary matters.  Every French Avoman is born  a queen
or is on the point of becoming so.
  As a Avife,  the simple woman,  who can be somewhat
instructed, and as a daughter, the confiding Avoman, Avho  can
at once be taught by her father: these will break that vicious
circle in Avhich we revolve, in which Avoman prevents us from
creating women.
  With so excellent a wife, sharing,  in heart  at least,  the
faith of her husband, the latter, following the very easy path
of nature, will maintain over the child an incredible ascendency
of authority and tenderness.   The daughter does  so trust in
her father !  He may make of her what he will.  The strength
of this second love, so lofty and so pure, will create in her  the
woman, the  adorable  ideal of grace and wisdom, by which
alone family and society are to be  restored  in the future. 
        Part   I.—Education,


                     -----0-----

                           I.

                  SUN, AIR, AND LIGHT.

  An eminent observer affirms that numerous microscopic
beings, which in the shade remain vegetables, assume a higher
character in the sun, and become veritable animals.  The fact
is  certain, indisputable, and accepted  by everybody, that,
deprived of light, e\rery animal merely  vegetates;  that a
plant  can  scarcely blossom, and that its flower is pale, lan-
guishing, abortive, and short-lived.
  The human flower, more than all others, craves for the sun;
the sun  is its first  and supreme initiator into life.  Compare
the child a day old, that has known only darkness, with the
child a year old : the difference is enormous between the son
of shadow and the son of light.  The brain of the latter,  as
compared  with that of the former, presents  the  palpable
miracle of a complete transfiguration.  We are not surprised
to perceive that in it the apparatus of vision occupies more
space  than the organs of  all the  other  senses combined.
Light inundates the head, traverses it through  and  through,
even to the deep, recondite nerves, whence proceed the spinal
marrow, and the whole nervous system, the complete mecha-
nism of  sensation  and motion.  Even above the optical con- 
54               Sun,  Air, and Light.
duits in  AAdiich the light circulates, the central mass of the
brain (the radiant crown) seems also to be penetrated by it,
and doubtless receives its rays.
  So the first duty of love is to bestow on the child, and the
young mother also, who Avas only yesterday a child, shattered
by the accouchement, wearied  Avith nursing, plenty of light
and  salubrious  air.  Grant her  the blessing of " a good ex-
posure,"  that the sun may cheer her with his first rays, loving
and  regarding  her long, revolving around her at mid-day,
even at  two  o'clock, still warming and illuminating her, and
leaving her only Avith regret.
  Leave  to those Avho live the artificial life of the beau monde
the  splendors of  apartments turned  toAvard  the  Evening.
Kings, the great  and the idle, have  sought for  sunsets in
their Versailles, to glorify their  fetes.   But whoever sanctifies
life by labor,  whoever loves  and has his fetes in his beloved
wife and child, lives  most of all in the  Morning.  To himself
he secures the freshness of the early  hours, when  all  life is
energetic and productive.  To them he gives the joy, the first
flower of gaiety, which enchants all nature in the  happiness
of its aAvakening.
  What  is comparable to the innocent and delightful grace
of these  morning scenes!  The  good laborer watching for the
sun sees it peep  through the curtains to  admire  the young
mother,  and  the  child in the cradle.  She is surprised, and
stretches her arms;  "What! so late!"  And  smiling, says :
"Ah! how indolent I  am!"—"But, my dear, it is only five.
o'clock.   The child has kept you aAvake a great deal.   Sleep,
I beg you, an hour longer."   She does not need to be urged,
and they go to sleep again.
  Let us close the curtains dtmbly, and shut fast the Avindow-
blind.  But the Day, in its triumphant and rapid march, will
not be excluded.  A charming combat is Avaging between
light and darkness ;  and  it would indeed be bad if the nio-ht
got the  better of it.  What a  picture would  be  lost!  As
she, inclining toward the child,  encircles its head in the curvo 
Sun,  Air,  and  Light.               55
of her loving arm.   A gentle ray insinuates  itself.   So be it,
leave them Avith that sacred aureole of the blessing of God!
  I have spoken in  one of my books of a strong and stur iy
tree (a  chestnut, I believe), which I saw thriving out of the
earth, on air  alone.  We  suspend in vases certain  elegant
plants, that likewise vegetate  Avith no  element  but the atmo-
sphere.   Our  poor peasants resemble  these  only too nearly.
What  compensates them for  their  imperfect sustenance?
A\rhat enables them, so poorly nurtured, to endure  such  pro-
tracted and severe labors ?  The perfection of the air in Avhich
they live, and  the  power it  affords them of deriving from
their food all the nutrition it contains.
  Thou,  whose happiness it is  to rear and nurture those two
trees of  Paradise, the  young Avife AAdio lives in  thee, and her
child which is thine OAvn—consider well, that if thou wouldst
have her live,  and bloom, and give good milk to  that dear
little one, thou must first provide her with the  aliment of all
aliments, vital  air.  What a misfortune, hoAv sad a contradic-
tion, to expose thy pure, chaste, charming Avife to a dangerous
atmosphere enough to poison her body and soul!  No,  not
Avith impunity will  a delicate,  impressionable, and  penetrable
Avoman receive the horrible melange, of a hundred vitiated,
vicious effluvia, that rises from the street  to her—the breath
of unclean spirits, the pell-mell of smokes, vile emanations,
and unhealthy dreams which hover over our sombre cities.
  You must make a sacrifice, my friend, and at  any  price take
them where they can live.  If possible, go out of town—you
will see less of your friends, but they will come a little further
to see you, if they are  true friends.   You will go to the thea-
tre but little.   Its pleasures (agitating and enervating) are less
to be desired by him Avho has, on his OAvn loving hearth, his
OAvn rejuvenating joys, his own " Divine Comedy.".  You will
lose less time at night, gossiping in  saloons;  and for your
recompense, you will  have in  the morning all your strength, 
56               Sun,  Air,  and Light.
not wasted in  vain words, but fresh and tranquil, to put  into
labor, solid Avorks, those durable results which  shall  not fly
away.
  I want a garden, not a park:  a  little garden.  Man does
not easily flourish away from its vegetal harmonies.  All the
legends of the East place the commencement of Life in a  gar-
den.  A pure  and capable people, the Persians, believed  that
the world began in a garden of light.
  If you cannot leave toAvn, dwell in the upper stories of a
house; more desirable than the first floor, the fifth or sixth
may have a garden on the roof; at all events, light abounds
there.  I Avould choose for your young pregnant Avife a vast
and splendid prospect, to beguile her waiting reveries, during
your long hours of absence.  I Avomd prefer that the eyes of
the child, Avhen it is first carried out on the balcony, should
fall on monuments, on the majestic  effects  of the Sun, in its
course, lending to them at different  hours aspects so diverse.
Where a vieAV of mountains, tall shrubbery, beautiful forests, is
wanting, we receive from grand edifices  (in which is the na-
tional life, the  history of the country in stone) early emotions
whose traces are for ever ineffaceable.  Little children  know
not how to express their feelings, but their souls vibrate to the
effects of architecture so transfigured.   Such a ray,  such a
flash of light, falling at such an hour on  a temple, will remain
for ever present with them.
  For myself, I  may affirm  that nothing in my early child-
hood made a deeper impression on me than the Pantheon as I
once beheld it  against the  Sun.   It Avas in the morning.   The
interior, revealed through the windows,  shone  like a mysteri-
ous glory.  Between the light columns of the exquisite Ionic
temple,  so  grandly springing from its  austere  and sombre
walls, the azure  air circulated, roseate with an inexpressible
gleaming.  I was enraptured, fascinated, impressed, far more
than I have  since  been even by very  great  events.  They
have passed away, but that vision remains luminous  for me
still. 
The  First Exchange  of Glances.        57
                           II.

THE FIRST EXCHANGE OF GLANCES, AND THE BEGINNINGS
                        OF FAITH.

  The divine rapture of the first maternal glance, the ecstasy
of the young mother, her innocent surprise at having given
birth to a god, her religious emotion in her marvellous dream,
which is so real nevertheless,—all this may be seen every day,
but it has seemed impossible to paint it.  Correggio has been
able to grasp  it, inspired by nature, free from the tradition,
by which, in his day, art was restrained and chilled.
  There are spectators around the cradle, and still the  scene
is solitary, for it is divided  betAveen  her  and him, Avho  are
the same  person.   She gazes on  him, moved ; from her to
him, from him to her, flashes an electric fight, which dazzles
and confounds them together.  Mother and child  are one in
that living ray, which restores their  primitive and natural
unity.
  If she no longer has the happiness of  containing her child
palpitating within her bosom, she is compensated by the fairy-
like enchantment of having him before her, under her  eager
eyes.  Reclining over him, she trembles.  Young and inno-
cent, she reveals, by the naivest signs, her joy at^assimilating
to herself by love, this divine fruit of her own being.  Lately
he  was nourished  by her, now  she  is  nourished by him,
absorbs him, eats and drinks him. A delightful interchange
of  life:  the child  giving and receiving it,  absorbing  the
mother in her turn, like milk, and heat, and light.
   A great, a truly great revelation;  no idle creation of art
and sensibility;  a mere gratification for the heart and  the
eyes.  No ;  it is an act of faith, a mystery, but not absurd ;
the serious and solid foundation of religion and education, on
which is to be raised the whole structure of human life ;  and
the mystery is this :— 
58        The  First Exchange  of Glances.
  If the child were not God, if the relation of the mother to
it were not a worship, it would not live.  It is so fragile a
oeing, that it could never be reared but for the marvellous
idolatry of the mother, Avhich deifies it, and  makes it full of
bliss to her to sacrifice herself for its sake.   In her eyes it
is good,  beautiful, perfect;  and  it is  needless to  add, she
beholds in it her ideal, the absolute of beauty and goodness,
the acme of perfection.
  What  painful dismay  would beset  her  if some gloomy
thinker, some awkAvard sophist, should dare tell her that  " the
child is born bad, that man is depraved before his birth," and
other such fine philosophical and  legendary inventions.  But
women are mild and patient; they only turn  a deaf ear.  If
they had believed that, if for a moment they had seriously
accepted such ideas, all would soon have been ended. Uncer-
tain and  discouraged, they  Avould not  have  put their whole
life into  a cradle,  and the neglected child must  have  died.
There  Avould have been no humanity; history would  have
come to an end at its very commencement.
  As soon as the child  sees the light, and sees itself in the
maternal eye, it reflects, instinctively returns  the  look of
love; and from that moment the most profound and SAveetest
mystery of life has been accomplished betAveen those tAvo.
  Will time add to it ?   Can the beatitude of so perfect a
marriage be increased ?   On  one condition only,  perhaps;
namely, that both have understood it, so that  the child will
disengage itself from the divine immobility ; will act, and seek
to correspond with its mother ;  will go  to  her with  all its
little heart, and impulsively give itself up to her.
  This second season of mutual love and faith forms the sub-
ject of a rare creation, which France possesses in the Louvre.
The painter, Solari (of Milan),  survives only in this one paint-
ing—all the rest have perished.  He had  lived many yearu 
The  First Exchange of Glances.
among us, and possessed the double sense, the soul of the two
sister nations.  How, had it not been so, could he have ac-
quired that exquisite expression of nervous life, and its deli-
cate sensitiveness ?
  In  this there is  no magical effect, no mysterious contest
betAveen light and darkness.  In full noon, without artificial
accessories, under a tree, in a pleasant,  everyday landscape,
are a mother and her child ; nothing more. Here and  there
the crudity of its tone (the effect of restorations) offends the
eye, but Avhy is the heart so troubled ?
  The young mother, refined and pretty, and singularly deli-
cate, is  desirous of fulfilling a duty far beyond her strength.
Not that her breast is wanting in milk; it is beautiful Avith
plenitude,  Avith visible tenderness, and a SAveet  desire to
nurture.  But  so frail is  this charming  person that Ave ask
ourselves how can she supply that beautiful fountain, but at
the cost  of her OAvn life.
  Who is she ? An Italian floAver, swaying Avith slight exhaus-
tion ; or a nervous Frenchwoman ?  I would quite as readily
believe  the  latter.   The  race,  moreover, is  much less ap-
parent here  than  the epoch,  Avhich is that of cruel wars and
miseries, when  are felt and expressed the touching charm that
grief imparts to grace, those smiles of suffering women, Avho
make excuses for their suffering, and Avould like not to  weep.
  The handsome, vigorous, and largely developed baby over
which she bends, reposes on a cushion; she could scarcely carry
him—a striking disproportion,  Avhich, hoAvever,  has  no mys-
tical significance, only that the child comes of a great race, of a
father avIio doubtless  even yet  belonged to the heroic times,
Avhile the young mother, suffering, Aveak,  refined, is of the
period of Correggio's  " Italy : " a last drop of the divine elixir,
under the pressure of grief.
  Observe also that  in  those days,  the  mother, although 
60        The  First Exchange  of Glances.
poorly nourished, nurses her child a long  time; the more
intelligent he groAvs, the sweeter he finds this  indulgence,
and  the  less desire he has  to renounce it.   She has  not the
strength  for the great rupture; she exhausts herself,  is aAvare
of it, but will go on all the same, as long as she has a drop.
She exhausts herself even unto death, rather than grieve hei
child.
  This picture of Solari says three things :
  Weak as she is, not giving of her abundance, but rather what
is necessary to her OAvn sustenance, she nevertheless smiles,
and says passionately:  "Drink, my child! drink, it is my life."
  But either the charming child, with  an innocent avidity,
has slightly wounded that beautiful bosom,  or the powerful
suction  reaches Avithin the breast  and rends its inner fibres,
for she has suffered, and suffers yet.  No matter, she still
says:  " Enjoy, drink, it is my pain."
  And  the milk which  rises,  swelling  and expanding the
breast, flows forth; the pain, departing, gives place to a sweet
languor Avhich is not  Avithout its  charm, like  that of the
wounded man who is pleased to see his OAvn life ebbing aAvay.
But here there is real happiness:  if she feels herself growing
weaker, she grows strong in him.   She experiences  a strange
and profound shock to the very sources of her being, but
says, nevertheless, " Drink, it is my delight."
  Such is his invincible power over her that, whatever may
happen, she cannot separate herself from him, and the result
to him is  that, understanding her, loving her, he is, both in
his  physical fife and in his young heart, bound up  in her,
wholly absorbed in her.
  His love is calm in the innocence  of his age—not, like that
of his  mother, sharpened by all  the arroAvs of delight  and 
      Play.—The Child Teaching  its Mother.   61

grief, but strong in its great unity.  If he could speak, he
would  say: " Thou alone art my infinite,  my absolute and
complete world;  there is nothing in me, which is not from
thee, which does not wish to return to thee.  I knoAV  not
whether I live or not, but I am sure I love!"
  India symbolizes the circle of perfect and divine life by the
attitude of a god holding his foot in his hand, concentrating
himself, and forming himself into a sphere.  Little children
often do this;  and thus does this little one, invited to his
mother's bosom.  She aids him to come to her, but he desires
it as much as she,  and  does what he  can toward it.  By a
graceful and charming movement, and a natural instinct, the
first daAvn  of the deliberate impulse of tenderness, he makes
a powerful effort, and contracts his whole body into an are as
complete as possible, in order to offer himself at once, and
entire.

                     ------o------
                          III.

       PLAY.--THE CHILD TEACHING ITS MOTHER.

  There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more touching,
than the embarrassment of a young mother, a novice in mater-
nity, puzzled how to handle her child, to amuse it, teach it to
play,  and enter into  communication with it.   She  hardly
knows how to take up her jewel, the adored mysterious being,
the living enigma,  that  lies  there, and seems to wait to be
moved, and have its desires and its  Avants divined.  She  ad-
mires it, moves round it,  trembles at the thought of touching
it roughly, and makes her mother hold it.   Her pretty awk-
Avardness makes the old nurse smile ;  she observes it in silence,
but says to herself that the young  mistress is none the less a
miss for having had a child.  Virgins are maladroit: grace 
62    Play.—The Child Teaching its  Mother.

and skill rarely belong to  her who is  not a complete Avoman,
already made pliant by love.
  Well, madam, since  indeed you are noAv a madam—is it so
many years since you Avere a little girl ?  At fifteen, if I  recol-
lect, under the pretext of trying the fashions, you Avere still
playing with  dolls.  When you were  alone,  you  Avere even
Avont  (confess it now)  to kiss and rock them.  Noav you  see
the fixing doll, Avhich  asks only to be  played Avith.  Play on
then, my little lady; nobody Avill look at you.
  " But I do not dare.   With this one I am afraid.  It  is so
delicate ; if I touch it, it cries ;  if I leave it, it cries—I tremble
lest I break it!"
  There are mothers so idolatrous, so lost in the ecstasy of
this contemplation, that they would pass the Avhole  day on
their knees before the child.  In nursing it, gazing at it, sing-
ing to it some little nursery song, they feel themselves united to
it, and desire nothing better.  But this is not enough ; union
consists much more in active will, in concurrent action.  If
your child did not act Avith you, would you  ever  know if
it loved you?  It is  play  Avhich will create between you a
union more intimate even than nursing, and have all the effects
of a mental nursing.
  Form its young soul, its thought, its will, by  play.  In it
slumbers an individual;  call him forth.  And your  happi-
ness will be that this soul and this individual, this desire and
this will, shall at first have no other object but yourself.   The
first impulse of the liberty you have gained for him Avill be to
return to you.  Ah ! how wise he is in this!  How gladly do
we  all, after pursuing the false pleasures of the world, return
to the  maternal paradise.  Proceeding  from the bosom of
woman, our only heaven here below is there.
  " I  should  certainly be very happy to become my child's
friend and companion; but Avhat shall  I do?" 
       Play.—The  Child Teaching its Mother.    63

   Little or nothing,  my dear,  but follow  his example.  Let
 us observe him.  Lay him gently on the sunny grass, on this
 flowery carpet.  You have only to look at him; his first move-
 ments Avill guide you ; he is going to teach you.
   His movements,  his cries, his  at  first poAverless attempts
 to act, the little playfulness Avhich follows, are not  at all
 arbitrary.   It is not your  nurseling only that you see here;
 it is the child Humanity,  as it was in the beginning.   "This
 first activity," says Froebel, " informs us of, and reproduces
 for our  contemplation, the  propensities,  ideas,  and needs,
 which first belonged to the human race.   Some uncongenial
 element may be mingled Avith it, perhaps, in our modern races,
 altered by a factitious society ; but, on the whole, it  is none
 the less  a  very grave revelation of the remote  past of hu-
 manity, and of its  instincts for the  future.  Play is a magic
 mirror, in Avhich you have only to look, to learn what man
 was, Avhat he shall be, and what  must be done  to lead him
 to his destiny."
   Let  us at once derive from  this the first principle of edu-
 cation, which contains all  the  rest: The mother teaches the
 child only what she shall first have been taught by the child.
 This means, that from him she  derives the first germs of
 Avhatever she develops in  him—that in the  child she first
 detects a glimmer, Avhich, in the end, Avith her assistance,
 shall become light.
   "Then these  germs are good," she  says; "these gleams
 are sacred.  Thanks!  Oh, I thought so.  I was  cruelly told
that the child is not born good.  I never could believe a word
 of that—I felt God in him  so clearly!   Beautiful, charm-
ing counsel!  May  it sink into my heart!—To keep my eyes
fixed upon him—to  make him my rule in everything—to wish
nothing but what he Avishes !"
  Softly, dear little one, softly.   Let us  first see if he is
 sure  that he  does  wish,  knoAvs  what he wishes.  Let us
 see, rather,  if, overwhelmed by a chaos of confused  things
 Avhich  How in upon  him all at once,  he does not await  your 
64   Play.—The  Child  Teaching its Mother.

aid to choose for  him,  to enlighten him as to objects of
interest.
  Here is a stroke  of genius by the good  Froebel; and here
truly, by force of simplicity, he has discovered what the wise
had vainly sought,  the mystery of education.
  Such the man, and such the doctrine.  This German pea-
sant is in a fair way to become an accomplished expert, for
he possesses a singular gift  of childlikeness, and the unique
faculty of recalling the impressions of his  earliest childhood.
" I was," says he, " enveloped in an obscure and impenetrable
mist.  To see nothing, to understand nothing, is at first a sort
of liberty; but Avhen our senses transmit to us so many images,
so many  sounds, the reality oppresses us.  A world of things
Avithout meaning, without order or succession, come to us all
at once, and without allowance for our feebleness ; we are asto-
nished and disturbed, possessed and  unduly excited.  From
so many ephemeral impressions Aveariness alone remains to us.
It is a relief, a happiness,  if a kind providence selects from the
crowd of objects,  and brings frequently  before us, such or
such that are easy and agreeable, which may occupy us only
to refresh us and deliver us from that Babel."
  Thus this  first education, far from imposing restraint on the
child, is  an aid, a deliverance, from the chaos of diverse
impressions  with which  it  is overwhelmed.   By bringing
things to it in order, one by one, that it  may consider them
at its ease, that  it  may observe  and handle any little  object
that pleases it, the  mother creates for it the true  liberty that
its age demands.
  To form in this way a good and reliable method, you must
perfectly understand the tendencies of the  child:  an easy
thing  for her who, bending over it night and day, regards it
anxiously, studying only Avhat  it is, what it wants,  and  the
good she can do it. 
      Play.—The Child Teaching  its  Mother.   65

  First, it wishes to be loved, it wishes  you to occupy your-
self Avith it, and prove  your love for  it.—Ah!  how easy
that is!
  Secondly, it wishes  to live,  to live  much, to  be always
progressing, to extend the circle of its little actions, to move,
to vary its life, to pass hither and thither, to be free.—Be not
alarmed ; I  mean free around you, the beloved;  as near as
possible to you, always able to touch your robe,—free, above
all, to embrace you.
  Thirdly, already launched upon voyages of discovery, it is in
no small degree preoccupied with a world of new things.  It
prefers to understand, through  you—and it always goes to
you—not by an  instinct of weakness and ignorance merely,
but by I knoAV not what sense which  tells  it that  everything
sweet, lovely, and good comes through  you, that you are the
milk of life  and the honey of nature.
  And fourthly; so young, scarcely speaking, scarcely walking,
it is already like us; its  heart and its eyes judge like ours,
and it finds you very beautiful.   Everything is beautiful to it,
in proportion as it resembles you.   Of  everything  which
nearly or remotely recalls the pleasant forms of its mother, it
says flatly : " It is pretty."  When they are inert things, it
feels less distinctly their connexion with your living beauty.
But even as to these things, you powerfully influence its judg-
ment.
  The symmetry of double  organs and forms, of your hands
and eyes, supplies its idea of harmony.
  Besides, its glorious and truly divine characteristic is that it
so abounds  in life,  that it dispenses it liberally to  all objects.
The  simplest are the  best for it.  Organized, living  beings
may amuse  it, but  their independent action will  perplex it;
it would  maltreat them,  but  without malice,—merely to
understand them, and from simple curiosity.
  Give it rather things of elementary forms (for it is  still an
element) and of regular outline, which it can group together
in its pastime.  Nature, in her first  attempt at association, 
66   Play.—The  Child  Teaching its Mother.

creates crystals.  Imitate  nature—give  the child forms like
crystals.  You  may be sure it will  use them, as it  does  so
many other things, placing them side by side, or one on top
of another.  Such is its instinct;  if you do  not  give  it some-
thing, it tries  sand, Avhich will  not be fixed, and  always
disappoints it.
  Above all, never  set  a  model before  it,  to  fetter  its
action.  Do not make it  an imitator.  Be sure, that in  its
mind, or at least in its memory, it will find pretty types for
its tiny architecture.   Some morning you will be astonished
to recognise your house.
  " Marvellous!" you will cry.  " He has done that himself.—
My son is a creator !"
  And that is  the proper name for  man.   Moreover, in cre-
ating anything, he goes on creating himself.  He is his OAvn
Prometheus.
  And that is  why, young  mother,  from  the Arery first, out
of the pure instinct of your heart, Avithout daring to express
it, you felt that he Avas God.
  But see! she is at once alarmed ;  " If that be  so," she
says, " he is already independent, and presently he will escape
from me!"
   No, no fear of that: for a A'ery long time he will remain
quite dependent on love;  he belongs to you, and that is  his
happiness.   If  he creates,  it is always  for you.  " Look,
mamma, look !" (Nothing Avould be beautiful to him without
the favor of your notice, the benediction of your eyes.)  " See
what I have made for  you.—If it  is not pretty, I will do it
another way."—So he piles stone on stone, block on block—
" See here, my  little  chair, on which  mamma may sit.  Two
posts and  one  beam make one roof,—this  is the  house in
Avhich mamma shall live with her little boy."
   You  are, then, his complete circle ; he proceeds from you,
andTeturns to you.  The essay, the first effort of his inven-
tion, is to honor you in his work, to entertain you in  his
house. 
The  Frail and Sacred Child.         67
  Infantine and happiest life of all, and all engrossed in love!
Who can remember it without regret ?

                      ------o------

                           IV.

            THE  FRAIL AND  SACRED  CHILD.

  When we consider Iioav feAV children live, Ave are filled with
■a desire to render them happy, at whatever cost.
  One fourth die in their  first year — that is, before they
have lived, before they have  received the divine baptism of
light Avhich transfigures the brain in  the first twelve months.
  One third die before the second year—almost before they
have known the sweet caresses of Avoman,  or recognised in a
mother the best of earthly blessings.
  One half (in many  countries) do not reach puberty—the
first daAvn of love. OverAA'helmed by  precocious labors, by dry
studies, and severe discipline, they never attain that second
birth of happiness and enchantment.
  The best foundling hospitals may be said to be the ceme-
teries; in the hospital at Moscow, out of the 37,000 children
received in tAventy years, only 1000 Avere saved; and in that
of Dublin, 200 out of 12,000—that is, one-sixtieth. What shall
I say of the  Paris institution ?   I have  seen and admired it,
but its results are not very accurately knoAvn.   In  it are
brought  together two very  different classes of children:  J.
orphans, Avho are received there after being reared—and these
stand some chance of living; 2. foundlings, properly so called,
children brought  thither at birth;  these are  sent aAvay to be
nursed, and their life is prolonged for some months.
  Let  us speak only of the happy ones, of  those Avho are sur-
rounded by tenderness and  foreseeing care.   Look at them :
all are pretty at four years of age, and ugly at eight; as soon
as we begin to refine them, they change, become vulgar, and 
68          The  Frail and Sacred  Child.

deformed.  We blame nature for this; Ave call it the ungrate-
ful age; but that Avhich is ungrateful, sterile, and Avithering,
is only the stupidity Avith Avhich Ave force the child from a life
full of  action into one of barbarous routine—and turn its little
head, full of sensibility and imagination,  to things so abstract
as philosophy or mathematics.   To do this Avithout  injury to
the child, many years of Avell-managed transitions are neces-
sary—very short  and very easy little tasks, diversified Avith
action, but  not automatic.   Our asylums  are still far from
fulfilling these conditions.
  This problem of education, Avhich is not only a question of
future development, but most  frequently of life  and death,
has often disturbed my mind.   The world is divided between
tAvo opposite educational systems, and I have seen both fail.
  Education by simple teaching, traditional and authoritative,
as it prevails in schools and colleges (or small seminaries—for
they all follow the same method), has lost prestige throughout
Europe, and to  its well-established  insufficiency, the recent
attempts at amelioration have added confusion.
  On the other hand, the free schools, which aimed rather at
forming the character of the child than instructing him, which,
inspired by  Rousseau  and Pestalozzi, were remarkable for
their  originality, flourished only for a season in Switzerland
and Germany, and were abandoned.
  These schools appealed to the hearts of mothers; for, what-
ever  came  of them, the child,  in  the meantime,  was happy.
But the fathers found that, with their very slow methods, they
taught too little, and gave too few lessons ; so, in spite of their
mothers' tears, the children were sent off to colleges (lay or
ecclesiastical).  •
  In these institutions, many wither and die : a few, very few,
learn, but only by superhuman efforts.  A course of instruction
bo various,  in Avhich each study is carried on separately, Avith 
             The  Frail and Sacred Child.         69

no demonstration of its relation to the others,  exhausts and
cripples the mind.
  Girls, of whom I shall presently speak more particularly,
are no better educated now than  in the time when Fenelon
wrote his pleasant book, or when the author of Emile sketched
his Sophie.  Nothing is done  to prepare them  for life;  they
are sometimes taught accomplishments that dazzle, sometimes
(among the less wealthy classes) pursue a few serious studies
which put them on the road to learning; but no culture pecu-
liar to woman, to the wife  and mother, no special education
for their sex.
  I had read  so  much  on these subjects, so many mediocre
and useless things, that I was tired of books; on the other
hand, my connexion  with schools,  my  own experience in
teaching, left many things obscure to me ;  so I resolved,  this
year, to go  to the very source, to  study the physical orga-
nization of man, face  to face with  facts—to strengthen my
mind by actual observation.   The body tells us a great deal
about the soul; it is much to see and touch the sacred instru-
ment  on which the young soul tries to  play, an instrument
which may reveal its character and indicate to us the measure
of its forces.
  It Avas spring.  The anatomical course was over in Clamart,
and solitude reigned  where  all is  so gay and populous in
winter.   The  trees  were  full of  birds,  the parterre that
embellishes those  funereal galleries was all in blossom.   But
there was nothing comparable to the hieroglyphic flower I
came to study.   The term is by no means a fantastic compa-
rison—it expresses my feeling.  I experienced no disgust, but
on the contrary,  a sentiment of admiration, tenderness, and
pity.  The brain of a child,  one year old, seen for the  first
time,  from its base  (the lower side as  it appears on being
reversed), has all the  effect of a large and splendid camellia, 
The  Frail and Sacred  Child.
with its ivory nerves, its delicate rosy veins, and its pale azure
tint.   I say ivory, for Avant  of a better Avord.   It is  an
immaculate  Avhite, and yet  of an exquisite and tender soft-
ness, of which nothing else  can give  an idea, and which, to
my mind, leaves every other earthly thing far behind.
  I am not deceived about this; my first emotions,  doubt-
less strong, nevertheless did not cause the illusion. Dr. Beraud,
and a very skilful artist Avho  paints anatomical plates daily,
accustomed  as they are to see these things,  were  of the
same opinion.  It is really  the flower of flowers,  one  of the
most delicate, innocent, charming objects  in the Avorld,—the
most touching beauty that  nature has ever  produced. The
vast establishment in Avhich  I studied  enabled me to pursue a
cautious method, to repeat and verify my  observations, to
make  comparisons betAveen children  of different ages and
sexes, and, moreover, to compare children and adults, even to
extreme old age.  In  a few  days, I had  brains  of all ages
under my eyes, so that I could trace from year to year the
progress of time.
  The youngest were those  of a girl who had lived only a few
days, and some boys, a year old at most.  She had never seen
the  light; but they had had time to be  impregnated by it.
Hers Avas a  floating brain, in its rudimentary state : theirs, on
the contrary, were already as strong, fixed, and almost  as well
developed, as those of older children, or even of groAvn persons.
  This great  revolution of  the first year passed, the develop-
ment of the  mind  (visible also in the face) modifies, more
than the age, the physiognomy  of  the brain.   In  a little
girl of four or  five years,  of intelligent countenance, it was
traversed by  convolutions and folds,  more neatly arranged,
more finely traced, than in those of many common women of
twenty-five  or even thirty-five years.   The mysterious figures
which the cerebellum presents in its thickest part, and which
are  called the tree of life, were much better outlined in this
young child, prettier, and more clearly defined.
  This was  not,  however, an  exceptional case; in many chil- 
The  Frail and Sacred  Child.          71
dren of the same age I found nearly the same  development;
and I came to the conclusion, that at the age of four, not only
the brain, but the spinal marrow and the Avhole nervous sys-
tem, have their greatest  development.  So, long before the
muscles attain their strength, Avhile the child is still so feeble,
the brain  is quite mature  as to  its nerves of sensation and
motion ;  it is  already,  in its most charming harmony, a
human being.
   But, though thus developed, at  this age it is still exceed-
ingly dependent, and Avholly at our mercy.   The brain of that
child of four years, pure and blank as an ivory tablet, full of
sensibility, seemed to Avait for  something to be Avritten upon
it—to say :  " Write here whatever you please—I will believe,
I will obey, I am here to obey; I am so dependent upon you,
and  belong to you so entirely."
   An utter incapacity to avoid any suffering,  or  to provide
what is necessary for itself, characterizes the child at this time.
This one, especially, advanced as she Avas, capable of loving and
understanding, seemed to implore assistance. You might have
almost read her prayer—for, though dead, she still prayed.
   I  was greatly moved, but at  the same time enlightened.
The nerves of this poor little girl afforded me a very precise
 revelation and insight into the absolute contradictions Avhich
 constitute the child's state of being.
   On the one hand, it is a mobile creature—more than all others
 moving by necessity.  The nerves of motion  are developed
 and active before the counterpoising forces which maintain the
 equilibrium.  Thus its incessant  restlessness annoys and often
 vexes us: we do not reflect  that at this age the  child is life
 itself.
   On the other hand, the nerves of sensation are mature; con-
 sequently the child's capacity to  suffer, and even to love, is
 greater than is commonly believed.  We  have proof of this
 in thaEnfants-Trouves ; a great many of the children brought
 there at four or five years of age are inconsolable, and die.
   A more astonishing fact, in connexion with this tender age, is 
72
Love  at Five Years.—The  Doll.
—that amorous  sensibility is expressed in the nerves more
strongly than in the adult.  I Avas alarmed at this; love, slum-
bering as yet in the sexual organs, seemed already fully awa-
kened in those parts of the spinal marrow Avhich act on those
organs. No doubt that at the  first call they afford premoni-
tions  of it;  Ave need not then be astonished at their innocent
coquetries, their sudden timidities, their furtive  movements
of bashfulness Avithout cause.
  Here is  a pitiful  phenomenon, Avhich should make us trem-
ble.   This infinitely mobile being,  remember, is at the  same
time infinitely sensitive.  Be kind, patient, I pray you !
  We destroy them by harshness, often too by tenderness.
Passionate and fitful  mothers force and  enervate the  child
by their violent transports.   I Avould desire for such as these
the painful but salutary impression that the sight of so ten-
der an organism would bestOAV.  It needs to be  surrounded
by a  mild  and gentle  and serious love, by  a A^orld of pure
harmonies.   The  little creature herself, already amorous in
organization, is  in almost as much danger  from furious ca-
resses as from undue severity.  Spare her, and let her live!

                      ------o------

                            V.

            LOVE  AT  FIVE YEARS.---THE  DOLL.

  It  is strange  that the  excellent Madame Necker de Saus-
sure  should  have  thought that, till ten years of age, a girl
and a boy  are almost the same thing, and that what is said about
the one will apply to the other. Whoever observes them, Avell
knoAvs that this almost is an incalculable, an infinite difference.
  Little girls, in the full levity of their age,  are already much
the more  staid.  They are also more tender; you will rarely
see them hurt a  little dog, or choke or pluck a bird;  they
have charming impulses of goodness and pity. 
Love  at Five Years.—The Doll.
  Once, indisposed, I was lying on a sofa, half covered Avith
a cloak.  A lovely little  girl, Avhom her mother had brought
on a visit to us, ran  to me  and tried to cover me better, to
tuck me in in my bed.   How can Ave help loving the delight-
ful little creatures; nevertheless Ave must be cautious not to
show it too much, not  to fondle them too much.
  The little boy is Avholly different;  he will not  long play
in peace with a girl; if they begin at first to make a house, the
boy will soon want it to be a carriage ; he must have a Avooden
horse, to whip  and manage.  Then she  Avill play by herself.
lie vainly'" makes believe" to be her brother, or indeed  her
little husband ;  even if he be the younger, she despairs of him,
and resigns herself to solitude,—and this is what happens:
  It  is chiefly in the Avinter,  by the fireside, that  you  will
observe it, when people are shut  up in the  house, and do  not
run about,  and  there is little doing  out of doors.  Some day,
Avhen she has been scolded a little, you Avill see her in a corner
softly wrapping some object, a bit of stick perhaps, Avith linen,
and a piece of one of her mother's neAV gowns; she will tie it
with a thread in the middle, and Avith  another higher up, to
mark the  Avaist and the head—and then will she embrace it
tenderly, and rock it to and fro : " Thou, thou lovest me,"  she
says in a Ioav voice; " thou Avilt never scold me."
  This is  play, but serious  play, much  more serious than we
think.  What is  this neAV person,  this  child of your  child?
let us examine all  the characters  the  mysterious  creature
enacts.
  You think that it is simply an imitation of maternity, that
to imagine herself groAvn  up, as  tall  as her  mother,  she
Avishes to  have also a  little daughter of her  OAvn, which  she
may rule and govern, embrace or scold.  So it is—but some^
thing more also: to this instinct of imitation must be added
another, Avhich  the precocious organism imparts to all, even
to those who may never have had a mother for a model.
  Let  us  name it aright:  It is First  Love.  Its ideal is
not a brother (lie is too rude, too noisy), but  a young sister,
                            4 
Love  at  Five Years.—The  Doll.
gentle,  lovely, like  herself,  Avho may  caress  and  console
her.
  In another aspect, not less  true, it is the first attempt  at
independence, a timid  essay of individuality.
  Under  this pretty  manifestation, there is,  Avithout her
knoAving it, a feeble desire to AvithdraAV herself,  something of
feminine opposition and contradiction.   She is beginning her
role as woman :  always subject to authority, she murmurs a
little at her mother, as she will hereafter at her husband. She
must  have an ever so tiny confidant, Avith Avhom she may
sigh.    For  Avhat?   Nothing to-day  perhaps, but  some-
thing or other which  will come in the  future.  Ah!  you are
right, my little daughter.   Hoav, alas! Avill your small pleasures
be mingled Avith  soitoavs !  We Avho adore you, Iioav much
Ave make you Aveep!
  We must not jest  at  this—it is  a serious passion.   The
mother  should join in it, and receive Avith kindness the child
of her daughter.  Far from despising the doll, she should insist
that the capricious girl be always a  good mother to it, and
keep it properly dressed, that it be neither spoiled nor beaten,
but treated reasonably, as she is  herself.
  You big children, Avho may read this—father, brother, cou-
sins—I  pray you,  do not laugh  at the child.   Examine your-
selves—do you not resemble her? Hoav often, in affairs Avhich
you  deem the gravest,  a memory  returns  to you, and you
smile—half avoAving to yourselves that you have been playing
Avith a doll.
  Observe, that the more the little girl's doll is her ovm, the
more that it is of her simple, elementary, but also personal,
manufacture, the  more has she  set her heart upon it, and the
more danger there is of distressing her.
  In the country,  in the north  of France, a  poor  and hard-
working region,  I once saw a  very discreet little girl, Avise 
           Love  at Five  Years.—The  Doll.       75

beyond her years.  She had only brothers, who were all older
than she;  born long after her parents had ceased to expect
more children, they seemed to take it amiss that she had come
into the Avorld. .Her mother, laborious and severe, kept her
always near her at work, Avhile the others played ; the elder
boys, moreover, Avith that selfish levity Avhich marks their sex
in childhood, rarely took part  in the sports of their young sister.
She tried to make herself a little garden; but they laughed  at
her attempts, and trampled on it.  Naturally it occurred to her
to make, out of some cotton rags, a little friend, to whom she
might relate the tricks of her brothers or the scoldings of
her mother. Her tenderness was lively and extreme.  The doll
Avas sensible, replied intelligently, and  in the sweetest voice;
by her tender effusions, her  touching recitals,  it Avas equally
affected, and,  embracing each other, they Avept.
  One Sunday it Avas discovered, and created much laughter;
the boys,  tearing it  from her arms,  took great delight  in
throwing it up to the topmost branches of a tree, so high that
it finally remained there.  Her tears  and cries  availed her
nothing.   She Avas faithful hoAvever, and in her grief refused
ever to make  another.  All the Avinter long, she thought of
it, and wept and Avept to think that it was out in the snow
and storm.  When, in the  spring, the tree was cut doAAm, she
begged the gardener to look for it.  I need scarcely say, that
long before that, her poor sister had  been  carried away by
the northern blasts.
  Two years  after, as her mother Avas buying some clothes
for  the  boys,  the shopwoman, Avho  had also  toys for sale,
noticed  the little  one looking  at  them.   Her good heart
prompted  her to  give something  to the child for  whom
nothing Avas purchased; so she placed in her arms a little Ger-
man doll.  So great Avas her surprise and delight, that she
trembled and  tottered, arid could hardly carry it.—This doll,
pliant and obedient, lent itself to  her every Avish.   It was
fond of dress, and its mistress thought  only  of making  it
beautiful and  brilliant; but that was the ruin of it—the-boys 
6               Woman a  lleligion.
danced her to  death:  her arms were  torn  out,  and  she
fell so  ill that  she was put to bed and nursed.  The little  girl
sank under these new Woavs of grief.
  Fortunately a young lady, touched Avith pity at seeing her
so very sad, found among her trumpery a splendid doll, Avhich
had been her own.   Although  defaced by time, it Avas much
more real than the modern one ;  its form Avas perfect—even
Avhen naked, it seemed alive.  Her friends often  caressed it;
and already it  had  preferences in its friendships, and showed
gleams, and first signs, of a  precocious passionate character.
During a short illness  by Avhich  the little girl Avas confined,
some one, perhaps from  jealousy,  cruelly broke the doll; its
mistress, on her recovery, found it decapitated.   This third
tragedy was too much;  she fell into  such  melancholy that
she was never seen to smile or play aftenvards.  Ahvays de-
ceived  in her fancies, she grew weary  of life, Avhich she  had
scarcely  tasted,  and  nothing could save her.   So she died,
sincerely mourned for by all who had seen the SAveet,  gentle,
innocent creature, Avho had scarcely known happiness,  and
Avho yet Avas so affectionate, with a heart so full of love.

                     ------o------

                           VI.

                  WOMAN A RELIGION.

  In education, the father is far too much concerned  for the
future, that is,  for  the Uncertain.  The mother  is devoted
chiefly  to the  present, and wishes her child to be happy,  and
to live.  I take my stand with the mother.
  To live !  Avhich  is really  a most difficult  thing.  Men do
not think of that; though they may have under their very eyes
the spectacle of the trials, the Avatchings, the anxious cares,
by  which from  day to day the life of a frail being  is pro-
longed, they coolly reason on what it will do ten years hence. 
Woman a  Religion.
77
Let them, then, at least understand the indisputable, official
statistics of the frightful mortality of children.  To the new-
born babe, death is for a long time the probable fate—with-
out a mother, almost certain.  The cradle is for the most part
a brief moment of light betAveen night and night again.
  Women, who Avrite  and  print, have made eloquent  books
on the misfortunes of  their sex; but if children could write,
what things  they would have  to tell !   They Avould say:
" Take care of us, spare us for the few days or months gene-
rally allotted us by unsparing nature.   We are so  dependent
on you!  You so hold us by superior strength, reason, and
experience ! For the little of skill and good management that
you  expend in our cause, we will be  very obedient, Ave will
do what you will.  But do not shorten the only hour we have
beneath the Avarm light of the sun and on our mothers' knee.
—To-morrow Ave shall be under the sod;  and of all earthly
goods, we shall take away with us only their tears."
  Impatient minds will conclude from  this that  I desire for
children that unlimited liberty Avhich Avould be our servitude,
that I trust only in the child's instinctive tendencies, that I
Avould have him obeyed.
  On the contrary, I set out, as you remember, Avith the pro-
found  and  original idea Avhich Froebel  first broached: " The
child, left to the  chaos of first impressions, would be very
unhappy.   He is relieved  if the mother substitute for  that
Avearisome  confusion  a small number  of coherent objects,
if she understand  these, and present them to  him in order.
For order  is a necessity of the mind, and consequently hap-
piness for the child."
  Orderless habits, unbridled agitations, are no more neces-
sary to the happiness of the groAving child, than  a chaos of
confused sensations to the  nurseling.   I  have  very  often
noticed the little unfortunates who Avere left entirely to their 
yS               Woman  a Religion.
OAvn fancy, and have  been astonished to see how soon  they
are Avearied by their empty boisterousness and boldness.  For
Avant of personal restraint they encounter every moment the
restraint of things, the  mute but  fixed obstacle of realities;
they fret against this to no purpose.   On the contrary, the
child, directed by a friendly providence and  in natural ways,
but rarely subjected to the tyrannies  of the  impossible,  lives
in true liberty.
  The habitual exercise of freedom in the paths of order, has
this admirable result—that  sooner  or  later it Avill  inspire
nature Avith  the  noble  purpose of subduing  itself, of con-
quering liberty through a higher liberty, of seeking effort and
sacrifice.
  Effort itself belongs to nature,  and  is its best elementy  I
mean free and deliberate effort.
  I have made this explanation in advance, for the benefit of
those Avho criticise-before they  read.   I am still  very far
from imposing effort  upon the little creature I have in hand.
She is intelligent, loving;  but she is, nevertheless, only an
element.  God preserve  me,  poor little one,  from telling you
all this!  Your duty to-day is to live, to grow, to eat Avell, to
sleep  better,  to run in the Avheat, and among  the floAvers.
But one can't ahvays be running, and you will be very happy
if your mother or elder sister Avill play Avith you, and make
you skilful in those labors Avhich are games.
  Duty is  the inner  soul, the life of education.  The  child
feels it very early; almost at birth, we have  inscribed on our
hearts the idea of justice.  I might appeal to that, but I will
not yet. Life should be completely and  firmly established,
before its barrier is set up, and its action  limited.   Those
who make a  great commotion about morals and obligations
with the child that is not yet sure of living  at all, Avho  labor
to confine and circumscribe its needed buoyancy of action, are 
Woman a  Religion.
79
only too  stupid.  Ah! Avretched bunglers, lay aside your
shears;  at least Avait till the material is there, before yoQ dock,
and cut, and trim it.
  The foundation of education, its soul and constant life, is
Avhat appears early in the conscience—the good, the just.  The
great art is, by love, gentleness, order, and harmony, to teach
the infant soul, as it attains its true, healthy, and complete life
to perceive more and more clearly the justice that already
exists Avithin it, inscribed in the depths of love.  Let the child
have examples only, no precepts—at least  not in the begin-
ning; he  will of himself easily pass  from one to the  other.
Without seeking,  he Avill discover  this: "I ought to love
my mother dearly,  because  she loves me  so  much."  That
is duty, and yet nothing is more natural.
  I am  not iioav Avriting a book on education, and should not
stop to  discuss general vieAVS, but proceed to my special sub-
ject, the education  of the daughter.   Let us have done then
with Avhat is common betAveen the girl and boy, and dAvell on
the difference.
  It is profound, and this it is:
  The  education of the boy, in the modern sense, aims to
organize a force, an effective and productive force, to  create
a creator;  Avdiich is  the modern man.
  The  education of the girl is to produce  harmony, to har-
monize  a religion.
  Woman is a religion.
  Her destiny is such, that the higher she stands as religious
poetry,  the more effective will she be in common and practical
life.
  The utility of man, being in creative, productive poAver, may
exist apart  from the ideal; an art  Avhich  yields noble pro-
ducts may sometimes have the effect of vulgarizing the artist,
who may himself retain  very little of the  beauty he infuses
into his Avorks.
  There is never anything like this in woman.
  The Avoman of prosaic heart, she Avho is not a living poAver, 
80              Woman a  Religion.
a harmony to exalt a husband, to educate a child, to con-
stantly sanctify and ennoble a family, has failed in her mis-
sion, and will exert no influence even in Avhat is vulgar.
  A mother, seated by  the  cradle of her daughter, should
say to herself:  "I have  here the Avar  or  the peace of the
Avorld, Avhat will trouble  the hearts of mei#or give them the
tranquillity and high harmony of God.
  " She it is who, if I die, will at tAvelve years of age, on my
tomb, raise her father on her little Avings, and carry him back
to heaven.   (See the Life of Manin.)
  " She it is avIio, at  sixteen, may with a Avord of proud enthu-
siasm,  exalt a man far above himself, and make him cry, 'I
will be great!'
  " She it  is Avho, at tAventy, and at thirty, and all her life
long, will  renew her  husband,  every  night, as he returns
deadened by his labor, and make his Avilderness of interests
and cares blossom like the rose.
  " She again, Avho,  in the AA^retched days, when the heavens
are dark, and everything is disenchanted, will bring God back
to him, making him find  and feel Him on her bosom."
  To educate a daughter is to educate society itself.  Society
proceeds from the family, of Avhich the Avife is the living bond.
To educate a daughter is  a sublime and disinterested task;  for
you create her, O  mother, only that  she may leave you, and
make  your heart bleed.   She  is destined  for  another.  She
Avill live for others,  not for you, not for herself;  it is this
relative character Avhich places her higher than man, and makes
her a religion.  She is the flame of lovre, and the flame of the
hearth ; she is the cradle of the future, and she is the school,
another cradle—in a Avord:  She is the altar.
  God be thanked, all the debated systems for the education
of the boy end here, all disputes cease here.   The great conflict
of methods and theories  expires in the peaceful nurture of this 
Woman a  Religion.               81
blessed floAA^er; discords are disarmed, and embrace each other
in Beauty.
  She  is  not  condemned to strong and violent action; she
Avill know, but not enter into, the frightful world of details,
ever increasing, beyond all the powers of man.
  Will she ever rise to the summits of high speculation ? Very
likely,  but not by folloAving in our footsteps.  We will prepare
ways for her to reach the idea, Avithout subjecting her charming
soul to the preliminary tortures in which the spirit of life is lost.
  What shall she be ?   Beauty.   After Avhat model, O mother,
shall she form herself?
  Every morning and every night, offer up this prayer: " My
God, make  me  very beautiful! that my daughter,  to be so,
need only look on me!"
  The end of Avoman on this earth, her  evident vocation, is
love.   One must be very unfortunately constituted, very hos-
tile to nature,  very blind and crooked-souled, to pronounce,
against God himself, that this delicate  organism and this ten-
derness of heart are destined only to isolation.  " Let us edu-
cate her," they say, " to be self-sufficing; that is the safest plan.
Love  is the exception, and indifference the rule.  Let her knoAV
how  to live Avithin herself—to labor, pray, die, and work out
her salvation, in a corner."
  To  this I reply, that love will never be wanting to her.  I
maintain that,  as  a Avoman, she earns her salvation only by
constituting the happiness of man.  She ought to love and bear
children ; it is her sacred duty.  But let this remark be under-
stood—if she is not a Avife and mother, she may be an  instruc-
tress ; in Avhich case she Avill be no less a mother, and will bear
the fruit of the mind.
  Yes, if it has been her misfortune to be born in an accursed
epoch, Avhen the most lovely are no longer beloved, so much
the more Avill she open her arms and her heart to the universal
                            4* 
82               Woman a Religion.
love.  For one child that she might have borne, she Avill have
a thousand ; and clasping them to her bosom she will say:  " I
have lost nothing."
  Let the men understand one thing, a noble and exquisite
mystery that nature has concealed in the bosom of Avoman;
and that is the divine doubt Avherein, in her organization, love
dwells.  In men, it is ahvays desire ; but in her, even Avithout
her knowledge, in her blindest  impulses, the instinct of ma-
ternity overpoAvers all  the rest.  And Avhen egotistical  pride
convinces the lover that he has conquered, Ave  may see, most
frequently, that she has yielded only to her own dream—the
hope and love of a child, which almost from her birth she had
conceived in her heart.
  High poetry of purity!   In every season of love, when the
senses assert themselves, the instinct of maternity eludes them,
and bears love into sublimer regions.
  To educate Avoman, is to promote her transformation—it is,
at every step of her life, by giving her love according to the
necessities  of her  heart, to aid  her thus to exalt  love, and
elevate it to a form at  once so pure and so intense.
  To express  in a word this sublime and delightful poesy:
from the cradle Avoman is a mother, and longs for maternity.
To her everything in  nature, animate or inanimate, is trans-
formed into little children.
  We shall perceive more and more clearly how felicitous this
is;' Avoman alone can educate man, especially in the decisive
years Avhen it is necessary Avith prudent tenderness to discipline
his young liberty by bringing it into order. To brutally break
and crush the human plant, as hitherto has  been done, there
is no need of  Avomen.  But they Avill be recognised  as the
only possible educators, in proportion as Ave  shall desire to
cultiATate in each child his peculiar and natural genius, Avhich
is of infinite diversity.   None but a Avoman is sufficiently deli-
cate, tender, and  patient,  to perceive  so many shades, and
take advantage of them. 
Woman a  Religion.               83
  The Avorld lives by woman.  She contributes two elements
which create all civilization ;  her grace, her delicacy; but this
last is chiefly a reflection of her purity.
  What Avould become of the Avorld of men, if these two things
Avere  Avanting ?  Those Avho  seem  most indifferent  to  them
forget that, Avithout this grace, these forms at  least of purity,
love Avould  be  extinguished  on earth—love, the  all-powerful
spur  of our human activities.   Delicious  tormeijt, fruitful
trouble! Avithout you, Avho would care to live ?
  It is necessary, absolutely necessary, for Avoman  to be grace-
ful.   She is not bound to be beautiful, but grace is essential
to her.  She oavcs it to nature, Avhich has  made her to be ad-
mired ; she OAves it to  humanity.   Grace charms the arts of
men,  and imparts a divine smile to  all society.
  And Avhat must the  child do to be graceful?  She must
ahvays feel that she is loved.   Let her be guided equably: no
violent alternations of  rigor and  tenderness;  nothing  rude,
precipitate, but a very gradual progress—no interruptions, and
no very great effort.   She need not be embellished with elabo-
rate  ornaments; but by  a sweet  absorption, create a  new
beauty which, little by little,  will bloom out from Avithin.
  Grace is a reflection of love  on a groundAvork of purity.
Purity is the Avoman herself:  .
  Such should be the constant thought of the mother, as soon
as a daughter is born to her.
  The purity of the child is at  first that of the mother; the
child  should always find  truth, light, and absolute transpa-
rency, as of a perfect mirror, in her, Avhich no breath ever
tarnishes.
  In the morning and  evening, both should make abundant
Avarm ablutions—or better, a little cold.  In  all things they
hold together.  The more the little girl sees her mother atten-
tive to neatness, the more will she Avish to be like her in per-
son, and soon in heart also. 
84               Woman a  Religion.
  Purity of air and temper; purity and uniformity of influ-
ences.   Let there be no nurse to  spoil beloAV stairs Avhat is
done above, by flattering the child, and making her think her
mamma cross.
  Purity above all in her regimen and her food.  And Avhat
is to be understood by that?
  I mean that the little one should have a child's diet, that
she should continue  her milk regimen, sweet, mild, and not
exciting; that, if she eat at your table, she should be taught not
to touch your dishes, Avhich are poisons to her.   A revolution
has been at work here:  Ave have abandoned the frugal French
regimen, and adopted,  more  and  more, the heavy,  bloody
cuisine of our neighbors, much more appropriate to their  cli-
mate than to ours, and the Avorst of it is that we inflict this
diet on  our children.   A strange spectacle truly, to see a
mother give to the daughter she Avas nursing but yesterday, a
coarse supply of half-raAV meats,  and dangerous stimulants,
wine, and (exaltation itself) coffee!  She is astonished to find
the child \dolent, Avhimsical, passionate, when she has only
herself to blame for it.
  What she does not yet know, but Avhich is nevertheless of
graA'e  importance, is, that in our  precocious French race (I
have seen nurslings in love in the cradle), the excitement of
the senses is directly provoked by  such a regimen.  Far from
strengthening, it agitates, Aveakens, enervates.  The mother
finds  it pleasant and pretty to have  so lively  a child, with
repartees already, and so sensitive that  it weeps at the least
word.   It is all owing  to her being over-excited herself;  she
wishes her child to  be so, and Avithout  knowing it, is a cor-
rupter of her OAvn daughter.
   All this is worth nothing to her, madam, and scarcely more
to you.  You have not  the courage, you say, to  eat anything,
unless she has her share.  Well,  abstain then,  or at least be
moderate in the use of such a diet—good  for  a jaded man,
perhaps, but fatal to an idle Avoman—vulgarizing her, per-
turbing her, making her violent, somnolent, or stupid. 
Love  at Ten Years.—Flowers.
   In both Avoman and child it is a kindness, a loving kindness,
 to be chiefly frugivorous, to avoid  the  fetid viands, and live
 rather  on the innocent aliments Avhich cost no  creature its
 life—the fragrant fruits  Avhich delight the  smell  quite  as
 much as the taste.   A  very  natural  reason Avhy the dear
 creatures never inspire repugnance, but seem etherial in com-
 parison  Avith men—is chiefly to be  found in their preference
 for vegetables and fruits, a purity  of diet which contributes
 not a little  to that of the soul, and truly assimilates it to
 the innocence of floAvers.


                      ------o------

                           VII.

           LOVE AT TEN" YEAES.--FLOWERS.

   When the good Froebel placed  in the pretty but rather
 awkAvard hand of my dear little one the elementary forms
 Avith Avhich  nature begins, he invited  her  also to the love
 of vegetable life.  To build  a house is beautiful; but hoAV
 much more  beautiful to make a plant, to create a neAV life, a
 floAver which Avill expand,  and reward you for your pains!
   A splendid red kidney-bean,  the  admiration of childhood,
 has been planted, not  Avithout some solemnity.  But, to Avait
 is  a thing impossible at fh*e years ; hoAV can she Avait, inactive,
 for Avhat nature does  by herself?   Next day, of course, the
 kidney-bean is visited.  Taken up and put back carefully, it is
 not at all improved.  The  tender anxiety of its young nurse
leaves it no  repose;  she removes at least the surface of the
 soil.  With an indefatigable Avatering-pot, she importunes the
idleness  of the nonchalant A-egetable ; the earth drinks avou-
derfully, and seems to be always thirsty.  So, in spite of the
care and the  Avatering, the bean dies.
  Gardening is a labor of  ATirtue and patience; it is excellent
discipline for the character of a child.   But at  what age 
86        Love at Ten Years.—Flowers.

may it be really begun ?  The little (iermans of Froebel were
to commence at four years; ours a little later, doubtless.  I be-
lieve that our little girls (much better than the boys) may, by
their kindness and tenderness for the baby plant, undertake to
Avait for it, to spare it, and train it.  As soon as one attempt has
succeeded, as soon as they have seen, admired, touched, kissed
the little being, everything is accomplished. They are so eager
to repeat the miracle that they become patient.
  The child's true life is in the fields; but even in town she
should, as much as possible, be familiarized Avith vegetable life.
  And for this, neither a grand garden nor a park is necessary.
She who has little, loves it  the more—though it be only a
Avail-flower on her balcony, and that an extension of the roof;
and she will  profit more by her  single plant  than  the spoiled
child of the rich, let loose in great parterres Avhich she has only
learned to destroy.  The care  and assiduous contemplation of
this flower, the  relations Avhich  shall  be pointed  out to her,
betAveen her plant and such or such an influence of the atmo-
sphere or season—Avith these alone  her entire education may
be carried on.  Observation, experience, reflection, reasoning,
will all come of it.  Who does  not knoAV the  admirable les-
sons Bernardin de Saint Pierre derived from the strawberry-
plant that grew by chance in a pot on his Avindow ?   In it he
saAv the infinite, and made it the beginning  of his vegetable
harmonies, simple, popular, childlike, but not the less scientific.
(See Alex, von Humboldt.)
  A floAver is a Avhole world,  pure, innocent, peace-making;
the little  human  flower harmonizes Avith it so much the better
for not being like it in its essential point.  Woman, especially
the female child,  is all nervous life; and so  the plant, Avhich
has no nerves, is a sweet companion to it,  calming  and re-
freshing it, in a relative innocence.
  It is true that this plant, AAdien in blossom, excited beyond its
strength, seems to be animalized. And in certain microscopic
species, it assumes in the organ of love a surprising identity
Avith the  higher order of being ;  but the child knoAvs nothing 
            Love  at Ten  Years.—Flowers.         87

of this beautiful delirium of plants, except from their intoxica-
ting odor, and her constant motion prevents her from imbibing
that too long.
  The little girl, Avho at an early age is so complete a being,
much more delicate  than the boy, more susceptible to nice
impressions, has  one sense  the more—that  of perfumes,  of
aromas.   She  could be penetrated by them and sometime
enjoy a sensual expansion; but this floAver is not for her an
object of idle love, of indolent enjoyment;  it is  a  necessity
for labor and activity, an  object of anxiety, success, and joy,
an occupation  for  her  heart and mind.   In fine, and  in a
Avord ; maternity  cures love;  the floAver is not her lover,
because it is her daughter.
   It is a bad  and dangerous intoxication  for the sedentary
little lady,  deprived of fresh air and exercise, to  inhale in a
parlor the  concentrated  emanations from  an amorous bou-
quet of floAvers.  And it is  not  only her  head that grows
dizzy ;  one of our novelists has undertaken to shoAv the
doubtful virtue of a young Avoman Avho  yields to  such  influ-
ences.   They Avould no less poAverfully trouble the little girl,
by hastening the  sensual  crisis, and forcing the blossom that
should rather be delayed.
   Shall I confess  (but Avhat a paradox! hoAV shocking to the
ladies!)  There are three things  that I rather dislike : those
babels of paintings, called museums, Avhere the pictures kill
off each other;—those babels of Avarbling,  called aviaries,
where  the nightingale, associated Avith vulgar singers, is in a
fair Avay to  fall into a  patois;—and those babels  of flowers,
called bouquets, made up of  all perfumes and colors, Avhich
conflict Avith and annihilate each other.
   Whoever has a vivid and  delicate sense of life  does not
with impunity submit to such confusions, such a chaos of things,
hoAvever brilliant  they may be.  Every odor  has its OAAm fra-
grance, its OAvn mystery,  and speaks its oavii language.   All 
88          Love at  Ten  Years.—Flowers.
together, they cither shock the brain or trouble the senses—
from Avhich the  nerves suffer, as by certain vibrations of the
harmonica.  It is voluptuous and cloying;  we smile, but our
hearts turn from it.  The discrete odors perish barbarously,
as by  asphyxia. "Alas!" says the SAveet marjoram, stifled
by the powerful  rose, " you will then never know the divinely
bitter fragrance  which is mingled with the  perfume of love ?"
  A certain Avoman, I kneAV Avell,  never plucked a flower
without regret,  and in spite of herself—asking pardon of it.
Each  has its own peculiar pretty Avay, if it is peculiar.  It has
its  special harmony,  a  charm  it  derives  from  its mother
earth, and Avhich shall never be taken from it.  In a  bouquet
Avhat would become of its Avays, its graceful curves, the sweet
and jaunty air Avith which it carried its head ?   The simple
floAvers, Avhich are  the floAvers of love,  Avith  their lithe  and
modest graces, groAv pale or disappear amid the grand corollas
of those luxurious virgins, that our  gardeners  develop by
their skill.
  Let us then restore  to our child the vegetable Avorld, in all
its naive and sacred truth.  While it is yet young, let it feel,
love, and  comprehend, the plant in  its proper and complete
life.   Let it knoAV the  floAver, not as a luxury  and a coquetry,
but as one stage of the plant's existence, as the plant itself in
blossom.  It is a great injustice to court it Avith the fleeting
pleasures of a vain adornment, such as an artificial floAver, and
forget the  marvellous  reality, the progressive miracle hidden
in a tiny sanctuary,  the  sublime elaboration of a future  and
an immortality,  by which  life every year escapes, and laughs
at death.
  Taking a winter  walk, in February, the little  one, looking
at the red buds  on the trees, sighs and says: " How soon will
it be  spring ?"   Suddenly she cries out, for she has it at her
very feet—a little silver bell Avith a green border, the snow-
drop,  announces the reawakening of the year.
  Soon the sun  resumes  his  strength.   To his first changeful
and capricious rays, in March, a A\diole little world awakes— 
Love  at Ten  Years.—Flowers.          8q
the jeunettes,  violets,  primroses, and daisies,—the flower-
children Avhich, from their little golden disks,  are called the
children of the  sun.  They have not strong perfumes—except,
I believe, the violet only.   The earth is too moist as  yet; the
hyacinth, jacinth, and lily of the valley, seem  almost wet  in
the humid shade of the Avoods.
  Hoav delightful, hoAV surprising !   This  innocent vegetation
seems created expressly for our little girl, and every day she
makes conquests from it, collecting, arranging, and binding to-
gether the  bundles of little flowers that she must throw away
to-morroAv.  One by one she salutes each new-comer, and gives
it a sister's kiss.  We Avill not  disturb her in her festival of
spring. But Avhen, after a month or tAvo, she is satisfied, I Avill
tell her: " While you have been playing at nature, my child,
the proud and splendid transformation of the Earth has been
accomplished.  She  has noAv put on  her green  robe, Avith
the immense flounces that Ave  call hills and mountains.  Think
you it is only to give you  daisies, that  she has poured from
her bosom  an ocean of herbs and floAvers ?  No, my pet: the
good nurse, the universal mamma, has first served up a banquet
to our  humbler brothers  and sisters,  Avho are our  support.
The good  coav, and  the  gentle sheep, the sober goat  that
lives on so  little and helps the poorest to live,—for them were
these meadows spread.  With the virginal milk of the earth
they will load their  udders, to give you cream and butter.—
Take, and be thankful."
  To these fresh and  sAveet supplies are to be added  the  deli-
cacy of the first potherbs, and the  earliest fruits.  With the
increasing  heat appear  in due season the currant and the
mild straAvberry, Avhich our little gourmand  detects by their
exquisite fragrance.   The tartness of the  former, the melting
lusciousness of the latter,  and  the delicate sweetness of the
cherry,  are the refreshments sent to us in the  burning days,
when the rising heats  of summer enervate  us, or Avhen beneath
an overpoAvering sun  the labors of harvesting begin.
  This intoxication first appears in the rich but too penetrat- 
90          Love at  Ten Years.—Flowers.

mg perfume of the rose, which gets in the head.  The coquet-
tish queen of floAvers triumphantly leads in the legions of her
more serious sisters—the medicinal floAvers and pharmaceutic
plants, useful and saving poisons.
   But  in the sovereign labors of the great Maternity, come
next those  Avhich  are to nourish  entire populations—the
venerable tribes of the leguminosm y  and the grasses also,
the poor of the \regetable kingdom, Avho, as  Linnaeus says,
are its irresistible valor and heroic force; though they be
maltreated  and trampled doAvn,  yet "will they multiply the
more!
   "Their two nutritious leaves  (cotyledons) are as a mother's
breasts.  Five or six poor grasses,  Avith the abundant fulness
of these breasts, support the human race."  (E. Noel.)
   My daughter, do not imitate the thoughtless, giddy child
who, Avhere a sea of gold rolls in the wind, of corn-poppies and
blue-bonnets in their sterile splendor, goes  in to pluck them.
Let not  your little  foot  stray from the  strict and narroAV
line of the  path.   Respect our nutritive father, the  reve-
rend Corn,  whose feeble stalk  scarcely supports his  head
heavy  with  bread for  to-morroAV.  Every ear you  destroy is
so much taken from the life of the  poor and worthy laborer,
Avho the whole year round has suffered, that it might thrive.
   Even the lot of the corn itself deserves your tenderest respect.
All the Avinter long, shut  up in the earth, it patiently Avaited
under the snow; then, in  the cold spring rains,  its little green
shoot struggled upward, -wounded, noAv by a nip from the
frost, noAv by a bite from the sheep; and it has thriven only
by enduring the smarting rays of  the  sun.  To-morroAV, cut
down by the sickle, beaten and again beaten by flails, broken
and crushed by mill-stones, the hapless martyr, reduced to an
impalpable  powder, will be cooked into bread, and eaten, or
brewed  into beer,  and drunk.   Whichever Avay, its death is
life to man.
   All  nations, in  joyous hymns, have sung its martyrdom,
and the  martyrdom of the vine, its sister.  Even in the coro 
            Love  at  Ten  Years.—Flowers.         91

resided, in the most concentrated nutritive form our climates
afford, something of the SAveetening, intoxicating property its
sister brought us.   The property of sugar-making, a singular
process of the human organization, exists in these vegetables,
Avhich may, therefore, be said to be humanized.
  Such is the last effort of the year; Avhen man wearies, groAvs
feeble, and languishingly perspires, mother nature  affords him
a more vital nourishment.
    To the vernal age of fields and milk succeeds the substantial
  and strong age  of Avheat;  and that is scarcely reaped and
  thrashed, Avhen the humble little vine—trailing and creeping,
  because so much more delicate  and  tender—prepares its
  heaven-bestoAved beverage.  What labors here, my daughter!
  And Avhat poAver over man does not this modest plant exert,
  this ugly, little,  tortuous shrub,  that  you  despised in the
  spring!  If you went through  all Champagne, Burgundy, and
  the South, you  Avould find perhaps a quarter of the popula-
  tion  of France,  millions of men, engaged, from the month of
  March, in  setting the  props, raising, binding,  and pruning
  the vine,  and heaping  the earth around  it; all the year on
  foot, leading the delicate creature to perfection.  To kill  it,
  a mere mist is enough.
    Ever the harsh alternative—life or death.   Every  plant
  must die  to give life to others.  Have you not observed, near
  the close  of autumn, Avhen the  season is growing pale, hoAV
  gently the  leaves fall,  Avithout even  waiting for the Avind ?
  Each, Avith a  feAV turns, drops,  wholly  resigned,  no noise,
  and no resistance.   The plant, whether  it  clearly knows it
  or not, at least feels, that its office is to nourish its sister, that
;  to this end it must die.   And  so dying gracefully, it falls  to
  earth, and, by nurturing Avith  its debris the  air that wafts it
  or the earth into Avhich it penetrates, prepares the life  of its
  friends, Avho are coming to reneAV it, to reproduce and restore it. 
 92         Love  at  Ten  Years.—Flowers.

 It disappears consoled, and (avIio knoAvs?) perhaps to rest—its
 duty done, and the law of God fulfilled.
   Thus, dear, if you have understood me, you have seen that
 beneath  this brilliant  circle  of annual evolutions, in Avhich
 each for a moment takes her place in the sun, there is another
 circle,  sombre and  mute, constituted in  the depths of being
 by sweet sisterly interchanges, each uncnviously retiring to
 transfer her life to the others.
   A world of peace, innocence, and resignation!  But the supe-
 rior beings, subject to the same  laA\r, rarely yield themselves
 to it so completely.—" Nevertheless," says  nature, " Avhat is
 to be done?  it is not my fault.   I  have only so much sub-
 stance, and no more, to share among you all; I cannot increase
 it at will.  It is but just that each in turn should have a little.''
   Therefore, she says to the animals,  " You,  the favorites of
 life, so privileged by a superior organization,  are not by that
 exempt from nourishing your sisters the  plants,  Avhich, grate-
 ful and graceful, daily nourish you in advance.   It is yours
 to pay tribute, but only of that which is Avorthless to  your-
 selves—your sloughs at  certain  seasons—your remains  in
 death.  . . . That may be as late as possible; I have shoAvn you
 how to retard it.  But it must certainly come  one day;  for
 I could do no better."
   This is but reasonable; is it not, my daughter?  And  the
 Father of nature, God, who. made and  endowed you, Avho  has
 given you  skilful  hands (or  fitted to become  so), who  has
 given you  a head, as yet light, but gradually recipient of
 thoughts,  grants you the distinguished honor of sharing in
his labors.   You  shall germinate vegetable  nurselings, and
little daughter-floAvers; you  shall build  up life,  by partici-
pating  in the grand operations of God; and afterwards, a
 Avoman, and perhaps a  mother, Avhen  your time shall come,
you  shall cheerfully transfer  your life to others, and Avith a
grateful grace vivify your good nurse, nature, and nourish  her
in your turn. 
The  Little  Household.—The Little Garden. 93
                          VIII.

    THE LITTLE HOUSEHOLD;---THE LITTLE GARDEN.

  If a choice of playthings be offered to a little girl, she will
certainly select miniature utensils of cooking and housekeep-
ing.   That is her natural instinct, a presentiment of the duties
the Avoman will have to fulfil; for she must nourish the man.
  An elevated and  sacred duty—especially in our  climate,
AArhere the sun,  less  powerful  than at the equator, does  not
complete  the  maturity of many vegetables, does not ripen
them sufficiently to make them digestible by man.  So Avoman
completes the Avork  of the sun; she  knoAvs  how the food,
cooked and softened, Avill be assimilated by him, will pass into
his circulation, to restore his blood and his strength.
  It is like another nursing; if  she could gratify her heart,
she would feed her  husband  and her children  on the milk
of her breasts.  Unable to do that,  she borroAvs aliment from
nature, but brings it to  them  greatly changed, mingled Avith
herself, and made delicious Avith her tenderness.   From pure
Avheat,  solid  and  strong, she  prepares the  sacred cake, by
Avhich the family partake of her  love.  Milk takes a hundred
forms from her; she puts  into it her delicate sweetness and
her fragrance, and it becomes a light and etherial cream, a
most  luxurious  dish.   The  ephemeral fruits that Autumn
lavishes, as though to get rid of them, she fixes as by enchant-
ment.   Next year her astonished children will see,  brought
forth from the treasury of her foresight, the fugitive delights
which they supposed  had perished before  the  first snows.
There they are, made after her own image—faithful and unal-
terable, pure and limpid as her life, transparent as her heart.
  O the  SAveet and beautiful faculty!  The child-bearing!
The slow, partial, but continuous creation, day by day!—She
makes and remakes them, body  and soul, temper and energy.
She  increases or diminishes  their  activity,  stretches  01 
94  The Little  Household.—The  Little  Garden.

slackens their nerves.   The  changes are insensible, but the
results  certain.  What can  she  not do ?  The giddy child,
playful and rebellious, becomes pliable, disciplinable, and soft.
The man, down-borne by labor and excess of effort, is gradually
rejuvenated by her.  In the morning, out of a heart full of love,
he says: " I live again, Avholly in  thee."
  Besides,  Avhen this,  her great poAver, is Avisely exercised,
she has no  occasion to restore, to cure.  She is the perfect
physician, creating, day by clay, health  and harmonious equi-
librium,  and  barring  the door  against disease.   Thinking
of that, Avhat Avoman's, Avhat  mother's heart, could  haggle
and find fault Avith nature.
  Love  is an idealist, and in all that is essential to the life of
its  beloved  it sees only spirit.  The noble and high results,
Avhich these humble cares  procure, elevate and ennoble them,
and make them sweet and dear.
  A young  lady  of distinction,  delicate and sickly, would
never allow any  one  else to feed  her nightingale.  That
AAdnged  artist is like man—to refresh its  burning throat, it
would  like  the  marroAV  of  lions; it must have  meats and
blood.   This  lady's servant  found the task repugnant; but
she, not at  all; she saAV in it  only the song, the soul  of love,
to Avhich she imparted strength.   It received from her hand
the banquet of inspiration (love, hemp, and poppy seeds), life,
intoxication, and forgetfulness.
  Fourier has well remarked that children have a taste for
cooking, and like to take part in it.  Is it mimicry or gluttony ?
  But I do not mean to encourage  mimicry, as he  advises.
Nor,  since it is  to become so grave a matter, would I have
the child make sport of it, and waste her time in foolish little
preparations for her doll's repast.   I Avould prefer that, after a
time,  Avhen her attempts at gardening shall  have  made  her
skilful, her mother initiate her  in some duty in Avhich  the 
    The  Little Household.—The Little  Garden. 95

life of her father is interested, by  Avhich he  who supports
them may be nourished by them, by which the' child may for
the first time serve  him, and be made happy by his " Thank
you, my daughter," at the table.
  Every art developes neAV qualities in us.   Housekeeping
and  cooking demand,  in a high degree, the most exquisite
neatness, and a certain dexterity.   An  even temper and a
gentle character contribute much more to them than Ave sup-
pose.  No  one  Avho is rough and  fickle can  manage such
things well.  A just sense  of precision is essential; and also,
in the highest degree, an appropriate decision of character—to
control  one's self, and knoAV where to stop.
  Observe the more important endowments Avhich the culture
of the garden demands.  At first it Avas only an amusement;
but as soon as it is understood and studied, in its relation to
the life and health of loved ones, as soon as the garden has
become auxiliary to the  cuisine, it assumes  an  important
aspect, and  is much better cultivated.   To notice, and take
account of, a thousand variable circumstances;  to respect the
Aveather, and control her childish impatience; to subject her
Avill to great laAvs; to  be active, but to  knoAV  that her OAvn
activity is not everything;  to  recognise the  concurrent agen-
cies  of nature; and,  finally, to fail often  and not  be dis-
couraged—such  is gardening to her—a labor made up of all
labors;  human life complete.
  The kitchen and the  garden are but two departments of the
same laboratory, Avorking  to the same  end.  The first com-
pletes by fire the maturing process Avhich the other began in
the sun.  They interchange kind offices;  the  garden  supplies
the kitchen, and the kitchen supplies the garden.  The  slops
that  are thrown out almost Avith disgust, are accepted (if I
may  believe an eminent horticulturist) as choice aliment, by
pure  and noble  floAvers.  Therefore, despise nothing.  Thcv
meanest refuse, eA'en the dregs of coffee, are eagerly absorbed
by vegetables, as a flame, a spirit of life; three Avhole years
may  pass, and still they will feel its warmth. 
   96  The  Little Household.—The  Little Garden.

     Let inc instruct your child in these necessary laws of life.
   It  would be  a  foolish  reserve to leaA-e her ignorant of the
   transformation  of substances, and their natural  circulation.
"  Our  disdainful  young ladies, avIio know plants only to pluck
   them, are not aware that the  vegeteble consumes  as much  as
   the animal.  How do they live, themselves ?  They never think
   of that; they have a good appetite, and they absorb, but
   Avithout gratitude, Avithout a thought for the duty of  restitu-
   tion.  Nevertheless,  they must  make restitution, by death
   especially ;  and they must make it  continually by the  pro-
   cesses of perspiration, sloughs, and diminutions of themselves
   —the losses and the little daily  deaths Avhich  nature imposes
   on us, to the profit of the lower orders of life.
     This fatal cireulus is certainly not Avithout its grandeur.   It
   has one very  grave aspect, by Avhich the child's heart will be
   touched Avith a salutary emotion: namely, that our Aveakness
   daily condemns us to seek strength Avhere it is accumulated,
   in our brethren the animals, and to live on their life.
     A double lesson this, by no means useless to the young girl,
   in that first impulse of pride, proper to her youth, her beauty,
   and intensity of life, Avhich sometimes make her think, " I am ;
   the rest is nothing.  The floAver and the charm of the world is
   myself, and all  else is but refuse."
     FloAver,  beauty, youth ?   Agreed.  But do not forget the
   cost of them.   Be modest;  remember the humble and severe
   conditions  on Avhich  nature parts Avith life:  to  die  a little
   daily, before dying  utterly; and every day,  at  this happy,
   loaded table, to be  born again—alas! by the  deaths of inno-
   cent creatures.
     At least let  these  animals be happy as long as they live.
   Teach the child  of their right to exist, and  the  regret and
   pity Ave OAve them, even Avhen the needs of our organization
   compel us to destroy them.   Carefully teach her the uses they
   all have, or had—even those that to-day may harm us.  The
   child is \rery  poetical, but not much  of a poet.  Nevertheless
   our little one Avill feel, by the instinct of her charming heart, 
    The  Little Household.—The  Little  Garden.  97

much  that  Avould  hardly impress  her mind.   The  heroic
maternity of  the  bird, constructing its nest with so much
pains,  submitting, for its  children's  sake, to so many  sore
trials, will certainly strike  her.  And in the  ant and bee she
Avill see, not Avithout respect, and a sort of religion, a very
different artistic genius from that which maternity inspires.
The colossal labors of the ant, raising  or lowering its engs,
by  the Avell-calculated  scale  of  its thirty  or forty  stories,
according to the air and sun, and all the variations of tempe-
rature, will fill her with admiration.   In these infinitely little
things, she will catch the first gleam, the first delightful ray,
of the great mystery, which is postponed for her,—the great,
the universal Love.
   Knowing that there is  but one happiness here below, that
 of creating, always creating, I have endeavored at all times
 to make her happy, by inducing her to create.
   When she Avas four years old, I put materials into her pretty
 hands, regular forms (analogous to those first attempts at asso-
 ciation that nature makes in crystals),  and with these wooden
 crystals, joined in her OAvn way, she erected little houses and
 other baby structures.
   Afterward,  she was shown how nature, bringing opposites
 together  in  sympathy,  makes veritable  crystals,  brilliant,
 colored, and so beautiful!  She has made some herself.
   From that time, Avith her OAvn hand, she has sowed seeds and
 made plants, and by her care in tending and watering them,
 has brought them to live and blossom.
   For silk-worms, she innocently collects the little grains, the
 seedlings of the butterfly ; these  she tends, and keeps ahvnys
about her, nurturing them Avith her Avarmth, and protecting
them night and day in her unformed bosom.  Some morning
she has the happiness to see a new world, disclosed to her by
her own young Ioa'c.
                             5 
The  Maternities  of Fourteen.
   Thus she goes on, creating and happy.   Continue to have
children,  my  daughter.  Associate yourself, dear  little one,
with the great Maternity.  It costs your tender heart nothing.
You create in profound  peace.  To-morroAV, it will cost you
more,  and your  heart Avill bleed.—Mine also ; ah !  believe
that Avell.  But for to-day, let us enjoy.   Nothing is more plea-
sant to me than to observe, in such complete repose, in such
touching  innocence,  your  little  fecundities.   They reassure
me for your lot; Avhatever may happen, you Avill  have had
your part in this world, participating in the  divine work, and
creating.

                      ------o------

                           IX.

THE MATERNITIES OF FOURTEEN.--THE METAMORPHOSIS.

   I  have feared but one  thing for this child:  and  that is,
secresy; I knoAV some who are pensive  at four  years of
age.  But happily she has been preserved from that: first, by
her active life ; and then, because from her birth she has had
a confidante in her mother, so that she could think aloud.
   Woman, all her life long, must overflow and discharge her-
self.  While yet  she was very little, her mother took her in
her lap every night, and, heart to heart, made her speak.
   Ah ! what a happiness to confess,  to excuse, or even accuse
one's self.  " So talk my child, talk on !   If it, is  good I will
embrace you.   And, if it  is not good, why,  to-morroAV Ave
will both try to do better."
   So she tells everything ;  what does she risk ?  Much ; " for
mamma will suffer, if I have been bad."—" No, my dear—tell
me all the same ; and even if it makes me cry, your heart
shall floAv with mine."
   Her filial confession is the Avhole mystery of childhood.  By 
The  Maternities  of Fourteen.
 this confession she has every evening suggested her own edu-
 cation.
   On so soft a pillow her sleep is deep ; but, what then ? She
 wakes at last.  Thirteen years and a half have passed, and she
 is drooping.  What is the matter, darling ?  Until now, you
 have lacked nothing for your  amusement.  When your OAvn
 doll  did not  satisfy you,  I gave you living ones; you have
 played at doll with all nature;  you have loved flowers much,
 and been loved by them; your free birds follow you,  even to
 forgetting their nests; and the other day the bulfinch (this is
 no invention)  left its mate for you.
   I guess—you need  a friend; neither  bird nor flower, but-
 terfly nor dog—but a friend like yourself.
   When she  Avas four or  five years old, her mother always
 took  her to play in the Jardins d"1 Enfants.  But now, in the
 country, she has no more little girls. To be sure, there is her
 brother, younger than herself, whom once she loved so much,
 and Avho clung to her.  But now she Avould have him be a girl,
 or he would like her better if she were a boy.
  To get him away from the excessive cares of his mother and
 sister, and  under more masculine influences, he was placed in
 the house of a friend, until he went to the public schools. The
 boys he brought home Avith him have rendered the house un-
 inhabitable.  My little girl has conceived a great antipathy to
 the blustering race.  Their cries, blows, and scuffles frighten
 her.  Like her gentle and  discreet  mother, she loves order,
 peace, silence—or pretty games in a low tone.
  Meantime, I see her Avalking by herself in a garden-path,
 and I call her to me.  Ahvays obedient, she comes—but rather
 sloAvdy, her heart swollen, and her eyes moist.  What is the
matter?  In vain does her mother kiss and caress her : she is
dumb, and  cannot reply, for she knoAvs not what it is.   We,
who understand her case, must  find a remedy for it—the one
which  at all times has succeeded Avith her; we will give her a
neAV loA^e.
  Her mother  who pities her very much, tries from that day 
100         The Maternities  of Fourteen.
to draAv her out of her troubled state, by placing  in her arma
not a thing but a person.
  She will forthwith take her to the village  school, and shoAV
her the little children.  At first the young dreamer, the great
girl, finds  the  poor creatures somewhat insipid; but she is
shown that they have  not everything they  need  : this one is
very scantily clad;  that one needs a new dress; this one has
come to school  Avithout her breakfast, because her mother has
no bread; that one has no mother, and her father, too, is dead;
at four years of age she is alone, and is provided for just as it
may happen.  Our darling's young heart aAvakes at this.  With-
out a word, she takes the child, and begins to arrange her dress.
She is not unskilful; one Avould think she had handled children
all her life.  She Avashes her, kisses her, and brings her bread,
butter, fruit, and  everything she  has.   Werther  fell  in  love
Avith Charlotte  at seeing her give a slice of bread to the chil-
dren.  So should I.
  The little orphan interests her in the others.  One is pretty,
another so knowing; one has been sick, another  beaten, and
must be consoled. They all please her, all amuse her.  What a
pleasure to play with such  delightful dolls, that speak, and laugh,
and eat, have Avills of their own, and are almost people! What
a pleasure to make  them  play !   And, with this idea, she goes
to playing herself—the great innocent baby !  Even at home
she thinks of them; and  the more she thinks, the livelier she
becomes. At once gay and serious—as is always the case when
one has suddenly a  great interest in life—she no longer Avalks
in solitude; but  seeks her mother, talks Avith her, requires
her co-operation, begs for this favor, bargains for that.  Every
day she  spends all her  spare time Avith the children ;  and
lives wholly within her  own little Avorld, so full of variety
for those who see it near  at hand and mingle Avith  it.  Therein
she has her friendships, her semi-adoptions, her preferences—
her tendernesses enhanced by charity, sometimes  little cares,
then joys, extreme  delights, and  perchance  even  tears.  But 
            The  Maternities  of Fourteen.         101

she knows why she weeps;  and the worst thing for young
girls is to Aveep without knowing why!
  She was just fourteen in May—those were her first roses.
After a  rain, the season,  thenceforth serene and beautiful,
bloomed out in all its glory.  She, too, had experienced a
short interval of storms—with fever and some suffering; it had
left her, for the first time a little weak, a little pale, while an
almost imperceptible shade of delicate blue,  or faint lilac, en-
circled her eyes.  She was not  very tall; but her figure had
changed, had gracefully de\'eloped ; lying down a child, in a
few days she had arisen a young woman.  Lighter, and yet
less active, she no longer merited the names her mother had
given her: "My bird!  my butterfly!"
  Her first  impulse on revisiting  her garden, changed and
groAvn beautiful like herself, was to gather  some floAvers for
her father and mother,  who had of late petted her even more
than usual.  She rejoined them smiling, with her pretty offer-
ing ; and found them  much moved,  saying  nothing to each
other, but mute Avith the same thought.
  For the first time,  perhaps, for a long while, they placed
her betAveen them. When she was a little thing, just learning to
walk alone, she needed to see them thus Avithin reach of her,
on her right and left.  But now, almost as tall as her mother,
she felt,  very tenderly,  that it Avas they who  needed to have
her betAveen them.  They gathered her into their hearts Avith
a love so profound, that her mother could scarce restrain her
tears.
  " Dear mamma! what is the matter ?"—and she threw her-
self on that dear bosom.  Her mother loaded her with caresses,
but did  not  ansAver, fearing to give vent to her own emo-
tions.  At last, a little composed, although tears still dimmed
her eyes, Mamma said, smiling: "I Avas  telling your father
what I dreamed last night.  You were alone in the garden, 
102        The Maternities of Fourteen.
and  torn  by the cruel thorns of a  rose-bush ;  I Avished to
bind up your wounds, but could not; so you were ruined for
life.   I was dead, yet I saAV it all."   " Oh ! mamma, then
never die!"  And she fell, blushing, into her mother's arms.
  These three persons, at that moment, Avere Avholly united in
heart.  But I should not say three!—they Avere one.  Through
love, they existed in their daughter, she in them.   There Avas
no need to speak a single word; they understood each other
so well.  They no longer saAV each other distinctly, for it was
already dusk;  and they went out,  dim and  shadoAvy—the
father supporting her on his arm,  the  mother embracing the
little one, and supported by her.
  No longer could be heard the songs of birds, but only their
faint tAvitterings, their last confidential chat, as they croAvded
into the nest.  These murmurs are very charming and very
various; some noisy and eager, overjoyed at meeting again;
others very melancholy, troubled by  the shadoAVS of night,
seemed to say to each other, " Who is sure  of waking to-mor-
roAv?"  The trustful nightingale returning to its nest, almost
on the ground, crossed the court  at their very feet;  and the
mother, tenderly moved, bade it good-night: " God keep thee,
poor little thing!"
  Nothing is easier than the revelation of sex to a child thus
prepared.  For her Avho is  kept in ignorance  of its general
laws, who learns the whole mystery at once, it is a serious and
a dangerous thing.  What are we to  think of the imprudence
of those parents who leave this  revelation  to  chance?  For
what is chance ?  It is often some companion, neither innocent
nor of pure  imagination ; oftener than would  be believed, it
is a flippant sensual speech from a boy, some near relative.
Many  mothers will indignantly  deny this;  their children are
all perfect;—they are so infatuated Avith their sons as to dis-
believe truth itself. 
             History as a Bas;s  of Faith.         103

  However  that  may be, if this mystery be not revealed by
the mother, it may be overwhelming and blasting, annihilating
the judgment.  At such a time, before she recovers herself,
the poor little one is, as it were,  at any one's mercy.
  As for her who has  early and  naturally learned  of the
generation of plants and of insects,  Avho knoAvs that in every
species  life  reneAvs itself from the egg, and that  all  nature
is engaged in the perpetual labor of ovulation,  she is not at
all astonished to find herself subject to the same common laAV.
The painful changes which every month accompany the phe-
nomenon seem also Arery natural, Avhen she  has seen the same
laborious processes in the inferior creatures.
  All this appears to her noble, grand, and  pure, as it harmo-
nizes Avith the general laAV of creation—grander still Avhen she
sees in  it the continual  restoration  of what death destroys.
" Death pursues  us, and hurries us on, my dear child," says
her mother ; " our only defence is in marriage.  Your father
and I shall  die;  and to compensate for our loss, it  will be
necessary for you, probably, even before that time, to leave
us and  be married.   Like me, you will Avith great  pain give
birth to children, who perhaps will not live,  or, if they do live,
will leave you.  This is what I foresee, and it makes me weep.
—But I am wrong;  our lot is  in  common with that of all
creatures, and it is God's will."

                      —----0------

                           X.

             HISTORY AS A  BASIS OF FAITH.

  Rousseau, first among the moderns to establish systems of
education, seems  to me not to have  seen clearly that a system
is not everything.  He is concerned only as to the way in which
the pupil may be formed; or, rather, hoAV the pupil, assisted
in his own proclivities, may form himself, and become capable 
104         History as a  Basis  ol  Faith.

of learning everything.  I am not criticizing his work; I sim-
ply remark that he says not a single Avord about the second
problem of education :  What shall be the principal object of
study f  What shall this pupil be taught?  Suppose Rousseau
has succeeded  in forming an energetic,  active mind,  inde-
pendent of ordinary  routines—to Avhat shall  it apply itself?
Is there not some science  in which it may find its develop-
ment, its natural gymnastics ?  It is not enough to create the
subject; Ave  must determine the object on which it  may he
exercised  Avith the  most  advantage.  I will call this object,
the substance of education.
  In my opinion, this should be altogether different, as it is
to be applied to the boy or the girl.
  If we  desire  better  results  in education  than Ave  have
achieved heretofore, Ave must gravely consider the incalculable
differences Avhich not  only separate but even oppose the tAvo
sexes—which constitute them harmonious opponents.
  Their vocations and natural tendencies differ; so should
their education differ—differ in method—harmonizing for the
girl, strengthening for the boy,—differ in its object, as to the
principal study on Avhich the mind should be exercised.
  For man, Avho  is called to labor, to battle with the Avorld,
the great study is History, the story of this combat—history
aided by languages, in each of Avhich is the genius of a people
—history prompted by Right, writing under  and for it, con-
stantly inspired, revised, and corrected by eternal Justice.
  For Avoman, the gentle  mediator between nature and man,
betAveen father and child, the study, thoroughly practical, rej u-
venating, and embellishing, is Nature.
  The man passes from drama to drama, not one of which re-
sembles another, from experience to experience, from battle to
battle.  History goes  forth, ever far-reaching, and continually
crying to him : " Forward !"
  The woman, on the contrary, follows the noble and serene
epic that Nature  chants in her harmonious cycles, repeating
herself with a touching grace of constancy and fidelity. These 
History as  a Basis  of Faith.         105
refrains in her lofty song bestow peace, and, if I may say so,
a relative changelessness.  This is why the study of Nature
never wearies, never jades; and woman  can trustingly give
herself up to it, for Nature is a woman.   History, which Ave
very foolishly put in the feminine gender, is a rude, savage
male, a sun-burnt, dusty traveller.  God forbid that I should
lead the tender feet of this child through so rough a pilgrimage
she would soon droop, her breath would fail her, and, fainting,
she would sink on the highway.
  History! my daughter, history !   I must indeed give you
some of it; and I will give it to you, fresh and strong, sim-
ple, honest, bitter as it is; fear not that, in tenderness,  I Avill
SAV^eten  it with poisonous honey.    But I am not required
to make you swallow the whole, poor  child, to pour down your
throat in torrents that  terrible tonic in  which poison pre-
dominates, to make you empty even to the dregs the cup of
Mithridates.
  What I owe you of history is, first, your own story;  Avhat I
should tell you  is of your own cradle, and of that which sup-
ports the very prop of your moral life.  I should tell you first
how you were born—the pain, the infinite cares of your mo-
ther, and all her Avatchings; hoAV many times she has suffered,
wept, almost died for you.  Let that  history,  my  child, be
your cherished legend, your pious souvenir, your first religion
here beloAv.
  Then I should tell you briefly  what is  and what was your
second mother—that noble mother, your Country.  God has
granted you the distinction to be born  in this land of France,
with Avhich the Avhole Avorld, my child, is either enraged or
enamored ;  no one is indifferent  to her—all speak either good
or evil of her—right or wrong, Avho knows?   As for us, we
sav of her only thus—that, "Men suffer gaily noAvhere but in
France.   Hers  are the only people who knoAV hoAV to die."
                           5* 
106         History as  a Basis  of Faith.

  Of the long  lives of your fathers  you will knoAV the great
events if you learn that at the sacred period Avhen your country
Avas laid upon the altar, Paris proclaimed to France the Avish,
the resolve of all, " To lose themselves in the great whole."
  From this united effort France became as one person ; she
felt her heart beating, and questioned it;  and she discerned
in that  first throb, the holy brotherhood  of earth, the wish
to free the world.
  This is your pedigree, oh maiden! exalt it, and may you
love only heroes!
  From France you shall go forth into the world.  We will
prepare together, just as in a garden, plots of ground suitable
to plant nations in.  Pleasant  and atiimating is the study of
soils, of climates, of the forms of the globe, which in so many
ways  have determined the  actions of men, and often made
their history in advance. Here the earth has commanded, man
obeyed; and sometimes, such or  such  a vegetable, such or
such a regimen, has made  such or such a civilization.  Some-
times  the internal force of man has uprisen to react, to strug-
gle against this; in these combats the good friend of your child-
hood, Nature, and the natural sciences unite, and harmonize
with the moral sciences, in which life will initiate you.
  Is the teaching of history the same for boys and girls ?  Yes,
doubtless, as a  basis of faith.   To both  it imparts its  rich
moral fruit, strength to the  heart, and nourishment to fife—
to wit, the grand consent  of the human soul on the question
of justice, the historic agreement of the creeds of the human
race as to duty and God.
  But let it be better understood that, man being destined
for business, to a combat Avith the world, history is peculiarly
adapted to prepare him for it.  To him it is the treasure-house
of experience, an arsenal of the Aveapons  of all kinds that he
shall wield to-morrow.  For the girl, history is principally a
moral and religious basis. 
              History as  a Basis  of Faith.         107

   Woman, Avho seems so changeable,  and Avho doubtless is
 physically  renewed  month by  month,  must  yet fulfil on
 earth, much more inexorably than  man, tAvo fixed conditions.
 Every woman is an altar, a pure and holy thing, where man,
 bewildered by life, may at all times  go for faith, and find again
 his own conscience, preserved purer  than in himself.  Every
 woman is a school, and it is really from  her that generations
 receive their creeds.   Long before the father dreams of edu-
 cating, the mother has inculcated  her  own teachings, which
 will never be effaced.
   The daughter must have a religious belief.
   Snares will soon be set for her, and  the most dangerous pro-
 ceed from the uprooting of established faith.   She will not be
 twenty, perhaps but tAvo years married, a mere child,  when
 they will begin  to explore the ground.  Pleasant people will
 come to chat, to laugh at everything, to ridicule  everything
 good that her father had  been able to  teach  her, the simple
 faith of her  mother,  the thoughtfulness of her husband—to
 make her think it fine to laugh at everything Avith them, and
 deem nothing sure here below.
   She must  have a faith, so that this base and selfish trifling
 may create in her only disgust, so that she may oppose it Avith
 the seriousness,  the gentle firmness,  of a soul Avhich has for
 itself a fixed foundation of belief, planted in reason, in  sim-
 plicity of heart,  in the concurring, unanimous heart-voice of
 the nations.
   From the very first, the  father  and  mother should agree
 that under  the  successive forms in Avhich, according to her
 age, history shall be presented to  her, she shall ahvays  per-
 ceive its moral harmony and its holy  unity.  Her mother,
under the lacteal form—that is, through the pleasant medium
of a language simplified for her—Avill ha\re told her, at first,
of some of the  great  and prominent e\~ents,  which she has
described in her oavii  Avay.   Her  father, in  the  intermedial
age (ten or tAvelve  years  perhaps), will have  given her care-
fully selected  readings from  original  Avriters—some  story of 
108         History  as  a Basis  of Faith.
Heredotus, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, the Life of
Alexander the Great, some of the beautiful Bible stories ; to
Avhich may be added the Odyssey, and those modern Odysseys,
our own fine travels;  all  these to be read  very sIoavIv, and
ahvays  in the same spirit, so  as  to  shoAV  her, under such
external differences of manners, habits, religions,  Iioav little
man himself has changed. For the most part  the discords
are but seeming discords, or sometimes demanded by pecu-
liarities of race or climate.  Common sense will explain all that.
  As to the family, for instance, Ave see clearly that it cannot be
the same under the physical fatalities of that hot-bed of India,
where  the Avife is a child, married at eight or ten.   But as
soon as we come into a free and natural world, the  ideals of
family  are absolutely identical.  It is the  same in Zoroaster,
in Homer, the same  in Socrates (see the admirable passage
from the Economics of Xenophon), the same, finally, in Rome,
and among us.  We  learn from Aristophanes that the Greek
women, not at all dependent, ruled at home, and often exer-
cised a powerful influence  in the state.  We see this in Thu-
cydides, where the men had voted for the massacre of Lesbos;
but returning home  at night, and  confronting  their wives,
they retracted and reversed their decree.
  LaAvs deceive us greatly. It is supposed, for example, that
Avherever the son-in-laAv pays the father, he purchases his Avife,
and she is his slave.   But that is a mistake.   This form of
marriage exists indeed in  Africa, and yet it is among those
very tribes that the  Avife, free  and a queen, rules—and not
the man (Livingston).  The payment does not constitute the
purchase of the Avife, but  an  indemnity to her father  for the
prospective children which shall not profit his family, but the
one into which the wife is  about to enter.
  It is  curious to note Iioav sceptics seize upon this, to create
discords and exceptions to the rule, and to prove that there is
no rule.  The enemies of moral sense and  human reason have
no choice but to seek in the most suspicious sources for facts
not easily understood. 
History as  a Basis  of Faith.          109
  " But," says the father,  " Avhence shall I derive  penetra-
tion  enough  to find my OAvn way,  and to guide my  child
through so many obscurities ?"   Strong and genuine criticism
is born of the heart, rather than the intellect; it springs from
loyalty, from the impartial sympathy Ave OAve to our brothers
of die past and of the present.  With this you will have
no difficulty in tracing through history the great unchang-
ing current of human morality.
  Will you believe one who has made the great voyage more
than once ?  His  experience is  precisely that of the  voyager
as he sails out of the Caribbean  Sea;  at the first glance, he
sees only the wide expanse  of water; in the second, on the
green field he discerns a broad band of blue;  that  is the
immense torrent of warm floods which,  crossing the Atlantic,
reaches Ireland, still warm, and is not entirely cooled even at
Brest.  He sees it perfectly, and moreover, can feel its warmth
on the passage.  Just so will the great current of moral tra-
dition appear, if you scan the ocean of history with careful eyes.
  But long before we  reach  this elevated simplification, in
which history becomes identical Avith morality itself, I should
desire my  young  maiden to  be pleasantly  nourished  with
pure  and Avholesome reading, borrowed especially from anti-
quity, from the primitive East.  Hoav happens it that we put
into  the hands of children the history of grown up nations
only, while Ave  leave them ignorant of the infancy and youth
of the Avorld ?  If some one would collect a feAV of the truly
spiritual hymns of the Vedas, some of the prayers and laAvs
of Persia, so pure and so heroic, and add a few of those touch-
ing pastorals from the Bible, such as the stories of Jacob, Ruth,
and Tobias, he Avould present the young girl with an incompara-
ble bouquet, Avhose perfume, early and sloAvly inhaled, Avould
impregnate her innocent soul, and remain with her forever.
  No intricate subjects in the remote past for her; banish 
no          History as a  Basis of Faith.
 from her presence  the  Dantes  and the Shakespeares, the
 sophists  and magicians of the old  age  of  the  Avorld.   Put
 aAvay, still more inexorably, historical  romances, that  per-
 nicious literature which  one can never unlearn, and which
 makes us insensible to genuine history forever after.
   She should have  the Avorld's  nursery song, the Iliad and
 Odyssey; the best book of all for  a young mind—itself young
 too, but  so Avise !
   Furthermore, in order to know which books are suited to
 her, you must classify them according to the quality of light
 that illumines and colors them.   The literature of every age
 seems to correspond to  some  hour of the  day ; Herodotus
 and Homer everyAvhere reflect the morning,  and it prevails in
 all the memorials of Greece ;  the  Aurora  seems ahvays to
 smile upon its monuments, everywhere is diffused a  transpa-
 rency, a strange serenity,  a classic joyfulness,  which  wins
 and delights the heart.
   The Indian dramas and poems, modern in comparison with
 the Yedas, possess a thousand beauties to charm the imagina-
 tion of the child and entrance her young girl's heart.  But I
 am in no haste  for those ;  they are all teeming with the ener-
 vating heats of mid-day—a world of ravishing illusions dreamed
 in the shades of enchanted forests.   To her happy lover, I
 will leave the voluptuous  pleasure of reading Sakountala to
 her in some boAver of flowers.
   It is at evening or at night that  the  greater part of the
 Bible seems to have been Avritten  ; all those terrible questions
 Avhich torture human reason are therein laid down harshly and
 Avith sa\age crudeness.  The alienation of man from  God, of
 the son from the father, the fearful problem  of the Origin of
 Evil, and all  those  perplexities of the latest-horn  people of
 Asia,—»I  Avould  forbear  from too early agitating  a young
 heart Avith these.   Of AA'hat possible use, forsooth,  could it
 be, to read to  her the lamentations of David in the dark-
ness, beating his breast, torn with anguish for the murder of
Uriah?  . 
History as  a Basis  of Faith.         1 j 1
  Strong wine for men, and milk for babes.  I am old and
almost worn out; the sacred book is for such as I.   But in it
man falls, and rises but to fall again—how many, many times!
how can I explain all that to my dear innocent?  May she long
be ignorant of the strife of the homo duplex I  It is not that
the Bible  presents the enervating  sensuality to be  found in
the mystics of the Middle  Ages, but for her it is too violent
—ever disturbed, and without rest.
  Another consideration which would make me hesitate to
allow her the Bible too soon, is that  hatred of Nature which
the Jews evince throughout.  They evidently fear from it the
seductions  of Egypt or Babylon.   But whatever the cause,
it invests their Avritings with a  negative, critical character, a
gldomy austerity,  which, moreover, is not always  pure:  a
state  of feeling exactly opposed to that which I wish for  our
child, who  should be the incarnation of innocence,  joy,  and
serenity; full of sympathy with Nature,  and especially Avith
the animals, to which the Jews cruelly gave a base name.
Rather may my little one be possessed by the tender sentiment
of the glorious East, Avhich blesses all fife!
  Daughter, let us read together—in that bible of light, the
Zend-Avesta—the ancient and sacred lamentation of the Cow,
appealing to man  and reminding him  of her gifts.  Let us
read those poAverful lines, ever true and living, in which man
acknoAvledges Avhat he OAves to the companions of his toil, the
strong bull, the Avatchful dog, the good mother Earth.  The
Soil is not insensible, and what  she  says to the husbandman
will endure for ever.  (Zend. ii. 284.)
  Be pure that you may be strong, be strong that  you may
be fruitful, is the whole meaning of that system of laAV—one
of the most humane, most harmonious, that God has given to
man.
  Every morning before light, Avliile the tiger still prowls, two 
112         History  as a  Basis of Faith.
comrades  go forth,—a man and his dog.   We are speaking
of the primitive dog, that colossal mastiff Avithout Avhich the
land Avould then have  been uninhabitable, a creature at once
friendly and formidable, which alone could overcome monsters.
One that Avas exhibited before Alexander strangled  a lion in
his presence.
  Man had then no Aveapon but the short, heavy sword, such
as is depicted on monuments, with A\diich, face to face, breast
to breast,  he stabbed the lion.
  Every day,  protected  by his  faithful  dog, he breaks the
land; he soavs it with good seed,  waters it, and tills it Avith
the plough ; he refreshes it Avith fountains, and his OAvn heart
is refreshed Avith the beneficent Avork of Law : so he returns
from it sanctified.
  The companion of this noble life of toil and danger, Avoman,
his efficient Avife, the mistress of his house, receives him at the
threshold, and restores him with food from  her own hand:
he eats what she gives him, and  allows  her  to nourish him
like  a child, for she knows everything,—the virtues of all
plants, those which give  health, and  those which cheer the
heart.
  Here woman is a magician, a queen ; she subdues even the
conqueror of lions.
  That world of ancient Persia was a virginal world, fresh as
the  dew before dawn.  I  can  almost feel  the circulation
through it, of those forty thousand subterranean canals  of
Avhich Herodotus speaks—hidden veins, which re-animated the
earth, and snatched living water from the thirst of the burn-
ing sun, to refresh the longing lips of  innumerable  roots, and
gladden the heavy hearts of trees! 
Pallas.—Reason.
H3
                          XL

                   PALLAS.--REASON.

  My dear child, you have as yet hardly been in the galleries
of sculpture; your mother thinks them too cold, and Ave have
always preferred to ascend to the upper story of the Louvre,
to the Avarm, breathing world of pictures.  And  yet, espe-
cially in the summer, it is a place of sublime repose, of silence,
where one may meditate and study better than in the museum
above.  To-day, while her duties detain your mother at home,
let us, together, make a pilgrimage to that solemn country of
the dead.
  Nations and Schools are not classified here as in the picture-
gallery.  The pure and lofty antiques are too often  found side
by side with the works of the Decadence.  There  is no con-
fusion,  however.  So proud, so sublime, so simple are  the
true children of Greece, that even in the midst of  Romans—
emperors and  senators—it is they  Avho are  glorious, Avho
triumph,—the Greeks, Avho seem masters of the Avorld.  The
Ioav passions Avhich characterize the busts of the Empire (the
Agrippas, the Yitelliuses, etc.) had no part in their noble pre-
decessors.   A sublime serenity is  the attribute  of  these sons
of the ideal; on their brows is the same reflection Avith Avhich
Aurora gilds the dome of the Acropolis of Athens, while their
deep  eyes  denote not soft revery, but subtile  intuition, and
masculine reason.
  You have read Plutarch's Lives, and you seek here for the
great dead, the objects of your preference;  but those interest-
ing and romantic biographies of the Decadence  afford  an idea
quite opposed to that of the  genius  of antiquity.  They pro-
claim the Hero to enthrone and deify him; on the other hand,
the glory of the Greek world consisted in being a heroic peo-
ple, where there Avere, nevertheless, no heroes—where no one
man was a hero, and  yet  all  were.  By  physical and mental 
n4
Pallas.—Reason.
discipline every citizen reached  the perfection of his beauty,
and attained the heroic climax,  so as closely to resemble the
gods.  By an incessant activity, by contests, by discussions in
the forum and the schools, by the theatre, by festivals with
games and combats, the Greek evolved everything strong and
beautiful in his nature, and moulded himself unwearyingly to
the likeness of Apollo and Hercules', borrowing the strength
of the  one, the graceful elegance and lofty  melody of the
other, or the meditative faculty of the Minerva of Athens.
  Were all the  Greeks  born beautiful?  It would be absurd
to suppose so; but they kneAv how to make themselves beau-
tiful.  " Socrates was born  a very satyr.  But  within  and
Avithout he so transformed himself by this  sculpture  of rea-
son,  of virtue and devotion,  he so improved his face, that
at last a god looked through  it, by whom the Phaedon is
illumined."
  Let us enter this large hall, at the farther end  of Avhich
stands the colossal statue of Melpomene, and, Avithout going
so far, let us stop a moment before this figure of Pallas.  It
is a sculpture of Roman times, but copied from a Greek Pal-
las,  perhaps from that of Phidias. The face wears precisely the
same expression as the well-knoAvn faces of Pericles and The-
mistocles;  that expression—to name  it aright—is thought,
Avisdom, or rather reflection.
  To reflect is to  turn one's thought  back upon itself, to take
it for its OAvn object, to look at it as in a mirror.  Thus it -will
apparently  be doubled, so that the thought gazing fixedly
upon itself  will expand and develop itself, by the analysis of
language, or by the inner speech of dumb reason.
  The lofty genius of Greece did not consist in the  ability of
a Ulysses or a Themistocles, who made her mistress of Asia,
but in this  invention of the process of reasoning, which  made
the Greeks the great teachers for all  time to come. 
                     Pallas.—Reason.                nr

  ^ Poetic and prophetic intuition, the Oriental process, so sub-
 lime in the Jewish writings, followed a no less thorny path,
 full of mists  and mirage.   It was arbitrary, besides, depend-
 ing on the Avholly involuntary chance of inspiration.
   For this obscure process,  Greece substituted  a  vigorous
 method of seeking and finding, of coming Avith certainty into
 the open  day, by ways known to all, where one may pass and
 repass, and make a thorough exploration.  Man thus becomes
 his  oavh  architect, and the  builder of his own  destiny—no
 particular man but any man AAmosoever—not the elect, nor the
 prophet, nor the special favorite of God.  With  this art of
 reasoning, Athens gave to  all the Avorld an  instrument of
 equality.
   Until then there had been no connecting link.  There were
 blind bursts of emotion, and attempts at reflection, but that
 speedily came to nought; all was unconnected and fortuitous
 —nothing regular.
   Until then all progress Avas by fits and starts ;  no true his-
 tory of the improvement of the human race has been  possible.
 Asia possesses  little of the historical  element;  her  scanty
 annals afford but isolated facts, from Avhich one can  draAv no
 conclusion.  Indeed, Avhat conclusion can Ave draw from events
 ordered by fate, and uncontrolled by Avisdom ?
   But from the day that reasoning became an art, a science,
 from the day that the virgin Pallas gave  birth to the faculty
 of deduction  and comparison, in its  clear form, there has
 existed a  regular, uninterrupted descent for human Avorks.
The stream floAved on, and has never stopped—from Solon
to Papinian, from Socrates to Descartes, from Archimedes to
NeAvton.
  In you,  as  in  us  all,  my child, this great poAver;  it  is
only necessary to cultivate it.   I do not ask  you to  apply
yourself to the most abstract subjects,  to translate Newton, 
n6
Pallas.—Reason.
for instance, like a celebrated woman of the last century ; I
do not ask you to teach the higher mathematics  to a circle of
attentive  men and  respectful pupils, as I saw a lady do at
Granville, in 1859;  but I should be  very happy  if, in the
misfortunes A\diich may cloud  your life,  you could find distrac-
tion in  those  pure  and  exalted  regions.  The  love of the
beautiful is so  indigenous to the heart of Avoman, that to feel
herself growing more beautiful will console her for  anything.
Purity, nobleness, the elevation of a life turned Avholly toward
the true,  is a recompense for the loss of all earthly happi-
ness.  It may be that even that Avould  no longer be remem-
bered.
   We have had an  example of this in an  admirable  child,
the young Emilia, daughter of Manin.   She had early suffered
the heaviest sorrows,—the loss of her mother, the ruin of her
father, and the fearful tragedy of Yenice, the results of which
fell upon  her;  exile  and poverty,  and the gloomy life  of
northern  towns, completed   her  desolation.  But  the most
terrible result Avas, that  this  suffering  image of  the martyr-
dom of Italy, who endured all its horrors, Avas subject to the
agonizing  paroxysms  of a  cruel  nervous malady.   Ah!
through all this that young daughter of grief kept her mind
serene and elevated, loving abstract purity—algebra and geo-
metry!   She so sustained her father by this  sublime serenity,
that he consulted her in everything, and even after he had lost
her acted  as she Avould have advised.  " I think," said  he to
me, speaking of a certain patriotic scheme,  " that my daughter
would have approved it."
  Is there any  difference  betAveen  God and  Reason?  It
would be impious to believe it.  And of all the forms of Eter-
nal Love (beauty, fascination,  poAver), no doubt  Reason is the
first, the most exalted.  It is  through Reason that Divine
love possesses harmony and the order  which blesses—benefr 
            Andrea del  Sarto's "Charity."         117

cent, benevolent order;  and though she  appears cold, she is,
nevertheless, loving.
  We shall not always live to love and protect you; perhaps
like other Avomen, you will be alone in the world.  Well, let
your father's heart appoint you a protectress, a grave and
faithful guardian Avho will never fail you—I voav and dedicate
my darling to the Virgin of Athens—to Reason !
o
                           XII.

           ANDREA  DEL  SARTO's "CHARITY."

  The attentive reader, I doubt not, has been able to seize upon
the double thread of the methods I have pursued in the three
last chapters, methods equally rigid, although one seemed to
respect and caress  Nature, and  the other to contradict  her.
From the  day when my little  girl, on  the delicate  ground
between two seasons of life, AAras in her turn attacked  by  that
delicious malady Avhich  is only love, I have successively em-
ployed  tAvo medicines, not to eradicate, but  to change it.
I Avould not cheat love, for Avhich I have that tender  respect
that Ave owe  to all  the good  things  of  God,  but  extend
it, satisfy it better than it  could satisfy itself, ennoble it, and
elevate it to Avorthier objects.
  The reader  has seen that at the moment of the  change—
tOAvards fourteen, or rather a little before, Avhen I  saw it
approaching—I made use of Avhat might be termed homoeo-
pathic remedies,  balancing and opposing  like with  like.  I 
   118        Andrea del  Sarto's "Charity."

  gave  as a counterpoise  to  the sexual  emotion, the maternal
  passion, and the care of little children.
    But in the years Avhich have folloAved, with allopathic art I
*  have  filled her mind Avith  new studies, with pure and quiet
  reading.   In the pleasing  variety  of  travels and histories I
  have  taught  her to find for herself the solid moral basis on
  Avhich her  life  is to rest—the oneness  of man's faith, in duty
  and in God.
    She has  seen God in nature, she sees him in history;  she
  perceives in  eternal  love  the  link betAveen those two Avorlds
  Avhich she has studied apart—with Avhat deep and tender feel-
  ing !   But have I not created clanger here, and will not this
  young loving heart groAV bewildered, and under the guise of
  purity, in a higher sphere, pursue a whirlwind of disorders no
  less dangerous ?
    As to this, everything depends upon the  mother.  At  the
  first shock of nature, the tender, troubled child, was Avholly in
  her mother's arms; and found therein not only warm caresses
  but dreams too.   A Avoman is so moved Avhen her child  be-
  comes a Avoman, that she herself becomes a child; she fears
  for  her adored treasure, now tottering  and frail;  she prays
  and Aveeps, and easily falls  back upon the weakness of a mys-
  ticism by which both may be enervated.
    And then what Avill  become  of me ?   Of Avhat use that I
  have given this floAver healthful and strengthening waters, if
  a Aveak mother is to keep it sickly Avith milk and Avith tears,
  and \Adiat is Avorse, dosed with quackeries ?
    Of all  corrupting romances the  worst  are the  mystical
  books wherein  soul talks Avith soul in the dangerous hours of
  an artificial  twilight.    She believes she is growing in grace,
  and she goes on languishing, softening, preparing herself for
  all human AA^eaknesses.  The rough, harsh, and violent agitation
  of the Jewish Avritings,  is sickly and feverish  in those of  the
  middle ages; how much more so in their modern imitations,
  so disastrously equivocal!   My  young daughter, Avho from
  year to year, by an  entirely opposite  path, has ascended to 
Andrea del  Sarto's  "Charity."
 the idea of God (of God strong, living, and creating), has less
 to fear than others; but it is just at this moment that I intend
 to arm her; to protect her young head with something to put
 dreams to flight—the luminous steel helmet of the true virgin,
 Pallas.   The mental dialogue I would begin in her is not at
 all  that  of dangerous  revery, but the rigid questionings of
 thought, fully awakened, Avith thought itself.  There, higher
 than reasoning she perceives Reason.  Above the spheres of
 life Avhich she has traversed, she sees the crystal sphere, where
 the Idea in full  light  has penetrated through  and  through.
 And so  beautiful and pure is this, that she loves and adores
 Purity for  its own sake.   This is the love which in her has
 transfigured love, and this is how I have defended her heart.
  But will this always avail ?  I must  not so flatter myself.
 Poor child! it  is not her fault; it is nature's, who every day
 enriches her Avith strength, embellishes her Avith a luxury of
 life, and  makes a magic charm of her.  A maiden of pure and
 lofty heart, of upright and enlightened  will,  she  seems by
 that very purity to offer a Avorthier prize to the imperious
 poAver.   Her eyes and  her thoughts are on heaven, her heart
 intent on serious  subjects, her  virtuous mind which can con-
 trol itself shuns no abstraction.  But it  often happens that
 in the very midst of these  noble studies  some one disturbs
 her (Avho, indeed ?) ; her cheek suddenly flushes, her beautiful
 eyes Avander and grow dim—a Avave of life has ascended and
 flooded her young bosom.
  She is a Avoman—so Avhat can one do?  she  radiates  all
 around her a seductive electricity.  Under the forests of the
 equator,  love, in myriads of  creatures, burst forth from flame
itself, through the magic of  the winged fires that transfigure
the  night.  Naive revelations these, but not more so than the
timid innocent charm of a maiden, thinking to conceal all.  A
divine  light emanates  from her involuntarily, a  voluptuous
halo; and at the \rery moment Avhen she blushes at her OAArn
beauty, does she diffuse around her the intoxicating  perfume
 of love. 
120         Andrea del  Sarto's "Charity."
  "0 my dear child, I cannot,  I  will not,  leave you thus!
You AA-ould be consumed even as a taper.  AVith that danger-
ous fever which would destroy you, we must blend another
to dissipate it.  A devouring power possesses you, but I Avill
give it food ;  anything is better, my darling, than to see you
pine alone.  Receive from me the cordial, one flame to quench
another; take (it is your father Avho administers) bitterness
and soitoav.
  "Sheltered by our love, shut in Avith your oAArn thoughts and
your studies,  you know but little of the world's labors, of the
immensity of its  Avretchedness.  Save a glance at a crying
child, so  quickly comforted, you have never yet suspected the
numberless griefs here beloAV.   You Avere weak and delicate ;
and  your mother and I did not dare to excite you Avith so
many heart-rending emotions;  but to-day we should be culpa-
ble not to tell you all."
  So I take  her with me, and  lead her boldly through that
sea of tears Avhich Aoavs by our very side without attracting
our notice.  I tear away the curtain, regardless of the physical
disgust, the false delicacy :  Look, look, my child ! behold the
reality!  In  the  presence of such  things a woman must be
endowed with  marvellous powers of egotistic abstraction, to
pursue her dreams and her personal idyl—her idle sail over
the stream of Love,  whose banks are gay Avith  flowers.
  She blushes  for  her ignorance, is troubled,  and weeps.
And then, recovering herself, blushes for weeping instead of
acting.   The flame  of  God burns brightly within her, and
henceforth she gives us no peace.  All the powers of love, the
warmth  of her young blood, enlisted in charity, rouse her to
activity,  to  enthusiasm; she is  impatient, unhappy that she
can  do  so little.  How shall we  calm her now? it is her
mother's task to direct her, watch her, restrain her; for with
this blind  enthusiasm,  she  may precipitate herself into un-
knoAvn dangers.
  The intoxication of charity and its heroic fire, that ravish-
ing passion of maidens  overfiWing with love, has never been 
            Andrea del  Sarto's "Charity."         121

described ;  but it has been painted  once.   An Italian exile,
touched Avith  gratitude for the charity of France, bestowed
upon us this inestimable gift, the most fervid picture, I think,
in the  Museum of the  Louvre.  Alas!  A\hy is it there
among so many common works of art, that inspiration of
exalted sanctity!  And how altered too!  Barbarians!  hea
thens ! thanks to you, this divine Avonder has almost perished
on the  canvas.   But  in  my  gloAving memory it  is always
blazing; and to my last moment, more than any other saintly
image, shall it have my devotion.
    The folloAving, Avithout alteration, is the hasty informal note
  I Avrote on the 21st of May last, Avhen I saAV it for the last
/  time :
    " A  Avork of infinite  boldness, without conventionality or
  deference to  rule.  In it Ave see that terrible period, of the
  catastrophe of Italy.  One must have died many times to be
  able to describe or paint like this.
    "The fair,  full breast is that of a virgin,  not a Avife—Avives
  too are more timid.   The one before us has not been subdued ;
  she has nothing dodging about her, she wavers neither to the
  right hand nor the left—has no fear, no doubt.  She only looks
  on those poor starving Avretches, and that is enough ; she feeds
  them.  (Here Ave must explain, that at this period a man cross-
  ing the Alps  encountered an immense troop of thousands of
  children who  had lost their  parents;  they were  browsing on
  all fours,  guided by an old Avoman.)
    " Before this horrible  spectacle of misery and filth, another
  Avould  have Avept, but would have fled.  She, young, heroic,
  knowing  neither fear nor disgust,  opens Avide her arms, and
  takes them to her bosom.
    " One is at her feet, all haggard, his ribs distinctly visible; he
  is tired, exhausted, and can go no further ; Avith Aveariness and
  sleepiness he has fallen on a  stone.   As she has but tAvo arms
                              6 
122         Andrea  del Sarto's "Charity."
she holds but two of the children ;  one she has placed at her
bosom, her luxurious bosom, turgid Avith milk.  lie is in per-
fect happiness, and his greedy, gluttonous  mouth (for he has
been famished so long!) presses the beautiful fountain, red with
life and love,  Avith pure and generous blood.
  " With  how  proud a heart, with Avhat  noble bounty, she
pours out her milk !  A naive circumstance betrays the charm-
ing precipitation with which she took up the starving child.
She is not a nurse ; so she has placed  him to her breast just as
he came, holding him on her left arm, which she has passed
under him Avith tender strength, Avithout ever thinking of the
right Avay.   But  Iioav could  one laugh at  that ?  No more
than he could smile  at the bold negligence  Avith Avhich  the
young saint, Avholly absorbed in her passionate employment,
has put on her cap aAvry.  The other child, which she holds on
her right arm to her covered bosom, is larger, stronger, more
decent—I Avas about to  say more corrupt.   He  has a girdle
about his Avaist, and is not dressed like a boy, but already has
the cringing,  faAvning air of a young beggar ; his sharp trem-
bling lips seem  to utter a harsh, piercing prayer  through his
clenched teeth.  He holds in his hands, I  think, some bad,
sour grapes ; but is in haste to forget in the pleasure of the
rich sweet milk of the woman, that bitter food.  He will not
be kept waiting long; his comrade has imbibed so much that
he is swollen like a leech.
  " Near by, on the ground, is a chafing-dish with a fire of red-
hot coals and embers—but so cold in comparison with the fire
that glows in her heart!  Her form  too glows,  and she  has
the grand calmness of strength, a firm heroic attitude, a throne
in the grace of God." 
The  Eevelation  of Heroism.
123
                          XIII.

             THE REVELATION  OF  HEROISM.

  Froebel, in his Education of Children, suggests a very happy
expedient.   He requires that they be  reared independently of
their teacher, by  a lovely and accomplished young lady, such
as a man would desire for his Avife.  How grateful Ave should
be to the children !   He advises that this young girl shall visit
the schools often,  to assist the teacher and assume her qualities.
The teacher must be careful, loving, intelligent, Avith that  un-
Avearying patience that love alone can give.  The young Avomen
Avho assist her should be like her, or gradually become so, by
means of that Avhich renders a woman  capable of everything—
the love of children, the maternal instinct.   Must they be per-
fect?  In this Avay, at least, they wilj become  so.  Happy
children, to be in  such pleasant hands!  And hoAV much more
so, indeed, the lover to Avhose lot shall fall the divinest of the
gifts of heaven.
  Madame Necker is of the same  opinion.   She thinks we can
form the girl into an admirable wife by thus first making a
mother of her.
  Hoav much  these poor little  things who have nothing, can
bestoAV on the  young lady!   First, a knoAvledge of life, with all
its realities and miseries; for they Avill shoAv her the world as it
is.  They Avill  strengthen her character, and relieve her of her
false delicacy.   She will not be the haughty prude, the fasti-
dious fine lady, that Ave meet every day.  She Avill become skilful
and bold, will feel the  sacredness of humanity, and the dignity
of charity;  she Avill have none of the silly scruples of those
Avho have nothing better; calmly, and Avith dignity, will she per-
form the most menial offices—feeding, bathing, dressing, and
undressing, if need be, her innocents. 
124        The Revelation  of Heroism.
   A thoughtful girl, AAdio has thus, at the same time, both the
ideal of study and the reality of lii'e, Avill be strengthened by
both, and derive from them  a correct judgment.  When she
is older, she Avill not know a gentleman by his yelloAV gloves,
or his horses  and carriages, but by his actions, by his heart
and  his goodness.  She Avill love only seriously, paying little
attention  to externals, but penetrating to the  depths of her
lover's character, for Avhat he does, and of Avhat he is capable.
   Suppose that by chance a young man enters and discovers
her Avith her mother, engaged  in her holy duties.  The chil-
dren, a little frightened  at the advent of so fine a gentleman,
cling close and cluster around  her, behind her chair, on her
knees, even under the folds of her dress, Avhere, feeling safe, they
peep out and show their pretty heads.   She, though surprised
and smiling, blushes a little; do you fancy she will take refuge
behind her mother?   No, she is herself a mother  to  them,
busied in comforting them, more concerned for them than for
her visitor.  It is he Avho  is  embarrassed ;  he feels like  kneel-
ing before them to kiss their hands.  He does not address the
daughter,  but approaches the mother: "Ah! madam, Avhat
a pleasant sight, what a charming  scene!  I cannot tell you
how my heart thanks you for it."   Then to the young lady:
"He Avould be  happy, mademoiselle, who could  aid you!
But, mon Dieu! Avhat could  I do ?"
  She, quite at her ease, in no Avise disconcerted, replies:
" That is easy, sir.  Most  of these  children are orphans;  find
some good people Avithout children, Avho Avould be willing to
adopt this little one.   He is  five years old.  I cannot comfort
him; he Avants a mother, a real  mother; I have tried my best,
but I am too young, too far  from the  age of his own mother
AA'hom he has lost."
  There  are many men of the Avorld, Avho feel these things
for a moment, who admire as  artists the grace of expression 
             The Revelation of Heroism.          125

or attitude the young girl may have displayed; but there are
not many who take them into  their hearts and preserve their
permanent and lasting impression. Life is variable and restless;
it drifts them far aAvay.  At most, they only say in the even-
ing : " I saAV a charming thing  this morning, mademoiselle—a
veritable  tableau,  after  Andrea  del  Sarto—the  prettiest
sight!"
  She very Avell knoAvs what  such admirers are  worth, and
the slight value to be placed on their fickle emotions.
  The more she retires into the sanctum sanctissimum  of the
family, the happier she is in it, the less she cares to leave it.
  Every  time she catches a glimpse of the Avorld,  she feels
more cheerfully the pleasantness of her own little nest.
  Little,  very little!  yet human life is complete Avithin it, in
that graceful equilibrium of a mother ennobling by her heart
the humblest cares,  and of an earnest father, Avhose hidden
tenderness is often betrayed  in spite of himself.   At such
passionate demonstrations the  young girl quivers, and is even
more deeply touched by his care to transmit to her every day
Avhatever he has in himself of good and great.
  As a Avoman, she is happy in thus discovering the inner life
of a man.   She did not knoAV her father, at least never so Avell
as now ;  she saAV him every day, and listened to his teachings,
and his emphatic Avords; but she did not knoAV the secret and
best part of his nature.   Every man becomes Avhat circum-
stances, the force of precedents, and education, the necessities
of business, may chance to make  him.  Much must be sacri-
ficed  to  position, to  the needs of Family; and thus the
inner man,  often  very  different and far  nobler, lies  stifled
under all.  Amid the monotony of every-day life, AA'herein  it
sleeps, a  vague sadness betrays the mute complaint  of the
other, the better self.  AVhat  a  pleasant aAvaking is it, then,
and how  charming,  Avhen a young soul,  knoAving nothing
of our miseries, appeals to these hidden poAvers, to this captive
poetry, and asks  their assistance; Avhen all  absorbed  in her
family, and afraid  of the Avorld, she turns  alone to her father, 
126         The  Revelation  of Heroism.
and seems  to say to him: "I listen to thee, I have faith only
in thee!"
  Doubtless this sublime moment is the noblest, the sweetest
experience  of paternity.  A child in docility, she is a Avoman in
ardor, and  in the eager  tenderness Avith which she.  receives
instruction.   How aptly she comprehends everything good
and noble!   He himself hardly recognises her:  " What!"
says he, "is this my little one Avho  but lately scarcely reached
my knee, and avIio used to say,  'carry meT"  His heart is
truly moved.  Let him but speak at this moment, let him but
speak, and, oh! he will be eloquent!   I am quite sure of that,
I have not  the slightest doubt of that.
  Let us take advantage of these beautiful hours, these  pre-
cious tete-a-tetes. I see the tAvo walking noAv under the majestic
elms that inclose their little  garden.   They step Avith a quick
firm tread,  faster than one Avould expect in this hot month of
July; but they keep time with the beating of their hearts and
the rapidity of their thoughts.  She, knoAving her father's taste,
has placed  in her  black hair some blades of  grain and blue
blossoms.  We will listen to their talk, for the subject  is  a
grave one,  the question of right and justice. For a long time
the young  girl has been prepared to  understand him; in his-
tory she soon recognised the unanimity of nations in the idea
of justice;   in mighty Rome, her father showed her a world
of right. But here it is no longer  a question of study, of his-
tory,  of science,  but a question  of life itself.   He  hopes
that in her impending crisis, in the love which  will come of it
(violent perhaps,  and blind), she  may preserve the light of
justice, of Avisdom, and  of reason.  At heart, woman is our
iudge ; her influence, her fascination, if it is unjust and capri-
cious,  is only our despair.  To-morrow she will judge, this
beautiful girl.  In the most modest form,  in a  few low words
to her mother, she will  draw tears from one who may never
weep again, who perchance will die for that.
   She is so Avell prepared both by  the example of her mother,
and the lessons of her father, by the atmosphere of reason  in 
The  Revelation of Heroism.         127
which she has lived, that she will be less liable than others to
the caprices of her sex.  But  of the generality, Ave may say
with Proudhon, " Woman is the desolation of the just."
  Say to her, for instance, if she loves; " Of course, you deem
this favored man, the most Avorthy of your lovers ? You have
discovered in him something good and great ?"  And she Avill
ansAver frankly, " No ; I chose him because he pleased me."
  In religion she is the  same.  She makes God in  her own
image, a God of preference and caprice, who saves whosoever
has pleased him. Love seems to her-all the freer for falling on
the unworthy, on one  Avho has no  merit -to compel love.  In
feminine theology, God  would say:  "I love thee,  because
thou art a sinner, because thou deservest  nothing.  I have
no reason for loving thee, but it is pleasant to  me to forgive."
  Oh !  how thankful I am that her father has taught her jus-
tice ! for that teaches her true love.  I thank him in the name
of all the loving hearts who will soon be agitated by her, who
will hang upon her  youthful Avisdom, and Avait for the decree
of her  lips.   Let them knoAV indeed that,  thus  enlightened,
only to the most Avorthy, to the deserving, to the just man,
above all to  the man of noble  deeds, in whom her father
teaches her to recognise the lofty beauty of heroic justice, will
she belong.
  What is this justice?   It is  the right beyond the  right,
ind  seemingly opposed  to it; the injustice of Decius, who
discovered  that it was just for the best man to die for all, is
the deeper mystery  of devotion and sacrifice.
  Never until iioav had her father spoken to her of her OAvn
time, of the great nineteenth century, greatest in invention,
and  also one of the richest in  heroic devotion.   To-day, he
.mveils to her that sacred bleeding side of the  Avorld, of which'
she has lived in  such total ignorance; he repeats to  her the
Golden Legend—of the martyrs dead and living.
  A great day for her young heart!—and hoAV it transfigures 
128        The  Revelation  of Heroism.
her!  Hoav radiant this virgin, and Avho would not accept her
noAv for a symbol of the future ?
  But no, she is a woman, and she turns pale; her self-control
cannot restrain a tear ;  one orient pearl drops from her beau-
tiful eyes.
  Ye are reAvarded, O ye heroes, aa ho dying and bequeathing
to your country all your dreams, said, " In the future, virgins
shall Aveep for us."
  But enough, enough for one day.  A gentle woman advances
slowly, smiling and interrupting them.  The mother is happy
to see the father and daughter so closely united;  she looks on
them, and blesses them, and says: " Ah ! my poor little one!
this Avill be thy happiest love."
  But Avill she love elsewhere ?   He  has captured a glorious
prize, this father, master, pontiff, who makes  revelations of
heroism  to  a young, heroic heart, and fathoms  its  loAvest
depths.   One cannot talk much of heroes Avithout being him-
self a hero for the moment.  Such indeed does he appear to
the child Avho  hangs upon his  Avords ; he would paint his
ideal, but she sees but him.
  We knoAV the enthusiastic love of Mme. de Stael for her
father; and I have no doubt  that that young girl, then all
nature, all passion, powerful,  eloquent, divine,  exalted him
above himself.  He Avas great in her eyes, and that made him
so—or at least contributed to it.  Commonplace before and
after,  but in  that solemn hour, young, bold, transfigured, he
arose  to  the  noble  idea of '89—the infinite hope of equality.
He might change, he might fall, and she too, under his influ-
ence.  No matter—the child's dream, one  moment realized,
took the measure of the whole Avorld.
  This is a strong tie then, so strong that all others seem
;veak  and insufficient.   I have  seen other daughters, lesa 
The  Revelation  of Heroism.         129
knoAvn, but  not less admirable, in Avhom this first affection
seemed to have  closed  the  heart  against  all  others.  The
SAveetness and delicacy of the close intimacy they enjoyed in
the filial  relation  seemed attainable in no other.  One had a
father  nearly blind, and she  was his eyes; he saAV through
her, she  loved through  him.   For another, the rest of the
world  had  been destroyed,  her father existed alone;  she
declared  that Avith him she would Avelcome the profoundest
solitude at either pole.  " Talk not to me," said she, " of the
divorce that men call marriage !"
  For  our own daughter there remains to us the serious duty
of Avarning  her of the common fate.   Alas !  our pure and
tender union can be but transient.  Nature urges us on, and
does not  alloAV love to fall back upon itself.
  It is a  painful  task  to tear heart from heart, to calm, to
regulate the naive impulses of the child,  and lead it on to wis-
dom :  " My dear child, in yorir beautiful season of eager and
radiant life,  Avhich vivifies all things, one thing  escapes you
which you must sometimes recall—death !
  "Our undying love can avail you nothing;  your mother
and I must soon leave you.  What, if loving me too well, you
should Aved,  in  me, grief?
  " Of late,  the intimacy of this normal initiation, the  deep
joy  I  have  felt in revealing  to  you the  elements of man's
greatness, have too fondly enraptured your heart, my child,
and  identified it with mine.  You have seen me in your filial,
illusion, young  Avith the  eternal youth of the heroes  I  have
described, and  at the  same time mature, calm, Avise, Avith the
gift you call the SAveetness of autumn.  All this, my daughter,
is not Avhat God designs  for you.   For  you is the beginning,
not the end.  You require the brave, fierce strength of those
Avho have much to do, in Avhom time may do its Avork, to soften
and  ameliorate.  Their present defects  are often excellences
in the future.   Your gentleness is only too inclined to  cherish
the gentleness  of a father.  I Avish  for you—and may God
grant you—the energy of a husband. 
130         The  Revelation of Heroism.
  " At  this very time you  are  already the  beginning of a
Avife; another initiation aAvaits you, and other duties.  AVife
and mother,  Avise  friend,  and universal  comforter, you  are
created to be the happiness and the salvation of many.  Take
heart, then, my daughter,  and the cheerful courage one feels
in marching to duty.  Though my heart may suffer in teach-
ing you these sterner laws of life, it yet bears itself proudly.
  " Does the lover exist Avhom Ave Avould desire for you ? I
knoAV not;  but whatever happens, love will not fail you. The
maternal is the  purest love, and  you will be a mother to  all.
All shall recognise  in you the most benign reflection of Provi-
dence." 
   Book  II.—Woman  in  the  Family.


                     ------o------

                           I.

THE WOMAN WHO WILL LOVE MOST.---A DIFFERENT RACE.

  Before pursuing further the young girl's destiny, Avhich in
our first book we have been tracing, let us take a general
view of marriage, and the physiological questions of race
and amalgamation.
  Love is the mediator of the world, the redeemer  of all
human races.  Love means peace, harmony, unity, and  is the
great peace-maker.  Political hostilities, discords, contrary in-
terests, all these are as nothing to it; it cancels and overcomes
them;  or, even more, it laughs and mocks at them.  Diversity
indeed is the very thing it  prefers; contrast is a seduction, the
unknoAvn a charm, a mystery which it Avould fathom; the con-
trariety Avhich might be expected to blunt, only whets the
edge of its desire.
  Every, one Avho has been in Berne, has seen the portrait of
Magdalena Nageli, Avith the huge chamois gloves—a robust
woman  and a fruitful mother, avIio was beloved for her great
strength.  Though daughter of a patrician of Berne, she Avas
engaged in the family Avashing, at a fountain with her servants,
AAdien there passed by a young noble, of a house ahvays hostile
to hers—an.hereditary enmity, like that of the Montagus and
Capulets in Romeo and Juliet; and the young man lingered to 
132     The Woman  who will  Love Most.
gaze at the beautiful girl, as she clapped the linen Avith a hand
of iron and wrung  it Avith an  arm of steel.  He saw that
there would be born of her a race of men as strong as bears;
so he hastened at once to his enemy's palace, and implored
him for his friendship and his daughter, because he despaired
of ever finding another woman so vigorously framed.
  The most  energetic races  on earth have sprung from a
union  of  opposite,  or seemingly opposite elements:  for in-
stance, the blending of the white man Avith the black woman,
which  produces the mulatto, a race of extraordinary vigor;
or on  the contrary, of identical  elements; for example, the
Persians  and the Greeks, Avho married their near relatives.
Which is precisely the Avay in Avhich  race-horses are improved ;
they are  permitted  to  breed only Avith their OAvn  stock, so as
to refine their blood.
  In the first case, the principle consists in the fact that there
is  so much more attraction betAveen  opposite; the negress
adores the white  man.  In the second case, it proceeds from
the perfect harmony of likes, which co-operate.
  The native speciality accumulates and increases from mar-
riage  to  marriage.   The races  deemed inferior, only appear
so from their need of a culture contrary to ours, and especially
from their need  of love.   How touching are they in this
aspect, and hoAV  Avell  they merit a return from the favored
races, Avho find in them an infinite source of physical regenera-
tion and youth!
  The river thirsts for the clouds, the desert for the river, the
black woman for the Avhite man.   She  of all others is the
most loving, the  most generating;  and this not only because
of her youthful blood, but,  Ave must also admit, from the rich-
ness  of her heart.   She is loving among the loving,  good
among the good (ask  the  travellers Avhom  she has  so  often
saved).  Goodness is creation, it is  fruitfulness, it is the very
benediction of a holy act. The fact that this Avoman is so fruit-
ful, I attribute to her treasures  of tenderness,  to  that ocean
of goodness which  permeates her heart. 
          The Woman  who will  love Most.      133

  "Africa is a woman ; her races are feminine," says, very
truly, Gustavus d'Eichthall.  The  revelation of x\frica in  the
red race of Egypt was in the reign of the great Isis  (Osiris
Avas secondary).  In many of the black tribes of Central Africa,
the women rule;  and they are as intelligent as they are amia-
ble and kind.  We see this in Hayti, where they not only im-
provise charming  little songs for  their festivals, inspired by
their affections, but in business operations solve very compli-
cated mental problems.
  It Avas a pleasure  to me to learn  that in Hayti, through
liberty, comfort, and  intelligent culture, the  negress is disap-
pearing, and that without amalgamation.  She is becoming
the true black Avoman, Avith straight nose and thin lips; even
her hair is changing.   The coarse  and bloated features of the
negro on the coasts of Africa are  (like the SAVollen hippopo-
tamus)  an effect  of  his burning  climate, which at certain
seasons is  drenched Avith  Avarm floods.   These  floods fill the
valleys Avith refuse, Avhich decays there; and the fermentation
swells and puffs up everything, just as  dough rises'in an oven.
But there  is nothing of all this in  the  dryer climates  of Cen-
tral Africa.  The  frightful anarchy 01 petty Avars, and  the
slaAre-trade, Avhich  desolate  the coasts, contribute not a little to
this ugliness ; and it is the same in the American States under
the influence of slavery.   Even there, where she remains a
negress,  Avith no  refinement, the  black Avoman is still very
beautiful.  She possesses the charm  of supple youth, Avhich
the Greek beauty, formed by gymnastics and  ahvays a lit-
tle mascielinized, never  had.   She may scorn  not only  the
odious Hermaphrodite, but the muscular beauty of the crouch-
ing Yenus (in the Jardin des Tuileries).  The black is a A'ery
different Avoman  from  the proud ladies of Greece; she is
essentially young in  blood, in heart, and in body—of gentle,
child-like humility, never sure  of  pleasing, ready to do any-
thing in order to displease  less.   No tyranny Avearies her
obedience; annoyed by her face, she is in no Avise comforted
by her perfect form, so full of touching languor, and  elastic 
134     The  Woman who  will love  Most.
freshness.  She throws at your feet what you Avere about to
adore; she trembles and begs your pardon—she is so grateful
for the pleasure she bestows!  She loves, and her whole heart
flows into her warm embrace.
  Only let her be loved, and she Avill do anything, learn any-
thing.  In the black race, the woman must first be elevated,
and through love she Avill elevate the man and the child.  But
for her there  must be a system of education entirely contrary
to ours.  Cultivate in her first, Avhat she already has so  richly,
the sense of rhythm (dancing, music, etc.);  and through the
art of design lead her on to reading, to the sciences, and the
agricultural arts.  She will be in raptures with nature as soon
as she learns  of it.  AVhen  the earth is made known to her—
so beautiful,  so good, so Avomanly—she will fall in love with
it, and with more energy than one would expect from her cli-
mate, she will bring about a marriage between the earth and
man.   Africa had only the red Isis; America shall have the
black Isis, a gloAving female  genius, to impregnate nature and
reanimate exhausted races.
  Such is the virtue of the black blood, that Avherever  a drop
of it falls, everything revives; no more old age—a young and
puissant  energy, it-is the very fountain  of youth.   In  South
America and  elsewhere, we  behold more than one noble race
languishing, drooping, dying;  why is that so when they have
life at their very doors ? The Spanish Republicans, true  nobles
and perfect gentlemen, were better masters than the other colo-
nists ; they were generously the first to abolish slavery. Ah! in
return, beneficent Africa can restore them to strength and life.
  Observe this African race—so gay, so kind, so loving. From
the day of its resurrectiop,  at its first contact, by love, Avith
the Avhite race, it furnished  the latter Avith an extraordinary
combination  of faculties Avhich give force, in a man of inex-
naustible  powers—a man, did I say ? rather an element, like
an inextinguishable volcano  or a great American river.   How
long Avas it without the rapturous gift of improvization, Avhich
for the last fifty years it has possessed ? No m/itter, for all 
         The Woman who will loVe Most.      135

that it affords the best machinist, and the most vivid dramatist'
since Shakespeare.
  AVe  find an unknoAvn source of beauty in the black race.
The red  rose, Avhich Avas formerly the only hue admired, has,
we  must confess, but little variety. Thanks to the art Avhich
combines, Ave have the  numberless tea-roses now, with their
thousand shades,—and  others  still more delicate, veined or
tinted  Avith  faint  blue.  Our  great  painter,  Prud'hon, has
painted nothing more lovingly than the beautiful dark woman
in the hall of the Loim-e.   She is a little in the shade, like a
mystery  unveiling itself.  Her beauty is seen as through a
cloud.   Her  lovely eyes are not large, but deep, and full of
expression.   The spectator,  AATho perhaps sees in  her what is
in his own heart, regards her as Night shrouded in Passion.
  A dark and glowing picture !   And yet I have  seen one
someAvhat clearer, and even prettier.  Last winter, visiting an
eminent  Haytian, as distinguished in literature as in business,
I was received, in his absence, by a young lady, as timid as
she Avas charming, whose rare beauty took me by surprise.  A
scarcely  perceptible shade of delicious lilac threAv over her
roses a. mysterious magical charm, quite indescribable.  Pre-
sently she blushed, and the fire of her eyes would have dazzled
the two worlds.
  A thousand honors to the black France! for so would I
name Hayti, since her kindly people so love her who oppressed
their fathers.  Receive my vows, O youthful state ! and may
Ave  afford thee protection in atonement for the past, and develop
thy free  genius, the genius  of  that cruelly calumniated race
AA'hose sole civilized representative  in this Avorld thou art.  By
an equal  title thou art representative of the genius of Avoman.
Through thy charming  Avomen, so loving and  so intelligent,
must thou  cultivate thyself and organize thy schools.   Such
tender mothers will, I am sure,  become admirable instructors.
A rigid normal-school for the governesses and school-teachers
(especially after the delightful method of Froebel) is the insti-
tution I would first desire for Hayti. 
136    The Woman who  will Love Most.

  Hoav France has been loved !   Hoav deeply do I still mourn
for  the  love  and friendship with which the tribes of North
America welcomed  us—so proud  and  fierce a race!  It  is
really a  glory to us that those men,  with the piercing eyes and
the second-sight of the hunter, preferred us for their daugh-
ters, and at once discerned the truth—that a Frenchman is a
superior man.  As  a soldier he lives everyAvhere, and as a
lover he creates eAreryAvhere.
  The Englishman  and the German, strong and Avell-formed
as they  appear, are both less robust and less generative ; they
can do nothing with the foreigner.  If the English or German
Avoman  is not always at hand, folloAvihg them on their jour-
neys, their race dies  out.  Soon  there will be nothing left of
the English in India—no more  than the Franks of Clovis
among us, or the Lombards in Lombardy.
  The black Avoman's love for us is perfectly natural; that of
the red  woman, the  American Indian, is more surprising.  She
is stern, haughty, and sombre.  A  Frenchman's gaiety, some-
times rather volatile, might have shocked her.   Her deep pro-
phetic poAvers could  hardly be expected to consort Avith our joy-
ous dancers, Avho even in the Avilderness, while an eight months'
Avinter reigned, danced to the songs of  Paris.  But she kneAV
them to be brave,  she  saw that they  Avere  serious, kind,
loving, helpful, fraternizing at once Avith her tragic Avarriors;
and so  they found  favor in her eyes.   If~ she checked the
audacity of  our Avild scape-graces Avho sometimes intruded on
her  privacy, it was in delicate, dignified  words, that did not
Avound.   The reply of the  betrothed maiden is well  known.
" The friend I havre before my  eyes  prevents  my seeing
you."
  These red Avomen treated us like boisterous children, Avho
are sometimes a little troublesome to  their mother or their
sister, but she does not love them the less.
  From these  amours a mixed race remains—the  Franco-
Indians  ; but they  are scattered—few in number,  and gra-
dually dying out;  the noble race  is fast becoming extinct. 
         The  Woman who  will  Love Most.    137

In a hundred years what will be left of them?   Perhaps
Preault's bust.
  A doleful image—ah!  so very sad—Avhich the great sculptor
of tombs seized upon instinctively, with unconscious genius,
and Avhich remains to  perpetuate the poor but noble Avoman
of the race that Chateaubriand caricatured.
  Some ten years ago, an American speculator bethought him
of exhibiting in Europe a large  family of Iowas.  The men
were  magnificent,  of a  proud and regal beauty—on their
necks the claws of bears, significant of combats.   Yery strong
—yet not Avith the great muscles of  the  blacksmith  or the
boxer, but Avith beautiful arms, almost like a Avoman's.   A
child too, ten years old, was like a pretty Egyptian statue 6f
red marble—perfect, but with a  fearful gravity.  You could
not look on him Avithout thinking, "That is the son of a hero."
  AVhat consoled these kings for being made a shoAv of on a
stage, like monkeys, Avas, I think, their latent scorn  of the*
croAvd of superfine gentlemen,  avIio  were there Avith their
opera-glasses—volatile, restless,  gesticulaters,  the veritable
monkeys of  Europe.  The  only  person in the party  who
seemed  sad Avas a woman, the Avife of a  renowned warrior
named " The AYolf," and mother of the  child.  She had suffered
much before, but how much  more here!  She drooped; she
died.  Alas!  Avhat  could  France offer to one of the last of
those poor Avomen who had loved France so well ?  Nothing,
but a tomb to preserve  the fire of a lost genius. Antiquity
(even the JeAvish) has never had, nor knoAvn, nor dreamed
of anything so  sad ; for  here Ave behold a superior being who
has not only  endured every personal  misfortune and sorrow,
but is accursed in not having been left to the legitimate expan-
sions of his race.  Hidden, but mighty grief of the American
world!   AVhat Avith his eternal Avar with  the Avilderness and
his savage contests Avith  bears and men, the  Indian has not
been permitted to reveal himself fully.  And then the prosaic
power of old Europe laid before him, in guns and fire-water,
every instrument of treachery or conflict. 
138      The Woman who will Love Most.
  She looks all this in the face, this woman—like a sphynx,
stern and bitter—and yet under that bitterness, oh !  the heart
of the  mother and  the Avife!   How  gladly  in  the long
famine of winter would she have cut bloody morsels from her
OAvn body to nourish her little one!  With what joy, to save
it, would she have been  burned at the*stake  by a hostile
tribe!   And what unfathomable depths of love would not the
hero of her  choice have found in her !
  One indeed felt, in  gazing  on her, the mysterious infinite
of pride and  silence she  concealed.  Her  life  was as mute
as her death.  All  the tortures in the world Avould no more
have draAvn from her a sigh than the sting of love.   She  had
not lost the poAver  of speech ; she spoke as she ever did, Avith
the thrilling expressions of the  strange world, enigmatical
and gloomy, that she contained Avithin her;  strange! but per-
haps nothing greater in all the realm of mind.

                      ------o------

                           XL

   WOMAN  WHO  WILL  LOVE MOST.--THE  SAME  RACE.

   Love has its earthly plan.   Its  true aim is  to unite, to
blend all races in one .universal marriage; so that from China
to  Ireland, from  the north  pole to the south," all  shall be
brothers, brothers-in-laAV, nepheA^s—like  the Scotch clans, for
instance, the six  thousand Campbells all cousins.  It should
be the same with all humanity.  AYe should form but a single
clan.
   A beautiful dream!  but Ave must  not yield to it too soon.
In such a union the blood of all races being  mingled together,
suppose, which  Avould be difficult,  that it should blend—I
imagine it Avould be very pale.  A  certain  neutral, colorless,
faded element would be the result.   Yery  many special cha-
racteristics, all charming,  would  be lost; and  the definitive 
         The  Woman who will love  Most.     139

victory of love, in that  total fusion, would  be fatal to- love
itself.
  An able intelligent book on the mingling of races is much
needed.  We must  not  suppose that they can be  blended
Avith  impunity.   An indiscriminate mingling degrades  the
race, or ruins it.  It is  only successful betAveen  sympathetic
races, seemingly opposed, but not so in reality.  Between the
negro and the Avhite there is no anatomical opposition, of any
importance.   The mixed race  lives and is  strong.  On  the
contrary, betAveen the French and English, which seem so
nearly related, there is even in the skeleton  a marked differ-
ence.   The offspring are either of  short life, or dwarfed, or
in their ensemble present some visible discordance.
  BetAveen the  French and  the German the results vary con-
siderably.  The  man finds a great charm in such a marriage.
Parched, burning, of an eager mind, he  enjoys  by contrast
the moral freshness—he finds music, an appreciation of nature,'
and complete amiability, Avhich render life  very pleasant to
him, although perhaps a little monotonous.  The child (if there
is one) does not ahvays live.  Generally it is frail, but charm-
ing.  Rarely does it preserve the paternal fire; neither French
nor German, it becomes European.
  I one day asked an intelligent young man, who was teach-
ing some wise birds to read and calculate, if his  little heroes
Avere not raised above their kind by skilful blending, if they
Avere  not mixed ?  On  the  contrary, said he, they are of a
very pure race,  not  impaired* by combining.
  This set me to reflecting on our actual tendency toAvard the
mingling of races, and the belief, often incorrect, that combin-
ing, as it does, the  endowments and the simple  elements of
both,  the mixed race is necessarily superior.
  Among those of our  great  writers whom I have known,
only three are of mixed race.  Six are pure Frenchmen;  and
the three of mixed blood,  being foreign, not through  the
father, but the grandfather, have three-fourths  French  ele-
ment, a very strong predominance of the national sap. 
140     The  Woman  who  will  love  Most.

  One important point to consider, Avhich  may seem para-
doxical, is that foreign women, of the  most distant races, are
easier to become acquainted with than European—especially
than French Avomen.
  If I marry an Oriental  I  can  very easily foretell Avhat my
marriage will be.  One can foresee and determine the Asiatic
Avife,  through  great  classes—race, nation,  tribe.   Even in
Europe, the man Avho marries a German Avoman, appropriat-
ing her, transplanting her, is almost sure to have a  peaceful
life.  The ascendancy of the French mind turns all the chances
in his favor.
   But races in which the personality is strong, are not so safe.
They say the Circassian maidens like to be sold, feeling sure
of reigning Avherever they go, and putting their masters under
their feet.   It is almost the  same Avith the Polish, the Hunga-
rian,  the  French Avomen—the superior energies of Europe.
They have often a masculine intellect; they marry their hus-
bands,  rather than  are married.  So it is necessary  to  be
acquainted Avith them, to  study them  beforehand, to knoAV if
they are Avomen at all.
   The French personality is the most active, most individual,
in Europe—the most complex too, and most difficult to under-
stand.  I speak especially of the daughters.  There is less dif-
ference among the men, moulded as they are by the army, by
centralization, by the machinery  of a quasi-identical education.
   BetAveen  one French woman  and  another the difference is
immense, but betAveen the  Fren<*h maiden and the French
woman, as till greater difference.   So, the difficulty in choosing
is not slight, but the ^oretelling  of them is.
   In return, when they yield, and are constant, they permit a
more thorough and closer  intimacy,  I think, than  any other
European Avomen.   The English woman, an  excellent wife,
obeys by the letter of the law, but  always remains a little
obstinate, and  changes but little.  The German Avoman, so
loving and gentle, wishes to belong to her husband, to assimi-
late herself Avith him; but  she  is effeminate, dreamy, and in 
         The Woman who will love  Most.     141

spite of herself, fickle.  The Frenchwoman brings you a prize;
she reacts on you; and when she has received your thoughts
most clearly, she gives you back the charm, the personal, inti-
mate fragrance of her free womanly heart.
  One day I met, after tAventy years' absence, a Frenchman, *
living in a foreign country, and married there.  I asked him
jestingly, if he had not married some superb English rose, or
a beautiful German blonde.  He  ansAvered seriously, but not
without  vivacity, " Yes,  Monsieur, those are very  beautiful,
more brilliant than ours. I  compare them to that splendid
fruit, which gardeners cultivate to the  highest development,
the  magnificent pine-apple  strawberry.  The  flavor is not
wanting—it fills the mouth; one only  misses the fragrance.
I prefer the French woman, and southern French too ; for she
is the Avild straAA'berry."
  Whatever we  may think of  this poetical comparison of a
neAvly married man, it remains fixed and sure that the per-
sonality  of the French Avoman is extremely powerful for good
or evil.   So marriages in France should be prudent, and pre-
pared with serious reflection; yet it is the very country  of all
Europe in Avhich  marriages are most precipitate.  This  arises
not merely from the quick calculations of interest Avhich, once
arranged, urge marriages to  conclusion; it  results  also from
the great defect of our nation—impatience.  AYe hurry every-
thing.
  I think the evil is increasing.   In proportion as we become
more earnest in business, precipitation in matters of the heart
seems to increase.   Our language has lost a number of elegant,
graceful Avords Avhich once marked the degrees and shades of
love.   AArhat  is  left  is  curt  and  hard.  The heart is not
changed at bottom; but the people, jaded Avith Avars, reA'olu-
tions, and deeds  of violence, are tempted to look in every-
thing for an  enterprise,  a coup-de-main.  The marriage of
Romulus, by  stratagem,  Avould have pleased them only too
Avell.   They must  have razzias;  I  could almost call it  viola-
tion by contract.   Sometimes the victims weep—not always ; 
142      The  Woman who will  love  Most.
they are but little astonished in these times of lotteries—lot-
teries of money, of war, of pleasure, of charity—to be thus
set  up in a lottery.  Frequently these  fortuitous marriages
suddenly unmask, the very next day, an unexpected battery of
irreparable evils, of ruin and ridicule, Avhich strike full in the
face.
 ' Physiologically such unions, often impossible as unions, pro-
duce abortions, monsters that die or kill the mother, or render
her ill for life—in short, which make a nation ugly.  Morally
they are still worse, for the father, who thus marries his daugh-
ter, is not ignorant of the consolation she Avill  soon accept.
Marriage under such conditions  constitutes and regulates the
universality Of adultery, makes intimate divorces, often thirty
years of mutual distaste, and in the marriage couch a temper-
ature that would freeze mercury.
  Our peasants were formerly firm  in  marrying those Avith
Avhom  they  Avere  best  acquainted — a relative  perhaps.
Throughout  the Middle  Ages  they struggled  against the
church, Avhich forbade the marriage of cousins.   The restric-
tion, at first excessive (even to the seventh degree, and later
to the fourth), no longer  exists in reality.  One can have dis-
pensation if he likes, to marry his  cousin, or his  niece, or the
sister  of his  first wife.  What  is the  result?   That  now,
when it is easy, very few profit by it.
  The casuists, those false geniuses, Avho in almost everything
have  cultivated the  art  of  finding the  wrong side of good
sense, say, pleasantly: " If wedded love be added to the love
of kindred,  there will be too much  love."  History teaches
precisely the contrary.  Among the  Hebrews,  Avho at first
allowed marriage  Avith sisters, Ave  see  the young people, far
from caring for each  other, going  out of the family, out of
the nation—running  after the daughters of  the Philistines.
Among the  Greeks,  Avho  could marry  their half-sisters, such
marriages were very cold, and but  seldom productive.   Solon
feltdiimself called upon to inscribe in the laAV that husbands
should be required to remember their wives but once in a de- 
          The Woman who will love Most.     143

cade; and the marriage Avith sisters was abolished.   The Ro-
mans married no closer than their cousins.
  In fact, marriage ought to  be a new birth.  The delightful
moment when the Avife first enters her bridal home, is lost to
the sister.  The beautiful Greek, as we see her in the marbles
of the Parthenon, never entered such a house ;  but AA*as there
from her birth, seated on the paternal hearth.  She faithfully
represented the spirit of father and  mother, the old familiar
traditions.  She could lend herself but little to the young ideas
of her brother-husband, to the mobility of Athens. Magnificent
as she Avas, she Avas someAvhat tiresome.  The race lost nothing
by it, it Avas the most beautiful in  the world; but love lost
much,  and the family was hardly reneAved.
  But* Greece cared  little for that;  she  dreaded fecundity,
and only Avished to strengthen  native genius,  by cultivating
to the  highest degree the vigor of each lineage, and its pecu-
liar originality.  She looked—not at  numbers—but simply at
the hero; and she obtained him by the concentration of ener-
getic races, and a marvellous increase of activity, which, in a
short time, it is true,  Avore out and exhausted the races.
  Breeders  of race-horses practise this very art.  By uniting
animals of near kin they accumulate the blood of the breed.
The perseverance of a century in this  direction, produced,
about  1789, the  famous Eclipse,  that horse of horses, that
flame  more  rapid  than  voice  or  eye, Avith whom  no horse
dared  to  run, and Avho,'by his  four hundred sons in twenty
years,  fetched the price of all Europe.
  I have read all that has been Avritten of late on this subject,
and Avhat seems  to me  probable, is, that  marriage betAveen
relatives, Avhile it may Aveaken the Aveak, jmd further degenerate
them,  may on the contrary strengthen the strong.  I so con-
clude, not only from  the experience of ancient Greece, but of
our OAvn  French coasts.  Our  sailors, prudent men, Avho go
everyAvhere, and knoAV everything,  and  do not decide  like
peasants, by local routine, generally marry their cousins, and
are none the less an elite of strength, intelligence, and beauty. 
144     The  Woman  who will  love Most.
  The real danger in such unions is the moral one—real for
all but the sailor, Avho is free, by his wandering life, from over-
Avhehning influences at home.  It is not Avithout good reason
that in France Ave marry our relatives less and less.  (See the
official statistics.)  By the charm of common memories, such
marriages are  liable to retain a man firmly in the grooves of
the past.
  The French woman  particularly, exerting an  influence
already,  by her energy and the wealth she has brought  (for
the laAV favors her  more than any woman  in Europe), if she
is also sustained by relatives, may become at home  a  power-
ful instrument of reaction, and  a serious obstacle to progress.
Imagine how  great  may be the double power of domestic
and religious  tradition,  to trammel and impede:  at every
step opposition, dissension—or at least sadness and inertia;
consequently, nothing done, and no advance made.  A pretty
Veronese at the Louvre expresses this idea perfectly.  The
daughter of Lot is  so slow in quitting the  old city, which is
tumbling about her head, that the angel takes her by the arm,
to  drag her aAvay; but for  all  that, she manages not to ad-
vance a step, saying,  " Only wait till I have put  on my
shoe!"
   AVe have no time, my beauty.   So remain, and be  a pillar
of salt Avith your mother!—But no, Ave will not go alone ; be
carried, if  you cannot Avalk.  The vigor of the modern  man,
which can  draAV worlds along, will not be greatly retarded by
thy Aveight, poor, light-Avitted thing.
   If the relative has not that special education Avdiich might
associate her  Avith  progress, the foreigner (I do not  say the
stranger) should be preferred.  She should be  preferred, I
say, in tAvo cases, Avherein she is knoAvn even more perfectly
than the relative.
   The first case I laid doAvn in  LAmour, Avhere a man forms
his own wife.   This is the surest; for he knoAvs Avhat he has
made.  I have two examples in my mind.
   Tavo of  my friends, one  an eminent artist, the other  a dis- 
         The Woman who will love. Most.     145   '

tinguishcd  and  prolific  writer, adopted and  married  two
young persons, entirely fresh, Avithout relatives and Avithout
culture.  Simple,  lively,  charming,  wholly  occupied  with
household affairs," but  gradually partaking of  the ideas of
their  husbands, in ten or tAvelve years they Avere completely
transformed.  The same in external  simplicity, they became
mentally ladies of lively intelligence, perfectly understanding
the most difficult matters.   What was done to accomplish
this ?  Nothing at all.   These tAvo men, busy, and extremely
productive, have  bestowed on their wives  no express educa-
tion.   But their thoughts were elevated, and they communi-
cated to them at  all times their emotions, their projects, the
aim of their efforts.  Love did the rest.
  But the success, I grant, is not ahvays the same.  A relative
of mine failed in a similar attempt.   He selected for a wife a
Creole child of a vulgar, Avorldly class, Avith a coquettish step-
mother,  who very soon spoiled everything.   He  had roved
about the world considerably, and Avas  then a functionary in
the Department of Finance.  He  returned  home sad  and
Aveary, without the animation, the fire, of those great creators
Avho, ahvays at  work,  have  ahvays  a great  deal  to  say,  to
vivify a young heart.   I will return to this  again.
  The othor case is that, in AAdiich of tAvo men united in heart,
in faith, and in principles, one gives to the other his daughter,
reared and educated in those principles  and that faith.
  This supposes  such a father as Ave saAV in our first book, on
Education;  it supposes a mother too—tAvo phenixes.  If we
found them in the second generation, we should realize some-
thino- impossible as yet, but which will be less so hereafter:
the hypothesis of tAvo children brought up for each  other—not
together, but in a happy harmony—knowing each other early,
hut seeing each other for a short time at long intervals, so as
to become each other's dream.
  All this, of course, left free for the two young hearts.  But
with  a little diplomacy one may create and cultivate love.
Nature  is so  amiable  a conciliator!   A double education
                             7 
146        The  Man who  will love  Best.
seems the only true logic  for man and woman,  each being
only a half.
  The eastern idea, of the same being divided,  and always
longing to be united, is true.   One should sympathize Avith,
and help the poor half to find its " other half,"  and restore
the lost unity.

                     ------o------

                           III.

           THE  MAN WHO WILL LOVE  BEST.

  If in the life of woman there is one period more fearful than
another, it is the marriage of her daughter.  To her, even the
best, the happiest marriage is an overturning of her existence.
Yesterday the house was full, now it is empty.  We did not
at all perceive how large a place this child filled ; we were too
used to  so natural  a happiness;  Ave are not, indeed, conscious
of living and breathing;  but if our breath fail  but for a  mo-
ment, Ave suffocate, Ave die.
  How different the position of the mother who can say, " My
son is married," from that of her avIio must say," I have mar-
ried my daughter."  The one receives, the other gives.  One
enriches her family by a happy adoption ; the other, Avhen
the din of the wedding is over, returns home—so  poor! shall
Ave call it " severed from her daughter ?"  " Avidowed of  her
child ?"   No, those terms do not express it.  AVe must always
regret that a word is Avanting to  our  language—a sad word,
and full of lamentation—orba.
  AVhat she gives up is herself.   It is herself who  goes to  live
in the house of a stranger, to be kindly or unkindly treated.
She dwells there in  imagination.   The  man is  loving to-day:
but hoAV will he be to-morroAV ?   In fact, the son-in-laAV is the
least of all  she has to  Avorry  about.   Hoav will his family
behave—his mother, whom he loves, Avho influences him,  and 
The  Man who  will  love Best.        147
Avho rules at home ?  How many A\Tays she has of annoying
the young wife, to break her in perhaps,  so that she shall
oppose her but little!   Therefore, the mother-in-laAV,  to  pro-
tect her daughter, must be respectful, and  pay court to the
mother.
  I can perfectly understand  the restlessness, the  eager anti-
cipation, of her who for the first time looks on her future son-
in-laAv—or at least, the young man who may become so.  Ah!
how I  sympathize with her secret emotions.  She is smiling,
gracious, but at heart hoAV moved!   Truly, it is life or death
with her ;  for Avhat is this young  man ? Her rival. The more
amiable, the more  loveable he  may  be, the more  Avill the
mother be forgotten.
  A rare  moment in which to observe her, for never  is
Avoman so interesting.  That  strife of restrained but transpa-
rent emotions imparts to her an irresistible  natural charm.
She is  beautiful in her love and  her self-abnegation, beautiful
by her many  sacrifices.  What  has she  not  performed  and
suffered to  create this perfect floAver ?   Such a daughter is
the visible virtue of her mother, her Avisdom and her purity.
Like every woman  she has had her  ennuis and her dreams,
and she has put them all to flight with the simple words " my
daughter!"  She has  confined herself to the domestic hearth,
betAveen God  and her husband,  devoting her most beautiful
years to duty, to the culture of one SAveet hope.  And noAv,
is it strange that her poor heart beats  so wildly ?  That heart
is in her face Avhatever she does; and at times it  gloAVS Avith
glorious radiance in the light of her  lovely tearful eyes.   If
you please, madame, try to be less fair.   Do you not see that
Ave are confused, and know not Avhat Ave say?
  She  is tempted to make use of this power.  She sees that it
depends wholly on herself, whether she shall charm this young
man, and  do with him as she pleases.   She might  become
absolute mistress of the future household; she might preserve
her daughter from the tyrannical influence of her new family,
she mihgt, day by day (for Avhat is impossible to a woman  of 
148        The Man  who will  love Best.
wit ?) make him a good husband—amiable, even obedient.  To
trust  him noAv Avith her cherished idol, before she is sure of
him, seems impossible; she must subdue this son-in-laAV.  And
so behold her, still young as she is, recklessly plunging into dan
gerous coquetries.   She thinks she can stop and retire, at Avill,
And Avhat is the consequence ?  Why that he loses his Avits,
often forms  mad schemes, and oftener AvithdraAvs altogether.
But the marriage has  already been announced, and the young
lady is compromised.  What remedy for that ? Am I Avriting
fiction ?  No, it is Avhat I myself have seen  more than once,
and  the cases are frequent.   The mother loves her daughter
so much, that to marry her Avell she submits to the strangest
conditions—a deplorable arrangement, Avhich sometimes leaves
all three overAvhelmed with sadness and mortification.
  The wisest, the most reasonable, almost ahvays make this
mistake: they choose a son-in-law to suit themselves, and not
their daughters ; they consult their OAvn fancy, according to a
certain ideal, more or less romantic, which most have in their
minds.  A double ideal, but always false—I say that frankly.
They admire masculine energy and strength, and they are
right. But  it is less the producing and creating force than
the destroying energy that they select.  Strangers to  grand
achievements, completely ignorant  of Avhat  constitutes true
strength of  mind, they understand by valor  only that  short-
lived daring which serves on  the battle-field, and think, like
children, that it  is fine  to break everything.  The  man  of
brave speech has all the  advantage with them.   They pooh-
pooh the true Avarrior Avho holds his tongue and shrugs his
shoulders.                              \
  Their judgment is no sounder as to the gentle than to the
rude characteristics.   They find a poAverful charm in the man
Avho resembles them,—a  puppet of no sex.  They Aveave,
very awkAvardly, a sentimental little romance over some good-
for-nothing,  girlish page—Cherubino, a shepherd in  a comic
opera—Nemorino, more a Avoman than Stella. In  their novels,
Proud'hon very truly  observes, they never succeed in creating 
The  Man who  will  love  Best.        149
a man  Avith "a genuine  masculine character;  their hero is
always a woman's man.
  Now, in real life, and  in  so  serious a matter as a mother
choosing for her  daughter, they act  just as they do in their
novels.   Their preference  is often,  almost ahvays, for  the
Avoman's man, the nice young felloAV of " correct principles."
In the first place, they are  flattered to perceive that they are
more energetic, really more man-like  than  he.   They think
they  can  govern him ; but they are  often deceived.  The
amiable, insipid character is frequently but  a  mask, assumed
for success; the man, at heart, is selfish, and  to-morroAV Avill
show Avhat he is—harsh,  unfeeling, false.
  Madam, in so important  a matter, where it is a question
of life with  you, and even more  so with her for whom you
Avould a hundred times sacrifice your life, will you alloAV me to
lay aside reserve and idle subterfuges, and tell you the plain
truth.  Do  you indeed knoAV Avhat your charming daughter
needs, she who says nothing, can say nothing?  But  her  age
and nature speak for her ;  respect those voices of God!
  AY ell! she needs a man !
  Don't  laugh.  The article is not so common as you may
think.  A loving man  is  necessary ;  I mean  one who  Avill
alway continue to love.
  She needs an arm and a heart:  a ctrong arm, to uphold her,
and smoothe her Avay of life ; a rich heart, from which she may
draAv for ever, which she has only to touch to elicit  the true
spark.
  AYoman  is conservative, she  requires solidity;  and that
is-natural.  There should be firm, sure soil for the hearth and
the cradle. 
15°       The Man  who will  love  Best.
  But everything is unstable.  Where shall Ave find the firm-
ness we desire ?
  No position, no  property in  these times can promise that.
Look—not at France, not at the  Continent, that sea of sand, in
Avhich everything is for eA^er going and coming ; but look at
that sacred island of property—old England.  If you except
five  or  six houses  of no great date,  every estate there has
changed hands often Avithin tAvo hundred years ;  only one
thing is substantial—faith.  You need a man of faith.
  But I mean active faith.
  " That is, a man of action !"   Yes, but productive action—
a producer, a  creator.
  The only man Avho has any chance of stability in  this Avorld
is he whose strong hand renovates it, who  creates it day by
day, and if it were destroyed could recreate it.  The men who
possess this action,  who in art, in  science, in manufactures, in
business, Avork Avith energy, it  matters little hoAV they  define
their credo—they ahvays have one.
  A beautiful miracle! you say.   Yes, madam, beautiful, and
very new ;  it is faith  in  things that  are proved, faith in
observation, in reason.   Would you knoAV the secret of that
increase of  modern activity Avhich for the last three hundred
years has made every century infinitely more  active, more
inventive, than the  one that preceded it ?
  This—that  men are no longer in the mists of that fantastic
age Avhich doubted all realities, and founded its faith on dreams.
They stoutly maintain that Avhat is, is.
  You Avill find it also in the stronger conviction  of certainty.
The vigor of our actions increases by the security that a firmer
soil bestOAvs.   In the sixteenth  century, Montaigne doubted.
Excuse him; the ignorant man had no idea of the intellectual
strength his  great precursors   had already displayed.   Pas-
cal, in the seventeenth century, doubted, because he chose to
doubt.   Galileo  and many others,  proved  the  earth  solid.
To-day  thirty neAV  sciences, erected  on  thousands of ob-
served and computed facts, have made this earth a rock.   Step 
The  Man who  will love  Best.        151
with firm tread and fear not—it is the immovable rock of
truth.
  The  modern man knoAvs what he Avishes, Avhat he does, and
Avhither he goes.
  AVho are the sceptics of to-day ?   Those Avho are pleased
to be so, those Avho Avill not be  informed, nor knoAV the times
they live in ;  those avIio, ahvays reserving to themselves the
right to change, are alarmed because there are so many immu-
tnble things.  When they proclaim their doubt I ask, " AVhat
does it avail you ?"
  Does this imply that the active and productive men of these
times have perfect knoAvledge of the thirty sciences  Avhich
constitute our security ?  No,  they knoAV only the great  re-
sults ; they feel their spirit, they feel these sciences under them,
firm and living.  At any moment, if they fall, they will gather
incalculable strength from the maternal soil of truth.
  And herein is the real difference between us and our fathers.
They tumbled  about in a marsh of earthy water  or watery
earth,  and AAdien their feet slipped, they could do nothing
Avith their hands.  But Ave, no longer slipping, do much Avith
our hands, much Avith our minds, much with our inventions.
We invent ten times as much as  the  age of Yoltaire,  which
invented ten times as  much as  the  age of Galileo, which  in-
vented ten times as much as the age of Luther.  That is what
makes  us gay, whateArer happens ; that is Avhat makes us laugh,
and stride through life  with the firm step of giants.
  AYhoever feels himself poAverful—that is to say, full, strong,
productive, a creator and  a generator—has  an  inexhaustible
fund of serious gaiety (I mean that), and of courage and love
as well, madam.
  Give your daughter  to such a man—a man who will always
be above his business, Avho Avill take her into his actions, Avho
will  suck her into  his Avhirlpool.   I dare swear that he Avill
love her, and that every hour of the  day and the night (and
there lies the gist  of the matter) he  will have much to tell
her. 
152
The  Proof.
                           IV.

                       THE  PROOF.

   If  God had given me a daughter, I should have made my-
 self beloved.  How?  By exacting a  great  deal, by impos-
 ing difficult tasks—but noble ones and just.
   Of what use is royalty,  if one does not use it ?   Doubtless
 there is a time when a Avoman may do much for a man—when,
 perceiving his value, she charms him, by imposing  lofty condi-
 tions, and requiring him to give serious proof of his love.
   Why, sir, at  such a time all nature makes an effort, every-
 thing rises one degree ; the flower  displays the sensibility
 Avhich is the charm of animal life; the bird  utters a divine
 song, and insect-love bursts even into  flame.   And do you
 think that  man will  not change then,  and be a  little more
 than man ?
   Proofs!  sir,  proofs!  else  I care  little  for  your  insipid
 asseverations.   I do not ask you, like those princesses of chi-
 valric  romances,  to  fetch me the  head  of a giant,  or the
 croAvn of Trebizond.   These are trifles ; I exact much more.
 I demand that  you transform me, a young girl  of  obscure
 family and  common  education, into  a noble,  regal, heroic
 creature, such as I have ahvays had in my mind—and that
 not transiently, but by a complete and radical transformation.
   Whatever your career, bring to  it  an imperial spirit and a
 noble Avill.   Then I  shall have confidence in  you, I shall
 think you sincere; and, in my turn, Avill see Avhat I can do
 for you.  He Avho can do  nothing  for me, Avhom  love itself
 cannot raise above prose, above the " earth to earth " of this
 age, God save  me from having him for a husband!   If you
 cannot change,  it is because you do not love.
   " Alas!" the  mothers say,  " what Avould  happen if one
presumed to use  such  severe  language ?  Love  is  not the
fashion;  young people are so blasS, so cold; they find so 
The  Proof.
!53
many opportunities of pleasure everyAvhere, and are so little
anxious to establish themselves!   The days  of chivalry  are
far off."
   Madam, in all  times, man  eagerly prefers the difficult.
In those days of chivalry, do you  suppose the young squire
could not have  had all the common girls of  the neighbor-
hood ?  In the strange pell-mell and confusion of the feudal
house, Avenches and  ladies were at the pleasure of the page.
And yet he  longed  only for the proudest, the "impossible
she,'' her who made his life a nuisance.  For her, from whom
he got nothing, he would be a knight; for her he would die at
Jerusalem, and bequeath to her his bleeding heart.
  And noAv there is  another crusade, a crusade of labor and
study, of the immense effort a young man  must make  to
plough the furroAV of a strong speciality, and  sow that  speci-
ality with all  human sciences.  Everything depends on this,
and henceforth he who  does  not  know  everything, cannot
knoAV anything.
  I see from here, on the rue Saint-Jacques, by the opportune
chance of a half-open windoAV, a young man Avho, early in the
morning, has had no rising to do, because he has  sat up all
night; but he is not weary iioav.  Is it  the morning air that
has so wonderfully refreshed him ?  No, I  think it must be
that letter Avhich he reads and re-reads, and  wears out, and
devours.   Never did Champollion's zeal peruse the trilingual
scroll with more of  eagerness.  A woman's letter, you may
be sure—short and elegant.   I will content myself with tran-
scribing a line : " Mamma, Avhose hand is lame, bids me Avrite
to ydu, and  say that she expects you to spend  your holidays
here, micl that you must, pass your final examination as soon
as possible.   Succeed and come.''
  AVe must not forget Avhat  a young man is  in the streets
of Paris,  lest Ave  forget  his  sadness,  his languor, and  his
homesickness.  To be sure, science is beautiful to the master,
to the inventor, lamiched upon the sea of discovery; but how
dry and abstract to  the student!   Yerily, the  idle, thought- 
l5A
The  Proof.
less friends, Avho never fail to come in his  moments of hike-
Avarmness, find a fine prize now.
  Ah! but there is the letter.  In the midst of his Avild com-
panions' talk he catches a glimpse of her.   She holds him fast,
and fixes him; she serves him as a fever or a headache—any-
thing to prevent him from going off Avith them to-night.   So
they take themselves aAvay, and my young friend betakes him-
self to his letter-reading, over again.   He studies it seriously,
in form and meaning, and tries to discover by the Avriting if
she was moved—seizing on some, dash omitted, or some com-
ma forgotten, as  a significant matter. But the same letter,
read at different  hours  or moments, is full of changes; yes-
terday it Avas passionate, to-day utterly cold; stormy one day,
the next almost indifferent.
  Some one, I know not who, regretted nothing of his youth,
" but a fine  disappointment on a beautiful prairie."  Add to
that  the sweet pain of studying, deciphering, interpreting, in
a hundred ways, the letter of your beloved.
  " What!  a young lady write to a young man ?"  Yes, sir,
her mother wishes it—a wise mother, who Avould at any price
cheer and guard  the  young  fellow.   But  she by no means
relishes the English method, which proudly thinks it can bring
flame to  flame without danger.  The Swiss would go still
farther in their grossness; they deem it well that the lover
should spend his nights Avith his betrothed, who, granting  all
things but  one,  never fails, they  say, to rise a virgin.   A
virgin ?—perhaps, but not pure.
  Every nation has its vices.   The Germanic races, above all
bibulant and gluttonous, are so much the less inflammable.
But Avhen the lacteal regimen of English Pamelas is so thick-
ened Avith meats, and even spirituous liquors, those sanguine
and over-fed virgins ought themselves to  wish for better pro-
tection and defence from their OAvn passions.
  I do not mean to say that it is not sometimes necessary to
alloAV lovers the happiness of meeting and talking  together.
But  such  communications, however  pure  Ave may suppose 
The  Proof.
i$5
them, if too  frequent, would be liable to precipitate  their
longings, consuming them Avith a sIoav fire, and making  them
martyrs.  Let  us, if possible, prolong the  more  beautiful
period of life. Let there be letters, first from the mother; and
then, as matters progress and become safer, sometimes a  word
from the daughter, Avritten under her mother's eye.
  But I have forgotten to tell Iioav love begins.  Happy they
who know nothing about it!  who, rocked  in the same cradle,
reared on the same hearth, enter at the same time upon love
and life ! like Isis and Osiris, the divine twins, Avho loved each
other  in their mother's Avomb, and still loved after death.
  But the fable has it, that  even before  they Avere born, in
the darkness of the maternal prison, they made the most of
time, and their  precocious love Avas fruitful—that they created
even before they lived.   AATe Avould not  have our  children
quite so fast as  those gloAving gods of Africa.  There should
be initiation and patience; Ave must deserve to be gods before
Ave enjoy the divine moment in its plenitude.
  It is all very  well, very charming, for them to live and play
together at  the age of three, four, or five years; but  after
that I deem it Avise  to  separate the sexes.  Though he saw
her only when  she  Avas  small, very  small, and  played  Avith
her, wherever he may go he will remember the pretty  little
girl—cousin, friend, Avhatever she may be (for at four years
old we  are  all relations)—the SAveet  creature to Avhom he
behaved  badly, Avith Avhom he often quarrelled; and he will
be sorry for it,  recollecting her amiability, her good temper,
and her childish wisdom.  Thoughtless as he is, as  all  little
boys are, there  will  sometimes come over him, Avith  the  plea-
sant remembrance of games and  sweetmeats, a longing to
see her again.
  And,  indeed, at last, when she is tAvelve perhaps, he will
see her again,—but  more sedate, already not daring to play
so much, in all the charm and dignity of that  first reserve
the maiden \years., as she sits by her  mother in the family
gatherings. 
ij6
The  Proof.
  Beatrice  Portinari Avas only twelve, and wore a  purple
dress (that  is, a violet red one) Avhen Dante  saw her for the
first time.   In his heart she ever retained  that age and that
dress; and  even unto death she Avas for him a queenly child
clothed on  with light.   So shall my collegian carry  ahvays
Avith him the image of his little  Beatrice.  She will save him
from many  evils, especially  from vulgarity.   Should pleasure
present itself to the boy (as is only too common) in the form
of some degrading indulgence, it  Avould disgust him. His
heart is already above that.
  Let  tAvo or three years pass  by, and then let him see her
again,  gay and pretty.  In  the  development of his rose, the
charming vivacity of Shakespeare's Perdita,  who goes and
comes, and  helps her mother, is shepherdess and princess at
once—behold the neAV ideal Avhich shall guard  my  young
friend.  If ladies of questionable delicacy Avould  attract his
early fancy they will  come  too  late.  Comparing them Avith
her he will say: " My cousin is entirely different."
  Petrarch,  in a most beautiful  sonnet, full  of a naive confes-
sion, tells his Laura that she is to him a sacred shrine towards
whom, himself a pilgrim, he  journeys all his  life.  And yet he
confesses that in the chapels that dot the road he halts, from
time to time, to offer short prayers to Madonnas.  I would
have no chapels, no Madonnas  by the  Avay.  At  every step
I Avould have  the traveller descry his Laura afar off, and
swerve not from the path.
  But  I am Avrong; Laura  herself is Avilling that he  should
have other  mistresses;  she  is not jealous,—she  consents to
share his heart.  She knoAvs, indeed, that man needs diversity.
She knoAvs that in the Jardin des Plantes ever Avaits that rav-
ishing Avoman Avith the beautiful form—Nature, the great Isis,
who intoxicates young hearts.  She knoAvs that in the schools
of the Pantheon, and everyAvhere, her lover will pursue the vir-
gin, Justice.   Besides, she takes their part, and interposes for
them.  She prays him, through his mother, to forget her, if he
can, for her sublime rivals.  A beautiful, a glorious time, when 
The  Proof.
!57
Avoman protects Avoman!  and this  absent young girl imparts
courage to him, in the midst of study and privation !  Import-
ant, most important, is it to prolong the fruitful labors of this
season, to preserve its energy just when it is perfect, to keep
the cup  full.  The hard life,  the  isolation of studies  which
achieve greatness, is  very differently  sustained  when  this
Robinson Crusoe of Paris can say,  in a double alibi of all base
and vulgar life :  " I have here my  mistress and my mind."
  Marriage is confession:  I have  said that before, and I re-
peat it, because it is very true  and very suggestive.
  Oh ! how delightful, Avhat a joy and  a safe-guard, to have
for your confessor a girl of eighteen, to whom you are free
to speak, but Avho herself is also free not  to understand en-
tirely, and not to influence you too much.   Sometimes her
mother is anxious, and says, " Is he not ill ?  I  should think
so—he is sad.  Add a line for him."
   It is indeed Avell that a young man should tell a maiden of
his emotions, the heights and depths, the hopes  and joys and
sorroAVS of his mind.   " Yesterday I learned—AAThat opens up
a new Avorld to  me.   It seems to me that, in this direction,
I too shall succeed.   Aid me, encourage me!  I shall yet
be a  man, perhaps."
   Do you know what  I think ?  That this same young gentle-
man  is a shreAvd and  adroit seducer.  It is a living joy to  a
Avoman's heart to mould  a man,—to recognise, day by day,
some progress in  him, Avhich she has made.  In the quiet life
of the domestic hearth,  with  a mother infinitely loving, with
an old, indulgent  father, it is a delightful novelty to her, gra-
dually to join her life  to the ardent life of  a young adventur-
ous man, who takes her in his bark.
   She is much embarrassed ;  she is afraid; she  flings herself,
in tears,  on her  mother's bosom.  Some  delightful day she
stops astonished,  as she is writing thus to him :  " It is  always
 a pleasure to converse, to  exchange ideas;  and all that proves
 your mind clearly enough.—But your heart ?" 
158       How  she gives her  Heart aAvay.
                           V.

          HOW SHE  GIVES  HER HEART  AWAY.

  "How  many improbabilities are  there  in  the preceding
pages ?   A student in love !   A student taking his  mistress
for  a confessor!   A student  shutting himself up to prepare
for  his examinations!  A student studying!  O that is too
absurd!   The author is  evidently ignorant of what schools
are.   He  forgets how long it  takes to attain a profession, to
set up an  office, to get practice, and all that."
  You enlighten me.  I forget  that all young  Frenchmen
must be  notaries, attorneys, functionaries,  note-takers, and
manuscript-mongers—must plunge indiscriminately and fright-
fully encumbered into two or three professions, in Avhich their
long noviciate will compel them to marry late—when most of
them, indeed, are already worn out.
  Who does this?  Those prudent  mothers especially, Avho
Avant a son-in-laAV in good position.   To them  " functionary"
is synonymous Avith stability, in this land of the unstable !  A
notary ! hoAV pleasantly the Avord  sounds to them.  And yet,
in most cases, the man plunges into debt to get his office.
  So the blindness of this spirit of reaction, the ignorance and
the fear of woman, make of the most adventurous people in
the Avorld the most foolishly timid,  the most  inert,—a mol-
lusk on his rock.
  The Englishman, the American, the Russian have the whole
Avorld for  the theatre of their activities.   The English-woman
deems it  perfectly natural to marry a Calcutta or  Canton
merchant.  She folloAvs her husband,  an officer, to the farthest
isles of Oceanica.  The Dutch Avoman will accept with equal
cheerfulness a husband from Java or Surinam.   The  Polish
Avoman, to comfort an exile, does not shrink  from living in
Siberia, and the perseverance of such devotion  has created
beyond Tobolsk an admirable Poland, Avith a better dialect 
How  she gives  her  Heart away.       159
than that of AYarsaAV.  But let us even take Germany, Avhich
thinks so much of home; and you see her spreading far and
wide, over the tAvo Americas. The closest family travels most,
sure of carrying its  happiness  with it.   Love everyAvhere
creates its oavii country, extends and populates it. AYith Love
man has Avings.  Only you of all Europe do not see that, if
you are not in soldier's clothes, you are a sedentary people, a
prudent people, you drag on where  you were born.  But a
man is soon ruined on 'Change in your lottery life, in your
money panics, and the oyster itself is shipAvrecked.   So much
for your stability, your sure position, for Avhich one must put
off marrying till a mature age, till  the  age when mo3t, who
have got to the end of it, have nothing to do but make love.
   Gaul and old  France AA^ere the homes of hope.   They be-
lieved  in a future, and  they made that future.  They loved
and married young;  at the age when Ave, quite worn out, finish
up, and take a wife,  they had had for a  long time home, fa-
mily, and posterity.  To be sure, all the children did not live ;
yet the people,  gay, loving, prolific, everyAvhere left traces
of themselves.  Our ancient Gauls built up, I knoAV  not hoAV
many nations in Europe and Asia.   Our mixed races of the
twelfth century founded numerous colonies. Our Frenchmen
of the sixteenth  and seventeenth centuries, by their energy,
their facile sociality, subdued the neAV world and Frenchified
the savages.  Who  put a stop to this?  Just Louis  XIV.,
who, attacking  Holland,  gave it to England, henceforward
mistress of the sea.   But for him Ave might have had the tAvo
Indias.  And Avhy ?  Because we were loved, and had children
 everyAvhere.  And the English have none any where—except
 in one place, the United  States, whither the whole congrega-
 tion of Puritans betook themselves in a body.
   Think of  that, young man;  and in the streets of Paris,
 where you have so many resources, of ideas and of arts, and a
 thousand  ways of making  yourself a man, look around you
 a little, and consider where you are.  Embrace with a  bold
 searching scope, all science, and the whole globe—universal 
.6o       How She gives her  Heart away.
humanity.  Love, and love, too, a loving and devoted woman,
who will follow you  Avith noble  courage into the uncertain-
ties of fate, and all the inventive boldness of your OAvn brave
thoughts.
  " But, sir," says my young friend,  " would you know Avhy
Ave are so prudent, Avith a woman's prudence.  It is because
women, mothers, impose such conditions upon us.  Those fine
laws, Avhich  make them equal with man, make them rich and
influential, even more influential than fathers: for the  father
can have only a hypothetical fortune, involved in business,
Avhile that of his Avife is often secured by contract, and remains
apart.   That is Avhy she rules, and does  as she chooses.  She
takes her boys from school to put them, one knows not Avhere.
She  gives her daughter to  whoever pleases her.  I, for  in-
stance—who am I ?  What shall I do ? or what shall I be ?  I
do not know yet. That depends on a Avoman. I am regarded
Avith favor, at a distance; but if Avith the least boldness I ap-
proach nearer, this mother will be alarmed, will draAV back,
and reserve her daughter for a man of position and rank."
  The  young gentleman  is  right.  A great responsibility at
this moment rests on the mother.  She  has immense power,
to make and to unmake.   One word from her can Avork a
marvellous transformation;  our hero may take his rank, may
become a bon sujet.  Moreover, if  this word  confirms his
courage, his young loving heart, through one bond alone, may
become great.
  You are a woman, and still young, madam;  but you are
already in that second youth Avhen  prudence is developed,
Avhen things have lost their glow, when one grows suspicious
of everything alive.  Please do not impose so much Avisdom
on them already.  Do not require this young man to begin
with old age.  You loved him, you took pleasure in his en-
thusiastic letters.   Pray, take him as he is, young and glow-
ing.  Your daughter will lose nothing  by  it.  Act a little
Avith her; consult her.  I warrant her less timid than you.
And in truth she is right to be bold.  Such spirits, in their first 
How  She  gives  her Heart  away.        161
flight,  may  seem eccentric by their OAvn excess; but there
must be too much at first, in  order that there may be enough
at last.  Soon balanced, they  will attain their true poAver,
and properly directed, will supply the man Avith his ideal of a
wise energy.
  Here are our young people, brought together;  and I should
like to pause at this delightful point of perplexity and restless-
ness.  Besides, so little is known about it.  We are ahvays too
far  above it.  We  deal only  Avith the surface, the pretty
quarrels, the SAveet seeming-contentions of love.  It is some-
what allied to Avar, and, in most cases, Ave approach it trembling.
Thus it is Avith these.  The strong charm of power beAvilders
the maiden somewhat; and, on the  other hand,  the young
man,  hoAvever truly  he  may love, has an extreme fear  of
ridicule.
  He is wrong.  Woman, the true Avoman, is too tender to be
sarcastic.   Our heroine especially, reared as Ave have seen, is
by no means the saucy, jesting Rosalind of Shakspeare—nor
the laughing, giddy, empty-headed  girl Ave see too often here.
Her playful badinage is delicate;—a pretty kind of strife that
would not even be felt by our young men-of-the-Avorld.  But
he, less blase, is disturbed, and rebels at the least thing.  He
can bear  nothing from her—is vexed, and answers crossly.
He suffers;  and, at  the same  instant,  she  suffers too.  To be
so sensitive tOAvards each other,—is not that love ?
  Love! what is it,  and whence comes it ?  Hoav much has
been Avritten about it, and how idly!
  Neither statement, nor analysis,  nor  comparison avails.
Love is love, a thing  like nothing else.
  A pretty metaphor is  that of de Stendhal, who likens it to
a branch steeped in the salt-springs of Saltzburg.  Two months
afterAvards  it is taken  out, changed,  adorned with a  rich
and fantastic crystallization—girandoles,  diamonds,  floAvers
of hoar-frost.  Such is love,  steeped in the deep springs of
the imagination; and the comparison  exactly applies to  his
pretty, ironical, sensual book on Love. 
162       How  She  gives  her Heart  away.
   To him the subject is very dry—a poor branch of Avood, a
 stick—such the reality; and all the rest is but the dream, the
 embroidery, the idle poetry that Ave Aveave upon it at pleasure.
 A capital theory that, to render utterly sterile the most fruitful
 of all subjects!  A trite theory too, in spite of the piquancy of
 its form.  'Tis the same  old  Thesis, "LovTe is  but a fleeting
 show."
   Love! I  have  found nothing more real in this Avorld—as
 real as second-sight.   It alone bestows the power of seeing  a
 hundred neAV truths  otherAvise invisible.
   As real   as  creation  ; the true  things  that it sees, itself
 makes true.  With Avoman, for instance, it is so pleasant to he
 loved, that,  delighted and transfigured, she becomes infinitely
 beautiful: beautiful, not only as she looks, hut as she is.
   Real like  creation, double and reflected, so that the created
 creates in its turn.  This radiance of beauty Avhich our  love
 imparts to  Avoman reacts  upon and  re-radiates from us, by
 wholly neAV powers  of  aspiration,  of genius  and invention.
 What  name shall Ave "give it ?   No matter Avhat!   It  is
 Master, the poAver and the creator.  If it abide with us, we
 are strong.   AVithout it, Ave could achieve nothing  great in
this world.
   Surprise   magnifies its  poAver.   Happy,  most happy the
young man if chance should develope some unforeseen beauty
in him !  By just that much has he advanced.   For example:
it  is discovered that in Paris our hero spent too much.  He
suffers himself  to be  censured ; but presently they find out
that, by reducing his expenses  to the minimum of his absolute
Avants, he supported a poor family on his salary.   His lady-love
is  affected;  she has but little  to say that day, and dares not
look at him.
  From crime to  crime  they detect the culprit, till they dis-
cover that Avhile they Avere most earnestly urging him to secure
a position in his  career, by the first successes of the  schools,
Avhich  by and by should  lead to  the great  success of life,
he has acted like the  great painter Prud'hon, and our  illus- 
How  She  gives  her Heart  away.      163
irious physiologist, Serres;  both of whom, Avith no fortune
but their talent in intellectual competition, abandoned the prize
themselves,  and Avorked for a rival.  Thus Prud'hon sent to
Rome a rival Avho, Avithout his aid, Avould haAre been  unable to
continue his studies.  Serres, in a  medical college, finding
among his comrades a poor English surgeon, Avho Avas dying
of hunger, conceived the idea of competing for him, succeeded
against  himself,  and so Avon for his friend a place as pupil at
the Hotel Dieu.   An act of courage in the cause of  humanity
is  another pretty bouquet to offer her he loves.   One has not
ahvays  such prizes; but they aAvait  those who are Avorthy.
A man  fallen  into the river, a fire, a shipwreck, a hundred
chances furnish the occasion.
   Such  acts induce love; for Avomen are Aveak, and very suscep-
tible to  them. I confide this receipt to all Avho are not loved:
Be beautiful—that is the only Avay.   From  the day Avhen that
lightning flashes across her, she recognises her master, and
feels herself poAverless.   Let him not take advantage of that.
   Hoav  could he ?  I knoAV not, for there have been no nuptials
yet—but there is marriage.  The father and mother, almost in
love Avith him, holding him in high esteem, respect their t§te-
a-tetes.   They have confidence—and they  are right.   AVhat
wise conversations, though so tender, so touching !   She talks,
untiring, of  their house, and its arrangements—of the cares of
their future home ;  he, of love and their future children.   She
listens, her eyes  doAvncast, but resigned and docile.   She takes
care not to interrupt him—does not object to a word.  But must
it be told? she is so gentle, she appears so submissive, that he is
tempted, tempted to try his poAver.  Then the poor  child sud-
denly groAvs pale ; she does not struggle, but throbs, and can
do no more; her breath fails her.  Hoav can he ?  She totters,
leans on  him, and  at  last sits  doAvn,  overcome  Avith  her
emotions.  " Spare me, I beseech you; it is thy Avife, Avho for a
few day* implores thy forbearance."  And then she puts both
her hands in his.  " After Avhat thou hast done,  Iioav could I
resist thee ?  But thou wilt make me miserable.   You see they 
164  Thou shalt leave  thy  Father and Mother.

repose confidence in thee—in thee alone.  They have seen me
30 moved, that they well  know how weak I  am.  Love  me
for myself, my husband;  protect me,  defend me, for I can
no longer protect myself."

                     ------o------


                          IV.

   THOU SHALT LEAVE  THY  FATHER AND THY MOTHER".

  Our Sakontala's farewell to her birth-place, to her sisters,
her flowers, her favorite  birds, and her pet animals,  is no idle
comedy; it is human nature.  She has loved them, and she
weeps for them; she has counted the days, and now that the
day approaches, it comes too soon.  She noAV feels hoAV much
it all Avas to her, hoAV pleasant and soft this nest that she must
leave—the  happy family table, the circle of young brothers
and  sisters Avho adored her, the weakness of  her father, stern
to all others, but gentle to her.  One person, indeed,  is  alone
in her sorrow,  the  real  victim  of  this sacrifice,  her poor
mother, Avho controls herself so well,  and scarcely ever weeps.
Oh !  it is too much for the young  girl!
  No dream of happiness, no mirage of fancy, can compen-
sate for this.  The night before the parting, at the table, Avith
her eyes on her plate, she  hardly dares  to look up, lest they
should swim Avith tears.  The rest go doAvn to the garden, but
not she ; on some pretext  she remains, to roam from chamber
to chamber through the  home of her youth,  Avhich she is
about to leave forever.  She  bids adieu to each article of fur-
niture, every beloved thing: her piano, her books, her father's
chair ; but to her mother's bed most of all.  There she bursts
into  tears.                                        *
  And Avhy ? does she not love ?  Never doubt  it.   Yes, she
truly loves. Strange,but natural, that at the moment of folloAV- 
     Thou shalt leave  thy  Father  and  Mother.  165

ing her husband she misses her lover.  The room in A\diich she
dreamed of him, the table on Avhich she wrote to him, have
their share of  her regrets.  The stormy alternations of her
love for so many years, come back to her memory noAv.  From
her neAV happiness, she throAVS a backward glance over  that
world  of sighs, and  dreams, and idle fears, in which passion
takes delight;  she mourns for it all, even to the sweet bitter-
ness she often found in tears.
  Nothing moves her more than the  sight of the friends of
her childhood—the dumb animals out of doors, Avho have been
told nothing—the dog, the cat of the house, Avho know all
about it all.  The dog follow? her Avith wistful eyes ; and the
cat, dull  and  motionless, refusing to eat, lies always on her
bed—the little girl's bed, that will be empty to-morrow.
  They seem to say to her, " You go, but we remain.   You
leave us for a stranger.  You quit the home of gentleness and
love, Avhere you had everything your OAvn way.  AYhatever
you did Avas right, Avhatever you said was beautiful.   Your
mother, father, e\Terybody, hung on your lips, eager to receive
all that escaped them.  Your sisters quoted your opinions as
supreme reason, and  decided by your word, ' She has said it.'
Your brothers were your knights, silently admiring you, ima-
gining nothing higher than you, loving in other ladies only
Avhat resembled you.
  " Alistress, protectress, beloved nurse, who so often hast fed
us from thy hand! whither art thou going, and Avhat will be-
come of thee ?   Thou art now to have a master, and thou must
swear obedience.  Thou departest to dwell with a stranger—
with one Avho loves thee, true—but a proud young man, and
stern.  Hoav much Avill his active energy, bent on other mat-
ters, leave him for his wife and home ?  From his daily work—
he will come home at night, often sad, often seATere.  His dis-
appointments,  his failures, Avill return to thee in the form of
unjust caprices.
  " This house of love whither thou goest, how often will it be
more  dreary to thee than thy dear paternal home!  All Avas 
166 Thou shalt leave  thy  Father  and Mother.

so serene here !  Avhen thou didst laugh, all laughed.  Thy idle
merriment, thy  clear young A'oice, thy goodness that made us
all  happy, created here a paradise, a house of blessedness.
All Avas love and  indulgence, and all were emboldened  by
thee.  For thy  father and  mother had not the heart to scold
the children or  us.  The dog Avell kneAV that at certain times
everything was permitted;  and the cat as Avell.   At  such
moments Avhen  the family Avere at dessert, Ave stole in to par-
take of the feast;  and thy birds came, clapping their Avings,
to receive a kiss from thy lips."
   Woman is born to suffer.   Every great step  of life is to her
a Avound.   She  grows up for marriage ;  that is her legitimate
dream.  But her " vita nuova " is a rending  aAvay of the past.
To grant to love its boundless pleasure, she must suffer in her
flesh.  Hoav much more so, when soon the other husband, the
other lover, the child from the depths of her being, shall tear
her heart!  Nor is that all.   Our fathers had  a sombre pro-
verb ; " A mother's soitoav  endures long."  Here " mother "
stood for "matrix," and the  meaning of the proverb Avas that,
in addition to the physical pangs of maternity, weariness  and
anxiety, sorroAv and pain  folloAv her, and  shall folloAV her, all
her days.
   On Avhat day, at Avhat moment, shall the victim be produced ?
What matter ?  says the legislator.  AYhat matter? echoes the
priest.
   The astrologer of the middle ages said, " It matters much."
And  he Avas  right.  But  hoAV is the day to be chosen ?   He
set up his glass,  and looked at the sky, saAV nothing, and
decided.
   AYhat Ave must look at,  is woman herself,  the dear creature
Avho gives up all, who, suffers and devotes herself.  AVe must
love her, and Avish her to  suffer less  by her sacrifice.  If any
day, any Aveek, be propitious and safe, let us choose that.
   Let me pause here, and ask Iioav it happens that the nume-
rous  authors avIio have treated of love and  marriage, have
never once touched on these questions.   And yet they Avere 
     Thou shalt leave thy  Father and Mother.  167

the very foundation  of their subject—at least, the point  of
necessary departure,  Avithout which  they could speak and
reason but at random.
  Happily, nature docs  not rely on us for the great func-
tions of life which  preserve it.   These  are  accomplished
instinctively, and, as it  Avere, under  the  dominion of sleep.
Our physiological chemistry is marvellously complicated, and
goes on its way, taking  no counsel.   So it has been Avith the
perpetuity of the human race,  operating  by love  and mar-
riage, through  the  constitution  of the family.  All this has
in noAvise changed, and man,  in these great essentials, has
remained in the track of reason.
   Unreasonableness belongs to exalted geniuses, the men of
thought and authority, the guides of the  human race.  For
example, to  the  political economists, those profound politi-
cians, Avho have thought they could regulate love, and retard
or hasten the operations  of  fecundity;  not one of  them
knoAvs Avhat fecundation is;  they do  not knoAV that they  are
maintaining the Malthusian theory, wherein they are ahvays
groping.  And, for  example, the theologians,  Avho have  so
lucidly explained the Conception Avithout knowing Avhat con-
ception  is.  And, for example, the  casuists,  Avho have  so
sagaciously directed and purified conjugal  life, Avithout knoAV-
ing Avhat marriage is.  And, let us add, our OAvn Avriters, who,
in so many eloquent books, have discussed the right and  the
 truth, accused  man  or Avoman,  and Aveighed the question  of
the superiority of one sex over the other.   Our great novelist,
a woman  of Avonderful  poAver—our  great orator,  a man  of
 potent and terrible arm, Avho striking the pro and con., brings
forth flash on flash, the world looking on—is it not astonish-
ing that neither of these tAvo has reached the bottom of the
 matter, the  loAvest  Avells from  Avhich indeed springs all  the
 rest ?   LoAvest ?  Nothing is lowest.  Let us abandon these
 old ideas of a  ladder and a top and a bottom.  " God is a
 sphere," said a  philosopher.  Heaven is  under our feet, as
 well as  over our heads.   Formerly we humbled the stomach 
168 Thou shalt leave thy Father and Mother.

to ex ih the brain. • AYe have  found  (in 1848) that the brain
digests ;  at  least, Avithout it no sugar is  made, Avhich alone
permits digestion.
  To return : until 1830, Avhen the ovum Avas demonstrated, the
crisis of love, theory Avas but folly ; before 1840, Avhen the law
Avas laid  down and the fruitful seasons indicated, all practice
Avas blind.   The persevering observations  of great anatomists,
the authority of the Academy of Sciences—a perfect pontiff
in these  matters—and at last the sovereign dictum  of the
College of France, from 1840 to 1850, gave to Europe those
disco\reries, henceforth to be accepted as articles  of human
faith.
   How  apropos does science  come  in ?  Medicine, before
the  scourge of  the century (the  universality of diseases of
the  matrix), stammered, and  turned aside, after having vain
recourse to the  brutalities of  surgery.  Then Ovology conies
to its aid.   It is the careful study of the functions Avhich must
open the way to  a knoAvledge of their changes.   And aaIio
knoAvs ?  The first, gently nursed by love, may perhaps antici-
pate the second.
   Forgive, my  young friend,  these serious Avords, at an hour
AAThen, of course, your heart  is occupied with very different
thoughts ;  but  love  is  anxious.  For thy sake,  for hers, I
Avould draw thee back  from thy poetic heaven to the real.
 But the real is  herself, so it is  heaven still.  The question is
 of her, and of your future.  When the health, the life of your
 darling  is  at   stake,  you  Avill not  accuse  us  of  excess of
 Avisdom, and tender precautions.
   Is it not a spectacle to make us reflect, to see around us
 young and charming women, smitten  by love  itself, con-
 demned to refusals, to involuntary evasions, or (hateful con-
 trast) to tearful concessions ?
   A desolate condition indeed, Avhich overclouds love,  and
 will soon  extinguish it—which  makes  generation a fearful
 thing.   One shrinks appalled Avhen, to the trials of maternity,
 he knoAvs that  increased pains are  added.  To the most ten 
     Thou shalt leave  thy  Father and Mother. 169

der outgushings of hearts, Avhich make them one, there comes
a time  full of grief and  terror of  the future, and death
betAveen kisses.
  Formerly this scourge was  less noticeable.  In the first
place, because they died sooner, and so did not take their full
measure of suffering ; but also  from another cause: Avoman,
then not  at all refined, living a less intellectual life, had
stronger physical reactions against both pain and bad treat-
ment.   I  here  allude especially to  what  is  mildly called
amorous passion, but which might be better termed  the de-
mands  of selfish  pleasure,  exacting  too  much,  desiring
Avrongly,  consulting neither the  period nor the  suffering.
She, weak and delicate, feels all this, and feels it deeply.   It
is no jest; but demands our serious attention, and the love of
every moment.
  What I would say' to the mother, I would insist  upon  to
the lover.
  In truth, more fragile than  a child, woman absolutely re-
quires that we love her for herself alone, that Ave guard her
carefully,  that  we be  every moment  sensible that in urging
her too far Ave are sure of nothing.   Our angel, though smil-
ing, and blooming with life, often touches the earth Avith but
the  tip of one wing; the other would already waft her else-
where.
  Ask not of the ignorance of  the past, what shall be done in
this great matter;  it knoAvs not, and cannot answer.  Ask
science alone to advise, and love alone to execute.
  Science replies first, very simply: That Ave should love  in
her  hour of love, Avithout precipitation, letting things take
their course, to succeed each  other in their natural  order—
but one thing at a time, avoiding congestions and all perma-
nent irritations.  Therefore, Ave knoAV the true moment, laAvful
and sacred, in which marriage should take place.  In a treatise
approved by the Academy of  Sciences, and authorized by its
hhdi approval,  it is stated that one ought only to marry a
                            8 
170 Thou  shalt  leave  thy  Father  and Mother.

young girl ten days after the process of ovulation,  that is
to say—in the calm, serene, and sterile Aveek she has betAveen
the two periods.  (Raciborski, 1844, p. 133.)
  This excellent observation, as humane as it is reasonable, is
no quack theory, but profoundly scientific, and derived from
established facts, and the  knoAvn laAvs of Ovology.   The
deduction is natural, and so it Avill remain invariable, an impera-
tive and necessary  law of marriage.   In fact, nothing could
be Aviser.   The  sterile period should be chosen, says Raci-
borski,  because  she would  suffer  too much if she Avere  en-
ceinte in the first months.  Hoav cruel Avould it be to inflict
upon her at the same  time three pains—her periodical indis-
position, the initiation of marriage, and the disturbances of a
first pregnancy.
  "But her mother Avould  attend  to that,'' says some one.
Not she.   She Avill alloAV the favorable period to pass, and
marry her  daughter three or four days later—just when the
woman  is most susceptible;  and she becomes pregnant imme-
diately.  The ten full clays alloAved  Avill be a blessing,  for
thus science  interposes between impatient  passion and the
wife, shielding her as in a mother's arms, and better than she
could.   So every great discovery, every great truth, A\diich
at first  is but a light, and  speaks  only to the reason, is not
slow in reaching those practical results Avhich touch the heart.
  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; one labor at a
time.  Spare the bride, I pray you, at such a time, those noisy
repasts  of  provincial  Aveddings  Avith  Avhich  fools  Avould stuff
her.  If she does not eat, they Avill say, " Don't you see ?  she
is sad;  they have to force her.  She  does not love her hus-
band—that's  plain."
  I perceive  that the good sense  of our fathers  desired, on
the contrary, that she should  come to this trial of separation
and tears, of moral and physical suffering, only Avhen prepared
by her  mother, Avell refreshed,  light  and gay, and so much
the less vulnerable. 
     Thou shalt  leave thy Father and  Mother.  171

  The rites and symbols  of marriage are even now very im-
perfect.  People busy  themselves  excessively in teaching the
weak that she is Aveak, so that she may feel dependent.  It
would be much more instructive, more original, more humane,
to teach the strong  that here he must not shoAv himself strong,
to inspire him at such  a moment Avith delicate attentions and
compassion.  Love  will provide for that, they say.  But it is
quite the contrary.  Love, be  it confessed, makes strange
transformations.  At times, in man, a Avild beast roars with
impatience—the ferocity of  desire.
  Physicians begin to suspect that precipitation and reckless
insisting  (shall Ave call it cruel pride?), are often prime  causes
of enduring irritations,  and incurable congestions.  Incurable,
of course !  Hoav can  there be a cure Avhen every day the
malady is aggravated ?
  Recall,  at the decisive  moment, that pious, that religious
maxim, that sovereign  exorcism which can put your devil to
flight quicker  than  any formula—the legal definition,  " Mar-
riage is consent."
  It Avill not be worth Avhile to remember it  at noon, if you
cannot think of it at night, in the moment of agitation, when
your trouble is greatest.  Then, then is the time to remember,
" Marriage is consent."
  I should indeed rejoice if thou hadst a mind  to think of this
in the evening—if,  laying aside pride and all its follies, con-
sulting only thy love and thy heart, thinking only of thy poor
little one, thou  wouldst talk Avith her  mother, aaIio, Avithout
thee, dares not  have a wish.   AVe  must soften, must blunt
these thorns, if not remove them.  The merciful rite of India
speaks in this matter like our OAvn  physicians.
  The daughter of  France is often sarcastic, laughing at our
expense, but at the  same time the most nervous in the Avorld,
and most readily captivated by imagination.  She  ought not
to be afraid of him Avhose absolute mistress she'is to be; and
yet she trembles to such a degree, that Avere  there no other 
172 Thou shalt leave thy  Father and Mother.

difficulty, there would still be a grave one in her depression
of spirits.   Man, so selfish, thinking only of himself, complains
much of some  sorcery Avhich he says paralyses everything.
But the more veritable  terrors of woman are  not counted.
Her cheerfulness should  be restored, that is the great point.
He  must be patient, magnanimous, and desire not as against
himself, but for the sake of both, that she, too, may be happy;
he must consult her, obey her, and  make this his  triumph—
that her pain do not  displease her.
  Happy he who can  prepare his own happiness!  Who would
have it free, and desired, Avho trusts in tenderness  and good-
nature.   A sincere adorer, with true devotion he honors the
approaches of the temple, and guards its portal with a tender
and patient persistence.   Of themselves those holy doors will
move for him.  The  living fire of the god, that  seems so far
off, is at the very threshold. ^
  In a higher, a more advanced state, to which  hereafter we
shall come, it will be truly understood that this pleasant invi-
tation is precious, especially by  the neAV ways it opens to the
heart; that it  is but one step in the progression  that love
makes in the gradual conquest of the beloved, in every serious
union, and  such progressions must have long preceded the fes-
tival Avhich is love's proclamation.
  The soul-marriage must have existed  long before the legal
nuptials, if it is to continue afterwards, and strengthen more
and more.
  Let us efface from our language that immoral and fatal
phrase;  the Consummation of Marriage.  A progressive
state, it finds its consummation  only in the consummation of
life.
  The wedding  is but a publishing  of  this long  initiation.
Useful, indispensable, as a guarantee, it nevertheless has often,
like the noisy, brilliant festival, a very bad effect upon the mar-
riage.  The uproar  seems to  signify that a great day is over,
and love has given up its all; and the succeeding days are dull 
       The Young Wife.—Solitary Thoughts.   173

and cold.  It is wrong to date by a festival what should be
eternal.
  No, even at that divine moment, know that it is indeed di-
vine only because it consummates nothing, ends nothing; it is
divine, because it begins.  Thine  idol has given thee all she
could, has given herself in accepting thy love, has given her-
self in saying, " I am thine," has given herself in opening for
thy entertainment one of the great portals of her soul.  But
that soul is a whole realm of delights which  thou must now
survey. The world of discoveries within her, which awaits thy
explorations, how couldst thou know it in advance ?   She her-
self does not know  it.   She  only desires, passionately, that
thou shouldst be her lord and master.  Once possessed, she
instinctively feels that she can be even more than she is.  She
will do what she can, so that with the infinitude of  neAV sen-
sations that  love will create in thee, thou shalt entirely tra-
verse her boundless  sea of yet virgin emotions, of chaste and
delicate desires.


                       ------o------


                           VII.

     THE YOUNG WIFE.--HER  SOLITARY  THOUGHTS.

   In my Book of Love, I have touched upon the great exter-
 nal points.  In this I attempt more : I would observe Woman
 herself, especially the woman who has strong family ties, and
 Avhom even  the most  desirable marriage quite uproots from
 the soil to which she was bound  by a thousand fibres.  A
 truly dramatic passage this!  From parents Avhom she regrets
 to a husband she adores, she passes, not hesitating, not strug-
 gling, but with  sacred  sorrow.  Does she  love  the less on 
♦
174  The Young Wife.—Solitary Thoughts.

that account ?  Infinitely more, to the full extent of her sacri-
fice.  She gives herself up Avith all her grief; Avith boundless
love, and an unstinted faith she puts  into his hand her bleed-
ing heart.
  I know not Avhether the man, beAvildered by his own hap-
piness, can preserve enough coherency  to  perceive all this;
but for myself, I knoAV no sight  more touching than such a
young girl  (shall I say maiden or woman ?) as she suddenly
finds  herself transplanted away from her old habits,  and all
her familiar Avorld, into a strange house.  To be sure,  it is, or
it will be, her own; but she has  still to become acquainted
with it.  Until then, all is strange to  her. She does not knoAV
where to find any thing.
  Each neAV article recalls to her the good old family things
she left behind.  True, her husband, with his strong persona-
lity, his youthful enthusiasm, his charming infatuation, Avarms
and illumines all;  but he is not always there; and if he be
absent but for a moment, all, all is changed, looks vacant and
solitary.
  The other house, in its great  harmony of  multiple affections
—father, mother, brothers, sisters, servants, pets—Avas  a world
ready made.  But  here is a Avorld  to make.  Happily, the
ardent and poAverful creator, the life-giver, Love, is here.
  But Love is jealous.  "If you wish," says he, "to create,
begin Avith me; if you Avish me to bear you into the future on
my wings, do not tie me down  Avith that strong thread of the
past.''  The  first kiw of the  Drama, unity in action, is the
first law of life.  Hope not for the strong without the simple.
  "Fool, to think the heart is 'in pieces,' to think that though
it be shared, each part is still an entity!  What will become
of  thee, if thou hast  forever  there that complaining, I will
not say jealous, mother, Avith Avhom  thy Avife will live, Avhom
she Avill confide in every day?  Let but a cloud come betAveen
you,  and it is talked of again and again : she is comforted by
her mother;  and  so the cloud takes form, and hangs on theN 
       The  Young Wife.—Solitary  Thoughts.   175

horizon.   But thyself, thy love, and Night Avould have dissi-
pated it entirely.
   " And her brothers—think  you they will not be a little
jealous of the man Avho takes from them her Avho Avas the
joy of the family, and its peculiar charm?   True, their young
and pure emotions are not to be condemned.  But that only
makes the tie stronger,  and the secret hostility more natural.
   The strong family feeling, lost  sight of for a moment, and
eclipsed, Avill  soon  return.   To have groAvn  up  together, to
be able to talk,  among  themselves,  of a  thousand nothings,
precious and dear, of A\diich  you  have no knowledge—this is
a sort of marriage.   In the  past  there is this strength and
danger too, that, embellished by time, by losses and regrets,
by the SAveet tears  Ave shed for  it, it is a hundred times
dearer than when it Avas  the present.  The holy brightness
of the domestic hearth, the cradle in which  they slept or
Avaked together, irresistibly allures them backAvards, to over-
look the present. The heart is double, and it is shared. Tra-
dition, old  times, and  retrospective thoughts  contend Avith
love hour by hour.
   Nature says :  " March, then ! Take thy Avife aAvay!  With-
out quite  parting her family ties, live with her  apart.  The
more distant her family, the more thine OAvn will thy Avife be;
the more, too, will it be thy duty,  thy happiness,  to  be all in
all to her.   Thou canst not neglect her.  Thou art her father,
day by day to form her mind ;  thou art her brother, to cheer
her with  friendly. chat and  SAveet companionship ;  thou art
her mother, to care  for her in her-little  Avomanly needs, to
caress her and pet her.  In thy maternal, as Avell  as  conjugal
arms, she  Avill learn to find her cradle when she suffers; and
by all her petty, trifling, childish things thou shalt raise  her,
so much the more, to thine oavii aspirations."
   This is a little hard, but it is true and serious—indeed, a
laAV of marriage.  So she will have her hours of solitude ; in
fact she has them the very next clay.  For  as they thought 
 176   The Young Wife.—Solitary Thoughts.

 themselves surely intrenched  for a  charming tete-d-tvte, the
 family physician, an intimate  friend, passes the sentry,  and
 would carry off the husband.   Any idle pretext  serves his
 purpose—some urgent and important business, for instance,
 in which her husband alone can aid him.  Of course the latter
 hates it, but goes.   And as for her, she is so reasonable, that
 even at such a time she would not interfere with their friend-
 ship.   In reality, it is all done for her sake.   An old and very
 Avise custom it was to let the bride breathe a little.  AVould to
 heaven the  three  days' abstinence—save furtive snatches—
 which once was imposed on them, were the rule  now.  Then
 love gathered strength, and greAV with its desire ; and  the
bride had time to compose herself;  for kind Nature quickly
restores,  soothes,  and strengthens—but on condition that
there be a little rest.  Love lost nothing by it, as we see
 in the Song of Songs.  For the bereaved virgin, when she
 was no longer besieged and persecuted, languished as though
 she were already a widow, and wished him to return  at  any
price.  Truly a naive and  significant outburst!  She was very
Avell satisfied until then, this chaste maiden ; and Avhy did you
trouble her ?   Do  not laugh, incorrigible man, but love and
adore  her.  See her (as in that  glowing  poem of Syria)  dis-
tracted, rising at night,  and  seeking him  through all  the
gloomy streets, at the risk of shocking encounters.  Protect
her, and lead her home again; or rather  bring back her hus-
band  to her.  Ah!  how happy  he is !  They will not complain
again ; the pain  of absence  will render every other trouble
pleasant.
  To  return to her who does not roam the  streets at  night:
behold her for the first time in her new house, alone with her
 own thoughts.  She recollects  herself now;  she broods over
 her Avondrous dream, and reproduces its details.  She turns to
 her husband, so tender, so generous, so good; and her eyes
 water.  She recalls  his gentleness, his patience, his infinite
 delicacy  under certain mysterious  circumstances,  and  she 
       The Young Wife.—Solitary Thoughts.   177

blushes.   Sometimes she  fancies this  is  all an  illusion,  a
dream—and she fears to wake.  But no—doubt is impossible ;
for a very palpable sign reassures her, a sign which will not
pass away.  " So much the better!  it is all true,'' she  says.
Thus  her  deep happiness, armed  Avith thorns, speaks to her
from time to time—" So much the better !  I am his, then,
sealed with his  love.  It is  done, and God  could do no
more.''
  So  haughty before, and  so  stately  always, she was still  a
woman, and she is loving;  she clings because she suffers, she
would belong and depend; she enjoys in solitude the  humili-
ties of passion.  If the thorns are  sharp,  she exalts herself the
more  by the difficulty and the duty.  She  is as a wounded
woman, who insists on suckling her child.   Then a strange
struggle takes place, wherein, much  desiring,  he devotedly
resists.  If he is  magnanimous and strong, if he abstain by
mere  force  of love,  oh !  her very heart  melts, and  in her
delight she repays him lavishly, in caresses, in kisses, in tears,
and overwhelms and intoxicates him.  She  no longer reckons
with him,  but  gives herself up in a hundred charming ways,
in short renders discretion impossible  to him.  He grows
dizzy ; his cruel exaction fills him Avith remorse.   But having
but the sublime side of love, she, to her  sorrow, perceives
only the divine uniting.
  It is not an  unusual thing for this fatal sensuality to be pro-
longed too far, sometimes for weeks and months, to the grave
peril  of the devoted victim.   He is sad, dejected,  full of
regret, and  yet sins on the same.   She, proud, pure, and cou-
rageous, insists that  they take no  one's  advice.  The only
remedy to be  thought of, as  I see, would  be (if the  husband
were  a soldier or a sailor) sailing orders, or  close duty for a
month.  But  Avhat despair for  her!  At  the first hint of
going, she Aveeps, and cries, " Let me die! Avhat  is the dif-
ference !  To  lose thee is to die !"
  She is very  noble in all this ! acknowledge that, my friend.
                             8* 
 178   The  Young Wife.—Solitary  Thoughts.

 But of thee I knoAV not what to say.  I pity thee, poor  slave
 of the body, I pity our slavish nature.
  Hoav exalted, and Iioav poetic !  She is the poetry of heaven
 fallen around you.  May you feel it, and Aveave Avith it a deli-
 cate religion!  This frail but  fascinating  emanation  from a
 better world is  given you,—for what ?   To change  you, to
 make you a better man.  And  you need it;  for,  frankly, you
 are a barbarian.   Civilize yourself a little.   AVith your gentle
 companion you may reform your manners ; by her pure love
 you may sanctify your heart.
  Even yesterday, you  were in company Avith noisy friends,
 pursuing pleasure Avithout restraint;  and  noAv you are Avith
 this young saint, this virgin, this charming sybil, who knoAvs,
 or  comprehends,  or  devises everything, Avho hears the very
 grass  groAV in the ground.
  She has ahvays lived in  so harmonious, so pleasant, so Avell-
 regulated and quiet  a home, that your young strength, your
 manly vitality, though  they please her much,  disturb her.
 Your bold step,  your someAvhat noisy Avay of closing doors
 and Avindows, startle her ear.   Her mother walked so softly;
 her father spoke but little, and in so low a tone.  But your ring-
 ing A*oice, with the true military quality, good to command sol-
 diers with,  made  her start—I  will not say tremble—the very
 first day; but she  laughed in a moment.   Soften yourself for
 your gentle companion,  for she wishes to be your companion
 in everything.  She  would assist and serve you, and be your
little friend, she says.  And so  she is, but a  weak and frail one ;
and you must take the more care of her because  she does not
like to be taken care  of.   u I delicate? Not  at  all.  ./sick?
Never."
  She  says  to her mother, " Everything goes  well."  But
some day, when you  are in haste to go, and are detained  by
her, through over-attention to her toilet, you are thoughtlessly
harsh  to her.  Then, see how her heart  overflows in tears.
Just then, her mother arrives, and catches  her in the act; but 
       The Young Wife.—Solitary  Thoughts.   179

blames herself:  " No, mamma, it is nothing; I was Avrong,
and he corrected me."
  The busy man, compelled to be absent long hours together,
finds, in her very sadness, a beautiful, delicious compensation,
in being so anxiously awaited.  How touching she is !  and
Avhat a pity you could not return secretly and conceal yourself,
so as to witness  her  agitation, especially in the  last moments.
Hoav freely, then, might  you read on her frank face, in her
eloquent eyes, all that she feels for you in her heart!   She
need not speak—I can hear it all: " Why  is he not here ?  It
is so long since he Avent  away.  Will he tell me something ?
Will he have some news  to entertain me Avith ?   I do so long
for him ! to hear him ascend the stairs quickly and  firmly, as
he always  does !  Then, in  a moment,  everything will  be
changed; the  house, full  of happiness and  mirth, Avill fairly
tremble Avith joy.   The  table, the hearth, will glow  again.
Such a fine appetite, such rapid stories!  His plate shall be
here.—No, better here.   These are his favorite dishes, ours—
for us tAvo alone (Fido  shan't have  any)—a kiss  for every
mouthful.  If the fire makes me sleepy, or if I make believe,
he, Avho never sleeps, Avill knoAV Iioav to Avake me.   I have on
the head-dress he thought so pretty.—But I am Avrong.—If
he should  be  tired ? Or oh ! if he should say that  I have
taken possession of him, expressly for to-night, I should feel
so ashamed !"
  Such are her simple thoughts, Avhich perhaps  I should have
done as well to  keep to  myself.  It is four o'clock, and you
are not expected till  six,  but still she cannot keep still.  She
goes and comes, and looks at the sun, and takes her place at
the windoAv.   " AAHiat is the matter ? Night is  coming on,
and  my flowers  are  closing.   The  smoke is rising from the
chimneys.  Those people are very happy ; they have returned,
and  their families are united.  What is he doing, and Avhere
is he ?"
  By accident, that day,  something unavoidable detains you. 
r8o   She would  be His  Partner  and  Client.

The clock strikes seven.   Oh!  how  her tide,  her  torrent
of  fancies, apprehensions,  dreams, rushes in !   Even her
natural sweetness is disturbed.  A tear of impatience escapes
her, and  (could I have believed it ?)  she stamps her foot.
Ten or  twenty times already, the table, the  fire have been
retouched, improved, perfected;  but they bring not back the
master.  Her anxiety is at its height; her pulse beats  rapidly.
But hark! a sound on the steps—three steps at a time—he
rushes in.  And she, too—another Avould have controlled her-
self, Avould have maintained her dignity—Avould have  waited!
But this poor little thing waits for nothing, but hastens to
drown herself in your kiss, and faint between your arms.


                     -------o-------


                         VIII.

    SHE WOULD  BE HIS  PARTNER AND  HIS  CLIENT.

  One day I heard a  pretty saying of the peasants: " See,
they have been married only a  Aveek,  and already they are
so loving!"  That already is  charming.  It expresses a very
truly and  deeply human idea—that we love in proportion to
our intimate  knowledge of each other, in proportion to the
length of time we  live together and enjoy each other's society.
This may astonish  the blase, the sick, and the tired.  The
deranged  stomach thinks it necessary  continually to change
its  food;  it finds  everything insipid, and has no appetite.
If it were healthier, it Avould  see that  the  same  is never
the same; when one's taste has its natural and correct tone,
it perceives the marvellously delicate shades with which the
same food is incessantly diversified.
  If this is true of taste, the lowest of the senses, Iioav much
more so of love, the most delicate, the most complex ! 
       She  would  be His  Partner  and  Client.    181

  In the higher orders of animals, we all knoAV that there is
much more variety in the reneAvings and metamorphoses of a
single female, than in the brutal tasting of many.  With man,
love is a  voyage of discovery  in a little world—infinite,
ahvays infinite, because always  reneAved—from  mystery to
mystery,  by the eternal revealings  of the beloved—ever
neAV and  ever unsounded; because we  are ahvays  creating
there.
  The honeymoon days of marriage are those of dizzy, blind
passion—if I may say so, a season of physiology.   In  these
first tastings of the tree of life we hardly distinguish its true
flavor. The neAvly-wedded wife would be much humiliated, if
she possessed sufficient sang-froid to perceive the truth, in spite
of so many fine  speeches—namely, how much her sex has to
do with her lover's infatuation, how little  she herself.   It is
only with time that a man learns to fully appreciate a distinct,
loving, and beloved personality—the woman Avhose preference
for  him makes her superior  to  every other.  He loves her,
then, for the pleasure she gives and has given; he loves her as
his  own  creation, sculptured and impregnated by himself.
He  loves  her for that high attribute of love, that in its  most
passionate climax it is no longer frenzy, nor annihilation, but
God made manifest.
  " People  love," they say, " because they do not yet  know
each other; as soon as they do, they will love no longer."
  AVho,  then, do  know each other ?  I meet in the Avorld
only people who are ignorant of each other, Avho in  the  same
chamber  live  strangers to each  other;  who, having  failed
aAvkwardly at the only point Avhere they might have blended,
remain discouraged, inert, in stupid  juxtaposition, like one
stone against another.  AVho knoAvs ? the stone struck, might
have given forth electric sparks, or perhaps  gold or diamonds.
  Another  maxim  is:  " The marriage  once  consummated,
adieu to  love."
  Marriage, indeed! and where will you  find it?  I  see it 
 182   She  Avould be His Partner  and  Client.

 almost noAvhere; the married people I know can scarcely be
 called married.
  That term, marriage, is very elastic; it admits of immense
 thermometrical latitude.  One is married at tAventy degrees,
 another at ten, another at zero.   Let us ahA^ays distinguish
 and ask, " In what degree are they man and Avife ?"
  Everything in married life depends on the beginning;  and
 Ave must confess that, in general, the fault lies not Avith the
 women.  Young ladies, really young, Avhom confession, ro-
 mance, and the Avorld have not precociously matured and de-
 veloped, bring to marriage delightful luxuriance of heart, an
 instinctive docility, and good intentions.   They have great ex-
 pectations of the life on which they are entering.  She, who,
 Avith her parents, Avas  industrious,  studied  zealously,  and
 seemed to knoAV everything, wishes noAv to  learn everything
 anew from her husband.  And she is very right, for it will all
 return  to her invested with  life  and ardor.    She at first
 received it passively, as inert and cold matter; but now she will
 grasp it, quickened Avith that burning electricity which is the
 only magnetism that unites soul and body.
  Yet Ave grant that her father acted wisely : if he had given
her a stronger impress, he Avould have committed a blunder.
The unknoAvn and unforeseen fate of his daughter, Avas this very
same future husband ; it was necessary then that her education
 should not be too  definitive, but somewhat elastic.  Besides
there is no stamina in the family—the mother, very often, still
entertains the old superannuated ideas Avhich cannot be those
 of a young man ; and  the father, though more decided, has
not been able to influence his daughter as to  many difficult
 and dangerous questions, Avherein the heart and the judgment
 are at  stake.  Hoav many maxims in morality and facts in
 history, has he not shoA\rn her in profile ! but it belongs to the
husband to fill them up.
  Those vague, those incomplete family traditions, the  hesita-
 tion and vacillation in the  life and words of old persons, are 
       She would  be  His Partner and Client.   183

precisely what the young Avife must be removed  from.   She
desires a man of decision, Avho will nev^er be in  doubt, who
Avill  think  and act  Avith firmness and  strength ;  who  even
on trying  and painful occasions will  retain the serenity and
good-humor of invincible courage.   She Avill take pleasure,
Avith such a true man, in being able to act the Avoman ; in hav-
ing for her confidence and her life a good pillow (but not too
soft) on Avhich she may lie in perfect rest.  Of such a prize, she
says, Avith her Avhole heart, " He is my master;" but her smile
adds :  " Whose mistress  I  am"—mistress by  the  great
subordination, mistress, in the full delight of obeying—Avhich,
AArhen one loves, is bliss unutterable.
  I do not  remember AAdiat Indian law-maker it is Avho forbids
the young  Avife,  loving and admiring,  to look at her husband
too much.  And Avhat should she look upon, if not her OAvn
living,  luminous book,  wherein she  may read at a glance,
both Avhat  she shall believe,  and Avhat she shall do.
  Hoav happy she will be!   AYhat limitless faith,  what a pas-
sion of obedience she brings to  you.   As a maiden she eludes
you.    You may read in the songs of the modern Persians,
in the  ballads  of  Provence, hoAV  she flies  through  all
nature,  taking a hundred forms  that she may be pursued.
But  once overtaken, Avounded, become a woman, far  from
flying,  she  folloAvs, Avillingly  folloAvs  her captor;  she Avould
even be held  a closer captive.   And in this there is no decep-
tion ; in this  naive and humble aspect, she  fears only to be
troublesome ; she walks  behind, step by step,  and says,  " I
Avill go anywhere."   Create,  if you can, a new world, full of
unknoAvn perils,  she  will foUoAV you there.   She Avill become
an element—air, Avater, fire—and folioav you into the infinite;
or, better still,  she will  be all imbued Avith life  Avhich shall
mingle Avith your own—if you like, a floAver; if  you choose,
a hero.
  Beneficent  gift of God!  AAroe to the cold, dull, proud man,
who, thinking he  possesses everything, knows not hoAV to 
184   She would  be  His  Partner  and Client.

profit by the unbounded devotion, the delicious abandonment
of her Avho gives herself up, without reservation, that he may
be made the happier for it.
  The man has a hundred ideas, a hundred objects of con-
centration ; she only one—her husband.   You should say to
yourself, on going out in the morning, " AVhat will my darling,
my soul's joy, do  all alone, the many hours  she will Avait for
me ?  What  shall I bring to her  to  interest  and refresh her ;
for it is from me she receives her life."   Remember this, and
never bring back to her, as so many do, the cares of the day,
the bitter dregs of failure.   You are sustained by the excite-
ment of  the  struggle,  by the necessity  of  exertion, or the
hope of doing better to-morrow; but she, this poor Avoman-
soul, so  sensitive  as to all that relates to you, she would be
very differently affected by the  bloAV; she  would retain the
wound, and languish of it long.   Be young and brave for
both; return serious, if the misfortune be indeed important,
but never overwhelmed—spare, oh ! spare your child.
  The best Avay to strengthen her against these chances, is to
very gradually initiate her into your business.  This is practi-
cable in  many professions; we improperly  circumscribe the
circle of those which woman may  enter, though many are,
doubtless, too laborious  for her, requiring  effort, time, and
will.
  But you could not  better employ your  time.    What an
admirable companion ! what a useful partner!   How much
Avill be  gained by it, especially for  your hearts, and  your
domestic happiness.   Thus to be one is true strength, repose
and freedom.
  She wishes to  work with you.   Well, take her  at  her
word; set about it, not with the petty attentions of gallantry,
but with strong, earnest love.  Know that at this time she is
capable of great effort, of continued application, that she will
do anything to be loved.
  I can cite the noblest, the most surprising examples of this: 
       She  would  be His  Partner  and  Client.   185

An illustrious physician, at  the head of one  of the  greatest
Schools of the age, had, in  his young wife, his favorite dis-
ciple and his  competent assistant, possessed of a mind  truly
manly  in its  vigor, and of profound sagacity.  The great
physiologist, Avho discovered and defined the law of Ovology,
often saw, and saw correctly, as has been proved, through
the eyes of a woman.   This is perhaps the noblest fact of
its kind; that an admirable wife,  by persevering  devotion,
thus contributed to the  revelation of marriage.   Without
this Avoman would women have ever been understood ?   Her
heroic exertions, directed  by genius, fathomed the great mys-
tery, which has opened a world to us.  Hitherto we had  loved
at hazard, we had  loved  in the  dark.   Humanity, Avhich
henceforth  will love in the light, will not be ungrateful, and
in drinking from its wells  of affection and happiness, will
ahvays remember Madame Pouchet, of Rouen.
   Every man, taking into consideration the  character of his
profession and the capacity of his Avife, should establish his
community of interests in  a greater or less degree, but it
should inevitably be  done.  The  artist, , absorbed in  his
technicalities  and his  specialties,  and in the  minute details
of execution, ought not to retire within himself, and shut out
his Avife from the great  idea which inspires his work, and
which she  herself Avould have fostered and sustained.   The
lawyer or the politician  cannot  afford to keep her  in igno-
rance  of Avhat makes  up his life;  she  can seldom  be of any
use to him, but she should be none the less informed.  She
is much more at home with the natural sciences.  The  physi-
 cian, who returns home fatigued and harassed with his  grave
 responsibilities, cannot be a " society" man; he will scarcely go
 to the draAving-room to pass his leisure moments.  Hoav com-
 pletely might he rest on the domestic hearth, pursuing  his
 peaceful  study of the secrets of life,  Avhich indirectly may
 arm him for his combat against death.
   Infinitely varied are the  souls of women!  Men, as I have 
186  Arts and Reading.—The Common Faith.

said before, are cast in the same mould, made uniform by edu-
cation ;  but Avomen are much more natural, and very diverse.
Nothing is more charming than the fact  that no one woman
resembles another.   Voyagers on tropical seas, sometimes be-
hold the water, for immense distances, transformed into a bril-
liant parterre, gloAving Avith an infinite variety of bright-hued
creations.  Are they plants, flowers?  Yes—living Aoavcis, a
marvellous iris of exquisite lives, seemingly fluid, but organ-
ized—moving, active, haA'ing volition.  It is the same Avith that
social parterre Avhich  the female Avorld presents.  Are they
floAvers?  No, they are souls.
  Most men, sensual and blind, in their flatteries and caresses,
say:  " They are  flowers; let  us  pluck  them; let  us inhale
and enjoy their perfume;  they bloom only for our pleasure.''
Oh! hoAV much greater the pleasure Avould be  if they Avould
cherish the poor flower, if they Avould leave it on its stem, and
cultivate it according to its nature!   What a charm of hap-
piness Avould it not give back to him Avho Avould devote  his
soul to it!
  But as the flowers are varied, so are the modes of nurture.
One needs grafting, the introduction of a different sap,  for
she is as yet young and Avild; another soft  and SAveet,  and
thoroughly permeable, needs only imbibition—nothing is want-
ing but to infiltrate her life;  another is more than fluid, she is
fantastic,  a fly-away;  the dust  of her love is scattered to the
wind;  she must be housed, concentrated, above all, fecun-
dated.

                      .------o------


                           IX.

       ARTS  AND  READING.--THE  COMMON  FAITH.

   A bird-song of our  fathers, shows  the  trivial  ideal  of
 their day: 
     Arts and Reading.—The Common Faith.  187

                  I was little, and a fool,
                  AArhen they sent me to school;
                  I was little, and a fool,
                  When they sent me to school;
                  But nothing there I heard,
                  Save a little loving word,
                  Which, now I have a lover,
                  I am always saying over.

  But  this " little loving word," you  must  develop;  and
Avhat does it contain ?  The three Avorlds, all that is real—and
no more.
  She would be but too happy to leave you to work, to act,
to reason  alone; she  Avould be glad  to  be only a charming
thing, that gave you pleasure. But you must make an indivi-
dual of her, and introduce her more and more into your Avorld
of thought.  The  more  intellectual she becomes,  the more
means Avill she possess to unite herself more closely Avith you.
Make her strong—never fear. She will be softened at finding
herself more free through you, happy in having more to give,
in possessing a will, so as the more completely to lose herself
in you.
  Learn this new thing, one. Avhich shall constitute one of the
blessings of the future, in  a more civilized society:  namely,
every art, every science affords  us special  means Avhe? eby to
penetrate more profoundly into the personality.
  It is not easy for tAvo souls alone to fathom each other, and
to mingle together.   But each of those great methods which
are  called sciences or  arts, is a mediator that  touches a neAV
chord, and discovers an organ of unknown love, in the beloved.
  Learn this other thing, too little observed, which renders our
communion of ideas Avith Avoman delightful: namely, that she
receives them by  senses Avhich are altogether  different  from
ours,  and gives them back to us, under most beautiful and
touching forms which have all the charm of complete surprises.
What to man is only light, is to Avoman warmth, first of all. 
188  Arts and  Reading.—The Common Faith.

An idea takes the form of sentiment; if it is profound, it be-
comes nervous emotion.   A thought, an invention, some use-
ful novelty, affects your brain pleasantly, and makes you smile,
as Avith an agreeable surprise.   But she, she feels at once the
good which will result from it, a neAV happiness for humanity.
This touches her heart—she trembles—she  shivers with agi-
tation—she is well-nigh  Aveeping.  You hasten to strengthen
her, you take  her  hand tenderly, but her emotion is/ not
calmed; like a circle in the water, spreading into ever-widening
circles, it extends throughout her A\diole system, to the very
depths of her nature, where it mingles Avith her tenderness,
and, like everything else in her, melts in love for you; so she
throws herself on your breast,  and clasps you in her arms.
  What boundless happiness Avill you enjoy in traversing with
her the world of Art; for each art is but a different Avay of
loving; each, especially in its perfection, blends itself with love,
or Avith religion, which is the same thing.  AArhoever initiates
a woman in  these higher  temples, is  her priest and  lover.
The stories of Heloiise, and  the neAV Heloise, do not belong to
the past, but  to  the present,  and the future—in a word, to
eternity.
  That  is why the  maiden can pursue art "only to  a certain
extent, and why her father is an imperfect guide.  He cannot,
he wi.1 not, allow her to pass with him beyond certain  grave
and frigid regions.   He leads her there, but when she would
adA'ance farther, in her young and pure  enthusiasm, he stops—
draws back;  for  she stands on the dangerous threshold of a
neAV world—Love.
  For instance, in drawing, he gives her  the old Florentine
school in its grandeur, the  Madonnas of Raphael, the chaste
pictures of Poussin.   It Avould be impious to place Correggio
before her—Avith  his quiverings, and his burning passion.  It
would be immoral to shoAv her the deep but unwholesome
meaning, the  feverish and sinister grace  of the dying Italy,
in the smile of the Joconda. 
     Arts and Reading.—The  Common  Faith.  189

  Life  itself,  life  with its emotions, teaches only by  love.
When  the superb  Nereid, the luxurious blonde of Rubens,
treads the foaming Avaters, murmurs the marriage hymn, and
already conceives of the  future—so much the Avorse for the
maiden who  shall feel that emotion, shall understand that
je ne sais quoi, which issues from her amorous mouth.  In her
heart, she would knoAV it too well.
  Even the master-piece  of Greece, pure and  sublime in its
greatness, so far, so very far from the sensuality of the painter
of Antwerp—the fainting women, the SAVooning mothers of the
temple of Theseus—what maiden would dare  copy them ?
Such the palpitation, such the  heart-beating,  visible under
those beautiful robes, that she would be troubled. The con-
tagion of love and  maternity Avould  utterly confuse her.  Oh!
better that she Avait  awhile.   Only under the eyes of her
lover, in the arms of her husband may she be inspired by
these things and appropriate to herself their life—may inhale
their effluvia  and  their warm impregnation, may drink Jong
draughts of their  beauty, adorn herself with  it, and endow
Avith it the fruit of her bosom.
   Music is the true glory, the very spirit of the modern world.
I define it, the art of fusing hearts, the art of mutual penetra-
tion and an  intimacy so close, that  by it, into the  heart
of  your beloved,  your  Avife, the mother of your children,
you shall penetrate still deeper.  What Dumesnil and Alex-
andre have said of grand symphonies, of the music of friend-
ship, of chamber  music, I admire too much  to  repeat.   I
have only this to add; that between man and Avoman all is the
music of love, the  music  of home, and of the closet.  A duet
is a marriage;  the singers do not simply lend  themselves to
it, but they give up their hearts for the time, give themselves
up Avith even more abandon than they desire.   AVhat shall I
say then of her who every evening sings, with the first comer,
those moving, pathetic melodies Avhich blend two souls toge-
ther as completely as the first kiss ?  The lover, the husband, 
190 Arts and Reading.—The Common Faith.

will come too  late, she has  nothing  more  to bestow  upon
him.
  Happy the man, whose Avife reneAvs his heart, day by day,
Avith music  in  the evening!   "All that I  have,  I give to
you," she says.  "My ideas?  No, I am still so ignorant;
but through you I shall in time knoAV  everything.   All I have
to give you, is the breath of my heart, the life of my life, my
soul, Avithout form, in Avhich  my love  floats  like an uncertain
shadoAV, a dream.  Oh, take both me  and my dream!"
  "Ah! hoAV little I  knoAV of music," he  says.   "AYhat a
savage life I have lived."
  She  begins, and strives  to abandon herself Avholly to the
inspiration, but cannot satisfy herself—it is  so pure, so lofty!
  He soars on golden Avings into the vast heaven of love.
He would also  accompany her a little with his voice; at first,
he  dares not, but hums Ioav, timidly restraining  his poAver.
Then, by degrees,  launching out, he  thrills her in his turn.
Half choked, she tries to go on—she trembles—oh, Iioav united
they are!—but their emotion is too  strong, their  voices fail,
the song dies aAvay in  an abyss of profound harmony.
   Music is  the croAvn, the  perfect flower  of arts.  But to
make it the principal  basis of education, as is often done, is
senseless and decidedly dangerous.   Music is a modern art,
almost Avithout a past; the  arts  of Design, on the contrary,
are of all times, and are  represented in every period  of his-
tory.  For  this reason, alone, they  furnish rich  and  varied
instruction.  At every epoch, sculpture and painting afford not
only models for imitation, but the most fruitful texts for intel-
lectual improvement.  These texts identify themselves won-
derfully Avith those of literature,  and  even supply  their place.
AVhat Rabelais and  Shakspeare could not express of some
idea, some nice feature, some aspect of their age, is told by
Da Arinci, by Correggio, by Michael Angelo, or Goujon.
   All the too passionate books Avhich the father avoided, from
 which, at the utmost, he only  dared to make extracts, ara 
     Arts and  Reading.—The  Common Faith.   191

laid open before you.   And what delight Avill it not afford
you thus to place betAveen you and  your beloved all the trea-
sures  of life, both the  Bibles of history and the Bibles of
nature!  Their  admirable concordance Avill be to  her  as a
pilloAV on Avhich her faith may rest.   Every evening, without
exciting  her  too much, and Avithout interfering with her re-
pose, some pleasant and improving reading, varied Avith affec-
tionate  conversation, may reveal  to her  something of the
universal love, and some neAV aspect of God.  She  may now
properly know all things, for she is a woman.  What AArould
have troubled the maiden will sanctify the Avife's heart,  and
give her, by your side, SAveet sleep and blessed dreams.
  It is through love that Avoman receives everything, even
her intellectual culture.  AVould you nourish her Avith the trite
and the commonplace ?   Under the pretext of facility this is
always done; we know that, on  the  contrary, only  the great
and strong  are  simple.  AVoman says  modestly:   " I leave
great facts to men, and read only light novels."   But these
novels, tame  and insipid Avith their sickly images of love, are
not the  less  complicated in incident and  plot.  No, let us
ahvays look  to  the  highest; there shall Ave find the. great
intellect and the strong heart, even purity itself.
  Love ! Avhere shall avc look for it.  Many a Avoman seeks it
in Balzac.  She had better  go to Madame Sand, for in her
Avorks  there  is, at least, always  au  aspiration for the ideal;
and better still, to the Cid and Borneo, to Sakontala  and
Virgil's Dido.
  But  from  an  enormous  height,  above all other human
works, the great  legends of antiquity excel the rest, putting
them to shame.
  Our ideas of  progress create no  illusions ; antiquity has
left us to fathom the depth of Analysis, which is the ground-
work of progress.  With its synthetic power, and the organic
vitality Avhich propelled it  forward, this young giant,  Avith
two strides, touched  the poles, and reached the A'ery bounda- 
 192     Woman  the Goddess of Goodness.

 ries  of the Avorld.  Analysis  has  created the great types of
 divine simplicity.  Thus, marriage in  Persia is of a type so
 heroic, that even in Rome it suffers a prosaic,  vulgar de-
 basement.  Hence, affection,  ardor, the divine  power of life
 and  instinctive  tenderness,  love—sensual  it  may be—but
 diffusing itself in impulses of universal beneficence: such is
 the story of Egypt.   Nothing has ever been added to it, and
 Ave can only adore it.


                     -------o-------


                           X.

THE   GREAT   LEGEND   OF  AFRICA.--WOMAN   THE
                 GODDESS OF  GOODNESS.

              (Fragment from the History of Love.)

  The chef-d'oeuvre  of Egyptian art, the  Rameses, as  it is
seen  in Ipsamboul, in Memphis, and in the  museum at Turin,
affords a unique example of goodness in poAver, and of sub-
lime  repose.   Its expression,  which one might deem peculiar
to that face, I have found again, in a degree, in the head of
a  young man, on  a beautiful  coin  of Leyden.  .It is cha-
racteristic of the race, and very different from the  sharp, thin,
Arab profile,  Avhich  seems cut  with a razor.   In this  head
there is an extreme gentleness, and  a fulness,  which, how-
 ever, is not heavy, but seems  the effect of a peaceful develop-
ment of all the  moral  qualities.   Man's heart is  in his face,
sanctifying, beautifying the  external  forms by the internal
ray.
  This extraordinary expression of countenance is more than
individual; it  is  the revelation of a race.   In it Ave perceive
that  the great Egypt was as a moral festival; the joy and the 
         Woman  the Goddess of Goodness.     193

 divine smile of that deep  African Avorld, shut in  on every
 other  side.   The highest type of  the African, above the
 negro, above the black, appears  to  be  the  Egyptian.   So
 unfortunate, so constantly kept doAvn, from the time of Joseph
 to that of Mohammed Ali—even to  our OAvn  time  indeed—
 the poor fellah of Egypt is yet a man of intelligence and un-
 common dexterity.  A  mechanic in the service of the pacha
 told me that the poor man A\Thom  he took into his Avorkshops
 paid the closest attention^ imitated him perfectly, and became
 in a fortnight  as good a Avorkman as a European  in tAvo
 years.
  This is  also OAving  to their gentleness  and their great
 docility,  to their necessity  of pleasing and satisfying.  An
 excellent race  of men,  they  desire only  to love and to  be
 loved.   In the cruel immolation of the  individual and  the
 family, Avhich poAver has ahvays compelled, their mutual ten-
 derness seems so much the greater.  The premature death of
 the man yielding to excessive toil, the child snatched away by
 cruel military razzias, make  for them an  uninterrupted suc-
 cession of tears and sighs and mourning. The old lamentation
 of Isis, seeking her Osiris, has never ceased  in Egypt; along
 her great river, at every moment, you hear it repeated.  You
 find it  painted and sculptured all through the country.  What
 are those monuments of grief, that infinite care to save what
 may be saved of  the body, that binding the dead with fillets
 inscribed with prayers,  that  commending  to the gods  the
 absent one ?  I have never visited Egypt;  but when I go over
 our Egyptian museums, I feel that this immense effort of an
 entire  people,  these excessive expenses  imposed upon  the
 poorest, are the most ardent expression of aspiration the heart
 of man has ever  shoAvn—to cherish  the beloved object, and
folloAv  it in death.
  Religions until then had dealt hi epics;  but hush !—here is
the Drama; and a neAV  genius  arises over Europe and over
Asia.
                             9 
 194      Woman  the Goddess  of Goodness.

  Let us lay the scene first.  This land  of toil and  tears,
Egypt, is in itself a feast, and a land of joy.   In the burning
bosom of Africa, fervid mother of a SAvarthy race, is opened
by a breeze from the north a valley of promise.  From un-
knoAvn mountains the torrent of fertility descends.  AVe share
the frantic joy of the traveller, Avell-nigh dying of thirst, Avho,
overcoming the  sands at last,  reaches his longed-for oasis—
Egypt at last, the great oasis of Africa.
  In Egypt, the first word is  "Isis," and  "Isis'' is the last;
for AVoman reigns there.  It is a remarkable  saying, that of
Diodorus, that in Egypt husbands swear  obedience to their
wives—an exaggerated  expression of the great fact of female
predominance.
  The lofty genius of Africa, the queen of ancient Egypt, is
this Isis; her throne  eternally decked Avith attributes of fecun-
dation.   The lotus is her sceptre, the calyx of the floAver of
love.   Instead of a diadem, royally  on her brow she bears a
vulture, the insatiate bird,  that never cries  "enough."  And
to shoAv that this greediness will not be Arain, in  her strange
headdress the insignia  of the fruitful coav rise above the vul-
ture, to signify maternity.  This kind  fruitfulness,  this inex-
haustible maternal goodness,  is Avhat glorifies and purifies the
heats of Africa.   Presently come, too thickly indeed, death
and  mourning, and the  eternity of sorrow to sanctify them.
Do  religions  spring only from nature, from climate, from the
inevitable destinies  of race and country ?  Oh! much more
from the needs of the heart.  Almost always they arise out of
the sufferings of the Avounded soul.   In the pangs of a neAV
dispensation, man plucks from it, as from a tree of sorrows,
fresh fruit of consolation. Never has any religion borne clearer
testimony to this than the faith of old Egypt.  It is manifestly
the sublime consolation of  a poor laborious people, Avho, toil-
ing Avithout respite, fearing death so much the more because
family was everything  to  them,  sought their alleviations in
immortal nature, trusted themselves to its resurrections, and 
         Woman  the Goddess of Goodness.      195

prayed to it for hope.  And Nature, deeply moved, swore ta
them that they should never die.
  The potent originality of this great popular conception is that
thus for the first time, the human soul and earth and heaven
associated their triple drama Avith the outline of the year.  The
year dies only to rise again.  Love caught at this idea, and be-
lieved in the eternal renaissance and resurrection of the soul.
  AVhen I see among the mountains some peak of basalt, which
has pierced the superincumbent strata, and overlooks all other
summits, I ask myself from Avhat  profound depths, and by
what enormous force, has this giant arisen ?  The religion of
Egypt  fills me  Avith just that  astonishment:   From what
depths did it spring, of physical tenderness and love and grief ?
The abysses of nature !
  In the universal mother, Night,  were conceived before all
time, a daughter and a son, Isis and Osiris, Avho already loved
each other in the womb, and who were so utterly one that Isis
became pregnant.  Even before  she was, she Avas a mother ;
for she bore  a son, who  Avas called Horus, but who  Avas no
other than his father—another Osiris  of goodness,  and beau-
ty, and light.  Then the three were born—a wonder! mother,
father, son, same age, same love, same heart.
  Hoav beautiful! behold them at the altar—woman, man, and
child—persons mark you, and living beings.  Not the fantastic
trinity by which India united in a  discordant marriage three
ancient religions.  Not the scholastic trinity by Avhich Byzan-
tian subtlety argued its  metaphysics.  But life, and nothing
more ; from that burning ray of nature flashed the triple hu-
man unity.
   Oh, until then, how fierce and terrible were the gods!  The
Indian Siva keeps his eyes closed, lest the world should perish
under his devouring glance.  The  God of the pure, the Fire
of the Persians,  hungers for all that exists.  But here nature
herself is on the altar, under the sweet aspect of Family,
blessing creation with a mother's eye ; for the great god is a 
196      Woman  the Goddess  of Goodness.

mother.   Hoav does this reassure me !  I had feared that the
black race, governed too much by the beast, impressed in its
infancy Avith terrific images of the lion  and the  crocodile,
Avould produce only monsters.  But thus is it softened, hu-
manized, made feminine.  The loving African, in his profound
desire, has exalted  the most  touching object  of all  earthly
religions.  AYhat ?  That living  reality, a good and  faithful
woman.
  Most ardent this, but so pure!   Ardent, as Ave compare
it Avith cold,  ontological  dogmas.   Pure, as  Ave contrast it
Avith modern refinements, Avith our faint conceptions, our pious
corruptions, our World of  equivocations.
  All innocent, the  joy bursts forth.  Immense and popular,
the joy of exhausted Africa—a deluge of  water, a prodigious
sea of SAveet AArater,  comes.  I know not Avhence,  but over-
flowing the land, deluging  it Avith  happiness, infiltrating and
insinuating itself into the least  of its veins, so that not one
grain of sand shall complain that it is thirsty.  The little dried-
up canals  smile, as the babbling Avater visits them with refresh-
ment.   The drooping plant laughs Avith  all its heart, as the
Avelcome  wave moistens its root, and takes possession of its
stalk, and mounts upward to  its leaves, and hangs upon the
stem, which gently sighs—the Avhole a charming spectacle, and
one Avicle scene of love and pure delight, for the  great Isis is
inundating her well beloAred.
  The good Osiris Avorks and Avorks.  He created Egypt herself,
and the land is his child.   He made the worship of Egypt, and
he engendered in  her the  arts, Avithout which she would
have perished.
  But nothing lasts.  The gods have disappeared.  The living
Sun  of goodness, which planted in  the. bosom of Isis all the
fruits, and everything that Avas salutary, could of  himself cre-
ate all things except time and  duration.   One morning he
Avas gone.  O, void, immense! where is he ?  Isis, distracted,
searches for him. 
         Woman the  Goddess of Goodness.      197

   The sombre doctrine  spread throughout all western Asia,
 that even the gods  must die ; but that dogma of Syria and
 Asia Minor, and the isles, could not even approach, it seems,
 this robust  Africa, which has so vivid and so ever-present a
 sentiment of life.
   But Avhy deny it ?  For everything dies.  The Father of
 Life, old Nile himself, is exhausted and dried up.   At certain
 times the  Sun is no longer himself, but, dejected and pale, has
 lost his rays.  Osiris, life, goodness die together, and by a bar-
 barous death, his limbs all scattered.   His weeping Avife finds
 his remains; but one part is Avanting, and she seeks that, tearing
 her hair.   "Alas !  that part is Life itself, the energy of Life,
 the sacred power of Life !  If you are Avanting, what shall be-
 come of the Avorld ?  Where may you be found again ? "  She
 implores the Nile, she cries to Egypt.   But Egypt takes care
 not to give up her assurance of perpetual fertility.
   Yet, so great a grief Avell deserved a miracle; and  in  that
 fierce combat of tenderness and death, Osiris, all dismembered
 as he is, and cruelly mutilated, resuscitated by an omnipotent
 will, returns to her.  And so great is the love of the dead,
 that, by the magic  of the heart, he finds a last desire.
   He has  returned  from the tomb only to make her a  mother
 again. And, ah, how eagerly does she receive  the embrace!
 But it is  only an adieu, and the gloAving bosom of Isis Avill
 never warm that icy germ. What of that ?  The fruit it bears,
 sad and pale though it be, proclaims no less the supreme victory
 of love, which Avas fruitful before  life, and is fruitful after it.
   Interpreters of this  legend ascribe  to it a significance of
 astronomical symbolism;  and,  certainly,  the coincidence of
 the destiny of man  Avith  the course of the year, the  decline
 of the sun, etc., has been recognised from  the earliest times.
But all this is secondary, and of later observation.  Its primal
origin was in humanity, the actual Avound of the bereaved
AvidoAV of  Egypt, and her inconsolable grief.
   On the other hand, let not the African and material coloring 
198      Woman the  Goddess  of Goodness.
 deceive  you.   Here, truly, is something more than regret for
 physical joys, and unsatisfied desire.   In such suffering doubt-
 less nature demands something.  But Isis did not desire merely
 a man;  she longed for him Avhom alone she loved, her own
 and not  another—the same, always the same.  The sentiment
 is entirely exclusive, and entirely individual.  We perceive it
 in the infinite  care bestowed upon  the body,  so that not  a
 single atom shall be lost, so that death may change no part
 of it, but one day shall restore, in its Avholeness, this sole object
 of love.
   " I long for  him Avho was mine, who was myself, and my
 completeness.  I desire him, and he shall live again.  The beetle
 reappears, and the phoenix; the sun, the year return.  And
 so I long for him, and he shall arise again.  Am I not life and
 eternal  nature  ?   Though he  disappear some  day, he will
 certainly return to me.  I feel him, I carry him Avithin myself.
 In myself I had him before I Avas.   I tell you I Avas his sister
 and his lover; but I was his mother also.
  Simple and profound truth;  and thus under a mythological
 form the triple  mystery of love is expressed for the first time.
 The wife is a true sister to the man in the labors of life—more
 than sister,'and  more than wife, to console him, and to rest his
 weary head at night.  She comforts his fatigue ; a nurse, she
 lulls him to sleep,  and taking him again into her bosom,  brings
 him forth with renewed life, forgetful of all things, and rejuve-
 nated for the joyous Avaking of the morn.  Such is the  poAver
 of marriage, but not of transient pleasure.  The longer it lasts
the more is the wife a mother to the husband, the more is he
 her son.
  It is their guaranty of immortality.  United thus, Avho shall
 disunite them ?  Isis contained Osiris, and so inclosed him in her
 maternal tenderness, that all separation Avas but a phantasy.
  In this legend, so tender, so pure, so simple, there is a mar-
vellous intimation of immortality, never  surpassed.  Be hope-
ful, all afflicted hearts, forlorn Avidows,  and little orphans! 
         Woman  the Goddess of Goodness.     199

you weep; but  Isis also weeps, and  she does not despair.
Osiris,  dead,  yet lives, continually renewed in his innocent
Apis.  DoAvn there, he is a shepherd of souls, a gentle guardian
of the Avorld of shades, and your dead one is near him.  Fear
not! all is well.  One day he will return to claim his body from
you.   Envelope Avith care those precious remains.  Embalm
them with perfumes,  with prayers, and with burning tears.
Preserve them very near you.  O happy day, Avhen the Father
of souls,  issuing from his gloomy realms, shall restore to you
your beloved, shall  join him to his body again, and say; I
have taken care of him for you.
  The  eternity of the soul—not vague and impersonal, as in
the creed of Asia—but the individual soul, consecrated and
eternalized in love, the imperishable permanence of the adored
one,  the  tender goodness of God held fast by the tears of a
Avoman and pledged  to restore—this sublime blessing is  the
boon of all, and henceforth shall never  pass aAvay.
  God has promised only for the good ; he will separate
them  from the wicked.  In this, for  the  first  time,  Ave
clearly apprehend the Judgment  and divine justice.  AYait-
ing, let us labor, let  us build  Avith eternal materials, let us per-
petuate our memories, let us address ourselves to future ages
in_the  language of marble and granite.  All  Egypt is as a
book to which all the wise may come,  one by one, to learn.
  Consequently, all  nations imitate her, and become emulous
of immortality.  They heap  up, and they accumulate.  Each
day enriches the inheritance  of the  human race.
  Thus by a moral  of art, of labor,  of  immortality, this
adorable legend fertilizes the Avhole earth. 
2oo         Hoav  Woman  excels  Man.
                          XL

               HOW  WOMAN EXCELS  MAN.

  The true happiness of the teacher is  in finding himself
surpassed  by  his pupil.   AVoman, constantly cultivated by
man,  and  enriched  by his thought, soon believes;  and some
morning she finds herself superior to him.
  She becomes superior to him, as Avell by these iioav elements
as by her personal gifts,  A\rhich Avithout the inspirations she
derives from man Avould scarcely have come to light.  Melo-
dious aspirations, and sensibility to nature, these Avere in her;
but they have flourished by love.  Add one gift (so high,  that
it is the all in all,  that Avhich chiefly distinguishes our  race
from others) :  a true and charming womanly heart, opulent
with compassion, Avith knoAvledge to console all, the divinations
of pity.
  She is docile, she is modest, she is unconscious of her splen-
dor ;  but at every moment it blazes forth.
  You take her  to the Jardin des Plantes, and she dreams
there of Alps, and virgin  forests of America.  You take her
to the galleries of pictures, and she dreams of the time Avhen
there will no longer be museums, when Avhole cities shall be
galleries, and have  their walls painted like the Campo-Santo.
At the labored concerts of artists, she thinks of the concerts
of the people Avhich shall  be  hereafter—grand confederations
wherein the souls of all  the  human race  will be united  in  a
final harmony of universal friendship.
  You are strong;  she is divine—a daughter and a sister of
nature.   She leans  upon  your  arm, and  yet she has Avings.
She is feeble,  she is  in pain;  and it is just Avhen  her beautiful
languishing eyes bear Avitness that she  suffers, that the dear
sibyl  soars to lofty heights and inaccessible summits.  Who
knows hoAV she mounts thither ? 
How  Woman  excels  Man.          201
  Your tenderness has  done much tOAvards that.  If she has
this poAver, if as  Avoman and  mother, united Avith man, she
possesses in the midst of marriage the sibylline virginity, it is
because your anxious love, surrounding the dear treasure, has
divided and distributed your  life,—for you, hard labor and
the rude contacts  of the world—for her, peace and love, ma-
ternity, art, and all the tender  cares of domesticity.
  How well you  have  done !  and  hoAV grateful am I for it!
Oh! Avoman, fragile globe of incomparable alabaster, Avherein
burns the lamp of God, one must care for thee Avell, bear thee
with a pious hand, and guard  thee  closely in the Avarmth of
his bosom.
  It is by sharing Avith her  the  miseries of the special labor
Avith which your  days are occupied, dear Avorkman, that you
will preserve  her in the nobleness Avhich only children and
women have—that amiable aristocracy of  the human  race.
She is your nobleness, your OAvn, to raise you above yourself.
When you return from the forge, panting, fatigued with labor,
she, young and fresh, pours over you her  youth, brings the
sacred Avave of life to you, and makes you a god again, Avith
a kiss. With so divine an object near you, you Avill not blindly
folloAV the temptations Avhich allure you from your rugged and
narroAv path.  You will each moment feel the happy necessity
of  elevating and  extending your conceptions, in order to fol-
low your dear pupil whither  you  have elevated her.   Your
young friend, your scholar,  as she modestly calls herself, will
not permit you, O master, to shut yourself up in your avoca-
tion.   She beseeches you every moment to come out from it,
and aid  her to remain in harmony Avith all that is noble and
beautiful.  To suffice for the humble needs of your little com-
rade, you Avill be forced to be great.
   &he is practical, and she  is  spiritual; she has the most oc-
taves, above and  below.  She is a lyre of ampler range than
VOU)—but not complete, for  she  is not very strong in the
middle chords.
                            9* 
202         How  Woman excels Man.
   She reaches into  the  details  of matters  which escape us.
An<l  on the other hand, at certain  times, she sees over our
heads, pierces the future, the invisible, and penetrates through
the body into the Avorld of spirits.
   But the practical faculty she has for  small things, and the
prophetic faculty that sometimes leads to great, have rarely a
medium, strong, calm, and melodious, Avhereby she can fall
back  upon herself, and fecundate herself.  For the most part,
she  alternates  rapidly  without  change,  according  to the
month.  Now her poetry declines to prose,  then  her prose
rises to poetry, often by fierce storms, by sudden gusts of the
mistral, like the climate of Provence.
   An  illustrious reasoner  laughs  at these prophetic powers,
and denies them, incontestable as  they are.  In the effort to
depreciate them, he seems to confound the spontaneous inspi-
rations of the woman Avith somnambulism, a sickly, dangerous
state, a nervous debility, often caused by the arrogance of the
man.   He asks what we can  do with a faculty so uncertain,
" besides being physical and inevitable."
   I know that inspiration, even the most spontaneous, is not
entirely free.  It is always mingled and marked  Avith a measure
of fatality.  If for that you would degrade  it,  you must con-
tend that eminent  artists are not men.  You must class Avith
the women  Rembrandt,  Mozart and Correggio, Beethoven,
Dante, Shakspeare, Pascal, all the great writers.   Is it abso-
lutely certain  that even those Avho believe  in  relying exclu-
sively on logic, never yield to this feminine  poAver of inspira-
tion ?  I find traces  of it even among  the  closest reasoners.
Let them become ever so little artistic, and  they unwittingly
fall under the wand of the fairy.
  AAre cannot say (like Proudhon)  that Avoman  is only recep-
tive.  She is productive by her influence upon man, both in
the ideal, and in the  real.   But her thought seldom attains a
Btrong reality; and that is why she has created so little.
  The political world is generally  almost inaccessible to her 
How  Woman excels  Man.          203
A generative and essentially masculine spirit  is necessary to
it.  But she has the sense of order, and is Avell fitted for  ad-
ministration.
  The great creations of art seem even noAv impossible to
her.  Every  noble work of civilization is a product of the
genius of man.
  All this has been made, very foolishly, a question of self-
love.   The man and the woman are two relative and incom-
plete  beings, only two halves of a whole.  They should love
and respect each other.
  She is relative:  therefore she should respect the man, who
creates everything for her.  She has no support, no happiness,
no wealth which does not come from him.
  He is relative: therefore  he ought to respect, to adore the
woman, who  creates the man, and the pleasure of man, Avho
by the magic of eternal desire has  draAvn from him, from age
to age, those  jets of flame Avhich are called arts and civiliza-
tions.  She renews him every evening, bestowing by turns
the tAvo graces of life:—in soothing him, which is harmony,
in putting him off, Avhich is the spark.   She has thus created
the creator, and that is all he is.
  I do not upbraid Avoman for not producing things for Avhich
she was not made.   I only accuse her of feeling too exclusively,
sometimes, her proud and  charming ascendancy, and of not
taking into account the world of creation—the  productive
sense of man, the fruitful energy, the prodigious effort of the
great Avorkman.   She does not even suspect their existence.
  She is beauty, and loves only the beautiful, but Avithout
effort—the beautiful ready made.   There is another beauty
of Avhich she can  scarcely concei\re, that of action, of heroic
toil, Avhich has  even made that beautiful thing, but is more
beautiful itself, and often even sublime.
  A thousand pities for the poor creator—to  see that in ad-
miring the effect,  the con pleted work, she  does  not admire
the cause, but often despises it! that  it should  be precisely 
204         How Woman excels Man.
 the effort he makes for her that kills her heart out, and that
 by desendng more he begins to please her less.
   " Let me do Avhat I may, I do not attach  her to me.  She
 has been mine this long time, and yet I shall never truly pos-
 sess her."
   Such Avas the  rather singular remark that a man of true
 merit, of a loving and faithful heart, ahvays in love Avith his
 Avife,  made to me one day.  She, brilliant, but good and true,
 complaisant and amiable towards him, could  be the object of
 no serious reproach.  She had no faults, but her superiority and
 her ever increasing distinction.  He felt, not  without sorrow,
 that she, his darling idol, Avas no longer wrapped up in him as
 at first;  and that, in spite of his devotion, she soared  into a
 sphere independent of that in Avhich he had  concentrated his
 energies.
   These words perfectly explain the types I have set up in my
 chapters on education:  "The  modern man is  essentially a
 worker, a producer; the Avoman a harmony."
   The more the man becomes creative, the more striking the
 contrast.  It explains much of that  coolness, Avhich we should
 be Avrong to regard as fickleness,  ennui, satiety—a coolness
 Avhich is not always because the pair are wearied Avith finding
 each other  ever the  same, Avith  never changing—but on the
 contrary, because they have changed, and  progressed  and
 ascended.  This progress, which should be a new reason for
loving each  other, is nevertheless the cause, that finding no
longer their old points  of union, they have but little influence
 over each other, and despair of regaining it.
   Will  they continue  thus coldly  apart, indifferent, united
only by interests ?  No, the danger increases; the heart will
play its part elseAvhere.  For in France, the heart is  very
absolute, it demands the closest union, or another love.  It
says, " all or nothing.''
   Indulge me in  a paradox.  I  r aintain that in spite of the
reckless gaiety universally feigned, our "period is that in which 
How  Woman excels  Man.          205
love is the most exacting, most insatiate.  If it takes hold
upon an object, it aspires to penetrate it to its lowest depth.
Extremely cultivated,  provided Avith so many new ideas, and
new arts,  which  are as  so  many senses by Avhich passion
is tasted, however little we may have in us,  we are sensible
of that by a  thousand touches, to Avhich our ancestors were
insensible.
  But it too  often happens that the beloved object escapes:
perhaps from want of consistency, the true feminine fluidity—
perhaps by brilliant transformations and the acquisition of dis-
tinctions—perhaps,  indeed,  by friendships,  those  secondary
relations Avhich divide the heart and weaken it.
  The man is humiliated, discouraged; very often he perceives
the sad consequences of this in his art, and in his energy, and
depreciates himself on  account of it.   Then, oftener than one
Avould suppose, a passionate egotism reanimates and exalts his
love.   He longs to regain,  to  repossess his dear creature,
Avho sometimes, Avithout irony, but Avith proud coldness, says
smiling: " Do what you can."
  "Ter totum fervidus  ira, lustrat  Aventini  montem,  ter
saxea tentat limina nequicquam, ter fessus valle resedit."
  Three times, ardent,  he makes the circuit of the mountain,
three times shakes the cold rampart of stone, three times falls,
and sits down in the valley.
  The difficulty, the mysterious negative  influence, the inva-
lidating impediment, comes almost always from outside.  But
it is not  invariably found in an enemy; it may be  a mother,
a sister, or a  drawing-room friend, for  aught I know.   The
most honorable cause  has sometimes such effects.   Indeed, a
vehement friendship, turning aside the strength of love, some-
times suffices to disturb the harmony of marriage.
  I kneAV tAvo accomplished ladies united in a close friendship.
One, only, Avas married.  The other remained unmarried, in
order to devote  herself  entirely to this  attachment.   The
husband, a man  of genius, a  brilliant, fascinating writer, had 
206         How Woman excels Man.
evinced  remarkable talent.   The  important  question Avas,
Avould his gift from the fairies become permanent ? Avould it
be strengthened ?  He felt his inspiration by intervals—I Avas
about to say, by chance.  Then, his Avork eclipsed everything.
What Avould he not have performed, if the strange spark had
been blessed and watched over by love ?
  She Avas extremely beautiful, and her heart more lovely still.
She  had an elevated,  but very serious, moral  nature, Avhich
made her slightly sensible of these capricious gleams; and to
confirm her in that, she had the friendship, the adoration, of a
woman, herself adorable.  Against this couple, so united and
so perfect, could the husband hold his OAvn ?  A third person
Avas de trop  there.   His fine  but AAravering qualities, mingled
Avith  the sensitive  defects Avhich sometimes  are  attached to
genius in decline, hardly coincided Avith the straight line Avhich
they applied to them.   The  tAvo friends, virtuous, pure, and
transjDarent  as the light of noontide, indifferently relished his
uncertain and sensuous graces, his transient twilight.
  His uncertainty increased.  He Avas very gravely Avronged
by not being believed in.  His  friends had faith in him, and
called on him to make good his promise; but nothing can
take the place of the internal support.  The Avife is the grand
umpire, and the sovereign judge.  He would have succeeded
better, perhaps, with an inferior Avoman.  She, by her noble
beauty, by her open purity, by her estimable talents, com-
manded too much respect.  Such excessive perfection affords
but little chance of appeal against its judgments—judgments
always benevolent, but frank.
  This singular  and charming  man  could  do nothing save
blindly.  He needed a  beloved hand to bandage his eyes, and
complete the blindness, which rendered him productive.   On
the contrary,  he lived Avith  judicious reflection  ever at his
side.  Solitary in the inspired moment, he yielded to the pru-
dence Avhich checks inspiration, and  so he  fell  short of his
mark, and missed his aim. 
             How Woman excels Man.          207

  Will  the  women permit  me  to interpose a word here ?
They have more delicate ears, they will hear better: besides
they have more time, for the  most part.   Man, that fanatic
of toil,  intoxicated Avith enthusiasm  and struggle, will not
hearken to me.
  Madam, be not perfect;  keep faults enough to console a
man;  nature intended him  to be proud.  It  is essential to
your interest, and to that of your family, that he should be
so, that he should think himself strong
  When you  see him  dejected, sad,  discouraged, the best
remedy is to be doAvncast yourself, to be more a woman, and
younger—e\ren a child, if need be.
  And  my  second maxim:—Madam,  do not divide  your
heart.
  I Avill tell you Avhat I saw at  Hyeres in  Provence, in a de-
lightful garden.  It Avas planted with handsome orange trees,
at suitable distances, and in the best exposure.; they had  no-
thing to complain of; in a country where the  people  like to
mingle  different kinds,  they had refrained  from planting
betAveen these  orange trees, any plant, or tree, or vine, which
could injure them.  Only some  borders of straAvberries were
along the walks—excellent, delicious, fragrant straAvberries.
As Ave all know, these have  but little root; so they spread on
the surface and extend, Avithout penetrating, their small and
delicate fibres.  Yet the orange trees drooped and fell into
sickliness.   The gardeners Avere troubled ; Avhat could be the
matter ?  They had sacrificed everything. They  never sus-
pected  that the innocent straAvberry vines could be the cause
of all.  But if those  robust trees  had been consulted, they
would have confessed that their  prostration came  from that
small enemy.   They did not complain—they only died.
   At Cannes, not far off, they knoAV that  the  orange tree is
 vigorous only when solitary.  So they not only  allow it no
 companion, small or great, but before planting it they dig the
 ground to the depth of eight feet; they  dig  it three times 
 208  The Humiliations of Love—Confession.

 over, to be sure that it is clean and free, that it contains no
 forgotten root, no living herb, Avhich might claim its share of
 the sap.
  The orange tree desires to be alone, Madam—and so does
 love.

                     ------o------


                          XII.

      THE HUMILIATIONS OF  LOVE--CONFESSION.

  Love is a very diverse thing, in kind and in degree.  It
 differs very much in different nations.
  The French Avoman is an admirable partner for her husband,
in business, and even in  ideas.   If he does not employ her, it
is possible  that  she may forget him.   But let him fall into
difficulties, and at once she recollects that she loves him,  de-
votes herself to him,  and sometimes (as in  '93) dies for him.
  The English woman is a reliable Avife, courageous, indefa-
tigable, Avho follows  anywhere, and suffers everything.  At
the first sign she is ready.  " Lucy, to-day I set out for Aus-
tralia."   " Well, only give me  time, dear, to put on my bon-
net."
  The German Avoman  loves, and loves ahvays.  She is hum-
ble, obedient, and Avould like to obey still more. She is fitted
for only one thing, love—but  that is boundless.
  AVith the German woman you can easily  change expedients,
and if the one you have is bad, emigrate  to  the ends of  the
earth.  AYith  the German Avoman you may live all alone, at
a retired country-seat,  in profound solitude.  The French
Avoman is capable of that, only provided she is occupied, and
you have knoAvn hoAV to  create for her a great  activity of
mind.  Her strong personality is much more embarrassing, 
        The Humiliations  of Love—Confession.  209

 but it renders her capable of going far in a sacrifice, e\ en tc
 the extent of immolating her vanity, and her craving for dis-
 play.
   Stendhal, an ultra Frenchman, strongly  opposed to Ger-
 many, and ridiculing  it every  moment,   makes  this just
 remark:  "The best marriages are those of Protestant Ger-
 many."
   He saw Germany in 1810,1 saw it in 1830—and often since.
 Things have changed in the higher classes, and in some of the
 large cities, but not throughout the country;  there is every-
 where the humble obedient Avife, anxious to  obey—in a word,
 the loving Avoman.
   True love, profound love, is recognised by this, that it kills
 I all other passions:  pride, ambition, coquetry, all are lost in it,
 all disappear.
   It is so far from pride, that it often runs  into the other ex-
j treme, and ranges itself on the opposite pole.  Anxious to be
> absorbed, it goes far out of itself, very easily forgets Avhat is
i. called dignity, and Avithout  hesitation sacrifices the graceful
 appearances intended for the public.  It conceals no bad quali-
 ties, but  sometimes exaggerates them—aspiring to please by
 no merit, but by excess of love.
    Lover  and mystic are herein completely blended.  In both
  the humility  is excessive—a desire to abase themselves,  so
  much the more to exalt their god;  whether it be a beloved
  woman,  or a favorite saint, the effect is the  same.  I forget
  Avhich devotee it was Avho said:  " If I could only have been
  the dog of St. Pauline." More than once have I heard a lover
  say the same thing:  " If I Avere only her dog! "
    But such  disparagements of the soul,  such excesses  of
  humility,  love should  not indulge in.  Its  effort, on the con-
  trary, should be to elevate her Avho loves, at least to hold her
  up to the man's level, to cultivate a union by that Avhich binds
  her fast,  Avhich alone renders her real—equality.   AVhen two
  souls  are so disproportionate no interchange, no blending can 
210  The  Humiliations of Love—Confession.

be possible.   You cannot harmonize everything and nothing
This is the torment which Colonel Selves (Soliman Pacha)
did not hesitate to acknoAvledge.  " Hoaa-," said he, " can you
knoAV that an oriental Avoman loves you ?" AAre Avho have the
happiness to possess in our European Avomen souls and Avills,
whateArer embarrassment these Avills  may at times cause us,
ought yet to avoid Avhatever may shatter them, and break the
mainspring of the soul.  Tavo things,  especially, are infinitely
dangerous to them:
  The first—by which imprudent women of the present day
are very  much abused—is the magnetic  power.   Their unfor-
tunate facility of submitting to it is a real disease, Avhich pei-
manently injures them, and is aggravated by cultivation. This
peril should not exist; it is disgraceful to see a man Avho is not
beloved,  and Avho has no poAver over her heart, assume an un-
limited poAver over  the will of a Avoman.  She becomes his
slave—compelled to  move  at his sign,  or disclose before
AA'itnesses the most humiliating secrets.  She follows him
fatally.   Why ?   She cannot tell;  he is her superior neither
in talent  nor energy; but she surrenders herself, under pretext
of medical treatment, or for the amusement of society—and
behold her abandoned to a thousand unknown chances.  Have
these  victims  the true medical inspiration? time will shoAv.
But Avhatever it be, the gift is  dearly paid for, since it creates
an invalid, a  humiliated invalid, Avho parts Avith the disposi-
tion of her OAvn will. E\ren he whom she loves, her lover or
her husband, if she beseeches him to assume this power over
her, ought to consider Avell  before he does so.  Instead  of
evoking from her this passive slavery, this obscure inspiration,
he  should associate  her with  the  active faculties, Avhich are
those of  liberty, and should exercise  over her only one kind
of attraction—open love.
  Another power which every generous man will beware of
exercising, is that of violence—the fascination of fear.
  Women throughout Asia (I might almost say throughout 
       The Humiliations  of Love—Confession.  211

the world) are treated like children.   But Ave should considet
that, except in Europe, they  are married Avhile  children—in
the Avarm countries at twelve, at ten, and sometimes in India
even at eight years of age.  The husband of a child of eight
years is obliged to be her father, in some sort her master, in
order to educate her.  Hence that  apparent contradiction in
the Indian laws, which in one part of the country prohibit the
striking of Avives, and elseAArhere permit them to be  corrected
"like small scholars."  They are  always children, and this
childish discipline (not servile nor violent) they patiently sub-
mit to.  Where polygamy is practised, they remain timid and
sensual, and are held somewhat by fear, receiving in just the
same degree caresses and correction.
  Our women of the  North, on the  contrary, marriageable
later in  life, are quite mature, and in no Avise children Avhen
they are married.   To treat  them as children Avould  be  the
most  shocking  abuse of poAver, and let us add,  the most
dangerous.   It is generally found that the seasons Avhen their
vexatious humor provokes the brutality  of man, are those in
Avhich they are most easily injured, when any violent emotion
would be dangerous.  They have their  hours, their days, of
cruel  agitation, Avhen  they suffer (they confess it themselves)
from the demon of contradiction, Avhen  everything  conspires
to displease them, A\dien they must offend.  Then they should
have sympathy, not irritation.  It  is  a  very unsettled state;
and as at bottom it conceals an emotion by no  means hate-
ful, it  often  only needs a little relaxation of rule, a little
address and love, to change the proud humor suddenly, and
transform it into the most charming sweetness—reparations,
tears, and loving abandonments.
  Men should deliberately reflect on this point; women are
more  uniform than they  are.  The excesses of temper  of
which they  are too frequently guilty, should especially put
them  on guard against themselves.   AVhen a woman is
excited and violent, it is generally a very natural cause (and in 
 212   The  Humiliations of Love—Confession.

 truth an amiable one) A\Thich disturbs her,  and incites her to
 provoke the man by  sharp words and defiances.   French-
 women perfectly understand this.  It is not a question of self-
 love, but of love.  There is no need to retaliate (as  they are
 too apt to do in England) ;  nor is it Aviser  to laugh, or coax
 a sudden change from quarrels to caresses.  But parry a little,
 maneuvre a little.  In an interval of Aveakness, of natural reac-
 tion, her good-humor returns ; she confesses that she is wrong,
 and repays you by being good again.
  In barbarous  times the government of the family, like  the
 government of the State, Avas a system of coups d'etat.  Let
 us pass on, I beg, to times that have been  civilized and soft-
 ened  by mutual understandings,  by that freer and milder
 rule AAdiich  comes from harmony of  will.
  Man's domestic  coup d'etat is that ignoble brutality Avhich
 lays its hard hand upon a woman, that savage violence Avhich
 profanes a sacred object (so delicate and so easily wounded)!
 that impious ingratitude Avhich insults and outrages one's own
 altar.
  The Avoman's coup d'etat, a Avar  of the  feeble against the
 strong, is her own  shame—the adultery which humiliates the
 husband,  imposes  upon  him  children  not  his OAvn,  and
 degrades both, rendering them for ever miserable.
  Neither of these crimes Avould be common, if the  union
 were every day strengthened by mutual confidences, by a  per-
 manent communion, wherein the most trifling differences, dis-
 sipated as  soon as perceived, Avould not have time to SAvell
 into such tempests. In their obligation to tell each other every-
 thing, they would be more watchful of themselves.  Tempta-
 tions, if they are not  brooded over, lose their force.
  Conjugal confession (a sacrament  of the future) is the very
 essence of marriage.  As Ave emerge from the coarse and bar-
barous state in which Ave are still plunged, Ave shall learn that
we  are married precisely for that—to unbosom ourselves
every day,  to disclose all things Avithout reserve, our busi- 
      The Humiliations  of Love—Confession.  213

ness, our thoughts, our feelings—to keep nothing to ourselves,
to share our souls entirely—even those formless clouds, Avhich
may become-great storms in the heart that nurses instead of
expelling them.
  This, I repeat, is the foundation of marriage.  Is genera-
tion essential to it ?   No.  Even in sterility there may be
complete union ; without children there may  be marriage.
Does it consist  in an  interchange of pleasure?  No.  Each
when the pleasure has  died out Avith age or disease, still there
is marriage.  But it consists in daily interchanges of thought
and Avill, in the continual blending and harmony of tAvo souls.
Let the beautiful maxim of the  law—marriage is consent—be
verified every  day ;   let  the confidences of every  moment
assure both that they are in the Avay Avherein each consents to
AA'hat the other desires and does.  AVhorn should you marry,
lady ? The man Avho  is Avilling to live before you in the full
light  of day, concealing no thought  or  act, conceding  and
communicating everything.
  AVhom should you  avoid ?  The man who,  freely promis-
ing to give himself up, still holds himself aloof—who, in the
selfish inclosures  of his  soul,  appropriates to  himself an
exclusive  part  in  what  should be common  property—Avho
.keeps one  sentiment  under  lock  and key, one  thought to
himself.
  Pure, gentle, and faithful Avomen, Avho have nothing to con-
ceal and nothing  to atone  for, have yet, even more than
others, the need of loving confessions, of continual overfloAvings
into a loving heart.  Why is it that men, generally, profit so
little by such an element of happiness ?  It must be because a
used-up youth, or the beAvilderings  of the Avorld, render us
blind and brutish, true enemies of ourselves, that Ave do not at
once  perceive that so tender a communication is  the most
exquisite enjoyment a Avoman can bestoAV upon  us.
  Oh, as for  that, most men are unAvorthy  of it !  They
smile, they scarcely listen; sometimes they show that they an 
214  The Humiliations  of Love—Confession.

sceptical in regard to simplest revelations, Avhich should not
only be accqoted, but adored.
  And yet there is nothing so very new in it.  In matters of
business the married pair consult and confide in each other.
They should be equally confidential in matters of the heart, in
matters of religion and love, as to agitations, emotions, and
all the secret life of imagination.  We are  united, married,
only by an extreme, conclusive and perilous pledge—to deliver
up our last secret, and to put ourselves mutually in each other's
poAver, by telling each other  everything.
  Do not  pass by the dear creature  Avhen she is a little ill,
when her  heart is troubled Avith foolish  dreams, as  Avill  often
happen to the purest; do not leave her distrustful of her.
husband,  Avhom yet  she  loves;  teach her to trust in  your
indulgence, and ask your  advice, rather than deliver up her
important secret  (Avhich at bottom is just nothing at all) to
some one  Avho henceforth will have a threat  for both her and
you, Avho Avill hold her by it, and on the street, without a
Avord, Avill have but to look at your poor  innocent to  make
her blush, and cast doAvn her eyes.
  And here again is something toaeflect upon :—If a Avorthy
and reasonable Avoman become somewhat  capricious, her hus-
band should ask himself the reason, and if the fault may not
be in himself. In the midst of life, Avith all its intoxication
and its folly, we neglect the essential things,  Ave neglect even
what Ave love most.
  The  husband should say to himself: "Perhaps she is right;
I am groAAdng tedious, too much absorbed in  one thing."  Or
rather, " Do I sufficiently respect her delicacy in our physical
relations.   Am I not disagreeable to her ?"  or  again,  " She
justly  regards me in a painful aspect, morally; I am hard and
sordid.  Ah, Avell! I Avill recover her heart; I will be  more
charitable, more  generous,  more magnanimous.   I AArill be
above myself.  She must necessarily perceive that, after all, 1
am better than he Avho makes himself agreeable to her, am1
especially that I love her more." 
The  Communion of Love.           215
  Yery few Avords are  necessary.  Sometimes it is enough
that they merely regard each other with  love in the evening.
  Dcelmud, an artist—AArho has tAvo or three times displayed
decided genius—in  an engraving Avhich he calls le Cafe*, has
very Avell expressed the  look  of two sympathetic souls, whc
have no need of Avord;  they understand and appreciate each
other so perfectly.   But I would add one  thing, especially in
the man—a something which should say:  Be sure you cannot
have a safer shelter than you have in me.
o
                         XIII.

              THE  COMMUNION  OF LOVE.

  I cannot  do Avithout God.
  A momentary eclipse of the high central Idea darkens this
wonderful modern Avorld of  sciences and  discoveries.  All is
progress, all is poAver, but everything lacks grandeur.  Minds
are struck and staggered by it—conceptions  enfeebled, iso-
lated, scattered.  There is certainly the poetical; but the grand
whole, the harmony, the poem, where are they ?  I do not
see them.
  I cannot do Avithout God.
  I said, ten years ago,  to  an  eminent thinker, AAhose bold
and energetic severity I liked: You are a radical; and so am
I, in one sense, for I Avish  to live; and  strict centralization
would kill off all individual life.  But the loving unity of the
Avorld, far from killing it, stimulates it—because this unity is
love.  AA no Avould not desire such  a centralization, and Avhc
does not perceive it throughout the universe ? 
216          The  Communion of  Love.
  Because Ave ha\"e abandoned the untenable argument of an
arbitrary pro\*idence, existing from day to day by personal
decrees and little coups d'etat, is that as much as to acknoAA'-
ledge that we  do not  perceive that high, impartial  Love,
which, reigns by its OAvn grand laAArs?  And being Reason, is
it not also Love ?  As for me, I  feel beneath  me  the mighty
wave that  bears  me up.  From the depths of life a strange
fervor arises, a fruitful aspiration ; a breath passes before my
face, and I feel  a thousand deaths in me.
  To reduce all religions to one head, in order  to cut that
one  off, is  a very easy proceeding.  But if you effaced the
last trace of historical religions and established creeds in this
Avorld, the Eternal Creed Avould remain.  The Maternal pro-
vidence of Nature, adored in the midst of dead and  living
religions of the  past or of the future, and of which you do not
think, remains  immutable; and  Avhen the  last great Deluge
shall burst over our little globe, it will still endure, indestruc-
tible as that World of Avhich it is the charm and the life.
  This, my faith in a loving  cause, obscured,  I could no
longer act.  Without the happiness of feeling that this world
is beloved, and that I am beloved in  it, I should no longer
wish to live. Then lay me in the tomb, for the spectacle of
Progress Avould have no more interest for me; though Art and
Thought should  soar higher still, I should no longer have
strength to follow.  Though to the thirty sciences that were
born but yesterday,  you should add thirty more, or a thou-
sand—as  many as you please—I should not want  them.
What could I  do Avith them, Avhen  Love is  extinguished in
me ?
  The Orient—humanity in its first beautiful daAvn,  before
the  sophistical  centuries obscured it—set  out  from an  idea
which Avill become dominant again in our second childhood, n
zenith of wisdom. That idea is, that the Communion of Love,
SAveetest of the mysteries of God, is also the highest, and that
its  clear  gleam for  a moment displays  the Infinite  to us 
The  Communion  of Love.           21 7
Dark in  an inferior  state of being (and such is ours at first),
it becomes brighter  and brighter, in proportion as the flame
is fed with refining and sanctifying love.
  I do not here repeat what I said last year on this subject,
so important to all, about the touching, the terrible mystery
wherein a woman, to impart life, sports Avith her OAvn—Avherein
pleasure, happiness,  fruitfulness,  bring  us face to face Avith
death.
   We feel it in that hour, in our profound agitation ;  Ave feel
it in our quivering flesh, and in our icy bones ;  a thunderbolt
falling could add nothing to it.   At the moment when Ave are
so near losing our  beloved, Avhen the chill of the agony is
upon us, if voice remained to us, we  should  utter one cry,
torn from our inmost being, and from the depths of truth:
" AVoman is a religion."
   AVe may utter  it now,  Ave may utter it ahvays; for it Avill
be always true.
   I said it of my OAvn little girl, Avhile yet she Avas but a child
—" A religion of purity, of mercy, and of poetry."
   Hoav much more should I say it now, that, truly a woman
and  a mother, she, by her grace, radiates on all sides a har-
monious  power, which from the family circle projects into
society still Avider  circles—" A religion of goodness  and
civilization."
   It is especially in  religious eclipses—Avhen the traditions of
the  past pale on the horizon, Avhen a new Avorld, complicated
and  fettered even by its OAvn greatness, organizes itself but
slowly—that woman can do much to sustain and console.  To
the support of the central Idea,  which, slowly evolving itself,
develops the oneness of intelligence, she, Avithout  knoAving it,
brings the charming unity of life, of love, of religion itself.
   In the great assemblies of mei?; Avhich have not Avorship for
their object,  in  the popular concerts  of Germany (wherein
five  or six thousand musicians are met), in  the vast  political
or military fraternities of SAvitzerland and France,  such  as
                               10 
218          The Communion of Love.
they have been and Avill be, the presence of Avomen bestows a
holy emotion.   Our Country is not there, if our mothers and
our wives are not there with their children.  Speaking only
of family and of individual happiness, I should simply say of
Avoman, in the language a good laborer one day made use of
before me : " She is the Sunday of man.''
  That is to say, not merely the repose, but the charm, the salt
of life, and the reason why we Avish to live.
  The  Sunday! the  joy,  the freedom, the  festival, the
cherished, the sacred part of the  soul—not the  half, nor a
third, nor a fourth, but the Avhole.
  Fully to fathom  the significance of that word Sunday,
which means much more than idleness, it is necessary to know
all that passes in the mind of a laborer on Saturday evening,
all the dreams that float there, all the hopes and aspirations.
Is it woman in general, or some pretty mistress, to whom you
must look for your Sunday ?   No, it must be your OAvn Avife,
your gentle, amiable, faithful wife ; because  only  Avith her is
a sentiment  of certainty mingled Avith your enjoyment—a
feeling of definite possession, Avhich deepens  your happiness,
and  makes it  delightful;  The penetrating  perception and
fine appreciation of a. Avoman  so devoted, Avho affords you so
many pleasures, far from lessening your content, opens to you,
in a thousand delicate forms, a Arast unknown of beatitude.
  In her is every SAveet and sacred emotion.  She brings back
to you, eA'en purer than of old, the  solemn impressions  of
your childhood.
  Your morning awakings, Avhen you Avere but twelve  years
old, which you can  yet  recollect—the freshness of the early
daAvn, the silvery bell of the village, as it  sounded then—all
seem far aAvay, and vanished,  never to  return.   But,  on Sun-
day morning, having toiled late into the night, and aAvaking
rather  later than usual, you  are greeted by the soft smile of
your wife, who for a long time has been gazing on you, and
who, with her cheerful voice, and  her round^rms about you, 
The  Communion of Love.          219
  salutes  and blesses  you.   She has Avaited, and  prayed for
  you.  And  you exclaim to  yourself,  " Ah, my dawn, my
  angelus ! how SAveet the sentiment of morning that you brins
  to me !   1 feel as though twenty years of my life were effaced.
  Oh ! how young you make me!  and hoAV I wish I were truly
  young, for your sake !"
     But she, Avith tact, putting you off and evading you, offers
  you a diversion—some cherished idea that you lately dis-
  cussed Avith her, some favorite project Avhich occurred to you
  even yesterday; thence to your  common  interests,  to the
  family and the children, the transition is easy.  And so, Avhen
  she  is sure  she has  you  in  a gracious  mood, inclined to a
  favorable hearing, she suggests something that shall do  your
  heart good, and sanctify the day, some good to  be done.
  The times are  hard,  and the effort is  not trifling;  but Avith
  plenty of work, and  God  aiding  you, you still may do it.
  You do not say no ;  you Avish to please her.  But before you
  have time to tell her all your thoughts, her quick  tact pre-
  vents you:  " See, my  dear,  Charles  is awake, Edward is
  prattling; the baby has not slept this long time, and is listen-
  ing.  Why, hoAV late it is!  I must dress them."
     'Tis dismal, gloomy weather.  It is snowing, and there is
  a high  wind.   The northern  birds, leaving early, foretell a
  hard winter.  There will be no visitors; will it  be a cheer-
  less Sunday ?   By no means; where  she is, Avho  could  be
'  sad ?  It is not the bright blaze  on the hearth, nor the hot
  breakfast, that  Avarms  the  house.  It is  her  affectionate
  vivacity that inspires and animates all.   She is so thoughtful
  for her OAvn, and so  loves and cares for  them,  so softly lines
  their nest, that there is only room for joy in it.
     And their happiness is doubled by the Avinter.   They con-
  gratulate themselves on the bad Aveather, Avhich shuts them up,
  and the pleasant day  they are going to pass together.  There
  is little noise.   As for the husband, he takes advantage of the
  day to do some odd job for himself.  He is like Rembrandt's 
220          The  Communion of  Love.
little picture of the Carpenter ; at least, if he does not plane
like him, he reads and re-reads a book. But as he reads, he is
conscious that the children are out there, because from time
to time they utter  something very low.  Behind him he per-
ceives, not Avith his eyes, but with his heart, something  that
makes no noise—her gentle, wavy movements, and her light
step.   She  does  only what is indispensable, and, with her
finger  on her  lip, makes a sign to them to be very good, and
not disturb him.
  And what are the children doing ?  I am curious to know.
They are reading a good book. They are  reading of the bold
adventures, the hardihood and sacrifices of the old travellers,
Avho opened the world for us, and suffered  so much for us.
" This coffee, children, that your  father drinks, the sugar you
put into your milk so freely  (perhaps too much of it), were
all bought with heroism and suffering ; be grateful, then.   To
Providence we owe those  other  providences, the great souls
Avho sloAvly bind  this globe together, AA-ho  enlighten  it and
make it  fruitful, who bring it, or soon will bring it, into the
harmony and  unity of one  single manly  soul."   By degrees
she tells them of those  material  communions which prepare
them for the  moral  one—of navigation, commerce,  roads,
canals, railroads, and the electric telegraph.
  Material! I conform to the foolish phraseology of the time ;
but they are in no respect material.  These things come.from
the mind ;  and they return to the mind, of Avhich they are the
means and shapes.  In introducing nations to each other, sup-
pressing ignorances and blind  antipathies,  I maintain that they
are equally moral and religious  poAvers,  or as  I have  said,
communions.
  To teach them  gradually, according to their intelligence,
Avith suitable sloAvness and precaution, is to impart to children
religious instruction, to train  them  in a  divine  spirit, in the
spirit of  goodness and  tenderness.
  AVho does not feel these revelations in his heart when  they 
The'  Communion of Love.          221
come to him from  beloved lips ?   The children are amused ;
but he, AArho kneAV  all this before, in receiving it again from
her, with such a softening charm, is silent in his perfect ecstasy,
and feels that all our new arts are but powers of love.
  Father and children are alike nourished by her soul and her
sweet wisdom.  They listen, and Avhen  she has finished, they
awake as from a  dream.  A  slight noise, a little  tic-tac, is
heard on  the windoAV.  It is the remonstrance of a Avinged
neighbor ; the house-sparrow says, in his frank, petulant Avay:
" AYhat, you little  selfish things!  when the Aveather is so bad
do you take care only of yourselves."   This speech has a tre-
mendous effect; they open the window and throw him bread.
But what an excitement when  one of their  guests, bolder
than the  rest, taking advantage of the chance,  enters  and
bravely hops to the farther end of the room.
  " 0 thank you, cousin Red Breast, AArho, without ceremony,
remind  us of Avhat we had forgotten—the universal relation-
ship.  You  are right; is not our home indeed yours also ?"
They  hardly dare to breathe ;  their  mother throws  him
some  crumbs, very carefully, so as not to frighten him.  And
he, not at all abashed, having picked them all up, and even
approached the hearth, flies off, leaving this adieu behind him :
" Good by, my  good little brothers!"
  If dinner-time were not so near, their mother Avould haA^e
much to say ; but  they must have something to eat, and you
too, little robins.
  At  dessert, she  tells them of the banquet of nature, to
which God  invites all his  creatures, great  and small, to sit
doAvn, placing  them  according  to  their  intelligence,  their
industry, their activity and labor—the ant  high up, and some
giant  like the rhinoceros or hippopotamus Ioav down.   If man
sits in the highest seat, it is because of one thing alone—his
perception of the grand harmony and the Love divine, his
tender sympathy with all that emanates from it,  his sublime
gift of Pity. 
222             The Offices  of Nature.
  AYhy is it that this discourse, which at another time might
pass unheeded, enters  the  hearts of  the  children ?   What
engraves  this hour  on their memory, and  Avhy are they
touched ?  Because their parents consummate before them
that act of fraternity Avhich their mother's prayer bespoke in
the morning :  the laborer Avill share his toil with his brother
—even his life and his soul.   With tearful eyes she embraces
him, and the table is sanctified.
  Enough for one day.  Noav children, gladden your father's
heart by  a double song—a song of the French land in its days
of great  sacrifices, Avhich, in the hour of need, you Avould
imitate;  and a hymn of gratitude to God, the benefactor of
the Avorld, who has given you this day, and perhaps  his own
tomorrow.
  " Now let us go to bed.  Your father, very tired, is almost
asleep now.  He sat up so late last  night, to finish his Satur-
day's^work !   Sleep, my own—sleep, my  children ; and God
keep you while you sleep."
  And so blessing them all, she carefully covers up  the fire,
making no noise, hardly breathing, and quietly  lies down near
him, very careful not to wake him.  Though  he  sleeps, he
Avell knows she is there; for she  is his spring-time of love, his
summer in the midst of gloomy winter.  In  herself are all
seasons.  What is all nature to her sacred charm ?

                     ------o------


                          XIV.

               THE OFFICES OF NATURE.

  The two natural  and reasonable aspects of religion  are
demonstrated in the tendencies of the man and the woman, as
they are  displayed by each.   Man perceives the infinite in the
invariable Laws of the universe, Avhich are the  ways of God's 
The  Offices of Nature.            223
existence ; woman, in the loving Cause, the father of Nature,
who creates better out of good.  She feels God in that AA-hich is
the life, the soul, and the eternal act—love and generation.
  Are  these  points of  view contradictory !  By no means.
The tAvo harmonize in this, that the God of the woman, Love,
would  not  be love  if he Avere  not love for all, incapable of
caprice  or arbitrary preference, if  he did not love according
to law,  reason, and justice—that is to say, according to the
idea that man has of God.
  These two columns of the temple  are  so deeply planted
that no one  Avill attempt to overthrow them.  The world,
however, alternates ; sometimes it sees  only Laws, sometimes
only the Cause.  It  for  ever oscillates  betAveen the tAvo reli-
gious poles, but it does not change them.
  Science—at present not centralized, as it  soon  will be—is
much inclined to recognise only Laws, and forget the loving
Cause, imagining the machine  could  go  Avithout  a motor.
This forgetfulness is Avhat produces the sad religious eclipse
by Avhich we  are now darkened, but it cannot last long.  The
beautiful central light from which  proceeds all the joy of the
world will reappear.   Though weakened for a time,  the senti-
ment of a loving cause will return to us.   No, laws are not
causes; and what would become  of our progress if Ave did
not recover the idea of  causality and life ?
  There is neither  cheerfulness nor happiness  here beloAV,
independent of the idea  of production.   Speaking of children,
I have already said that Ave can develop them and render them
happy only by making them creators.   AA^ell, from their little
Avorld, let us  carry the principle into  the  great one.  AY hen
Ave  perceive  that it is stagnant, that there is no longer vital
warmth in it, an overAvhelming despondency takes possession
of the  heart,  and Ave become happy again  only by recovering
the idea of the great fruitful movement Avhere, free, and yet
restrained by the high animating Reason, Ave, workmen of a
creative Love, also shall  create in joy. 
224            Tne  Offices of Nature.
  This  explanation Avas necessary to introduce us  to the
inmost heart of the man and  the  Avoman, and to their  tAvc
religions, Avherein each plays a distinct and very delicate part,
each fearing to wound the other; for generally they do not
knoAV how much, after all, they harmonize—hence the gropings,
the hesitations full of fears, the faint contest between two
souls Avhich in reality  are but one.   Never  in  the daytime,
before AAdtnesses, is this tender struggle; the children must be
asleep, even the light put out.  It is their last thought on the
pillow.
  But although each maintains a true and sacred aspect of
religion (he the LaAvs, she the Cause), there  is this  material
difference : that in God the man perceives rather His modes
of existence, His laAvs of action ; the woman His love, Avhich
continually prompts His actions.  She is more in the sanctuary
of God, I should say, and nearer to his heart.  Thus, having
the Love,  she has all the rest and understands it all.  She
touches at will every note on the grand key-board, while man
for the most  part knoAvs  but a feAV,  She comprehends by
intuition all the natural  manifestations of God, from grave to
gay, from lively to severe.   She is sovereign mistress of this
divine art, and teaches it  to man.  " AYhence, indeed, does
she get  all this?" he asks.  "Where finds she this treasure
of loving things, this torrent of enchantments ? "  Where, but
in thine own love, and in the love she bears to thee,  in the
reserved riches of a heart which no outpourings, no genera-
tions can empty.   Every day it gives out a Avorld, but still
the universe remains.
   So simple, so modest, and  yet  so  superior!   From  day to
day you go on blindly, never marking the course of time,
your eye  fixed on the earth, by the necessities of toil; but
she perceives  more clearly the progress of time, for she is in
harmony  with it.  She  folloAvs it hourly, charged  Avith the
duty of foreseeing for you, your needs, your pleasures, your
repasts, and your  repose; in every moment a  duty, but also 
The  Offices of Nature.            225
 a poetical delight.   From month to month, warned by the
 pangs of love, she scans  the  passing time, and  watches its
 sacred march.  AYhen the solemn hours of the year are struck
 in the flight of seasons, she hears the impressive chant uprising
 from the depths of nature.
   She has  her  ritual, in no  wise arbitrary,  which to her
 expresses the life of her country, in its immutable relations
 with the  life  divine.  It  is  no  easy matter to meddle Avith
 that.  The traditions, the authority, which impose upon one
 people the rites of another, tend to produce naught but jar-
 ring discord.  The  songs of  the exalted Orient, beautiful
 as they are, are discordant in  Gaul, for has she not her song
 of the lark, which as bravely rises to God.
   Our sunrise is not the sunrise of America  nor of Judea,
 nor are our fogs the heavy mists of the Baltic;  and all these
 have their voices.  Our climate, our  hours, our  seasons, all
 sing after  their OAvn fashion;  and the woman, with her fine
 French ear, has caught them all.  Yet, do not ask her for
 them; she Avould sing you only the conventional strain.  But
 Avhen she  is at home  alone,  someAvhat  saddened by  your
 absence, and quietly Avorking—in her pensive mood, she hums
 in an undertone, a simple and holy strain that comes of itself—
 of the day and the hour, her own humble vespers, her heart-
 song for God and for thee.
  How  Avell she knows the festivals, the true festivals, of the
year!  In that, be guided by her ; for she alone perceives the
days of grace Avherein heaven is loving  tOAvards  the earth,
the high divine indulgences.    She knows them, because she
makes them—she, the kindly smile of God, the  festival and
the Christmas, the everlasting Easter, of love, wherein the heart
lives, and lives, and lives.
  Without her,  Avho Avould care for  spring ?   Hoav sickly,
then, and  sad, Avould be the fruitful warmth with which all
life ferments.  But with her—enchantment!
  Freed from their Avinter confinement, they go forth into the
                           10* 
226            The Offices  of Nature.
 air.   She in a Avhite dress, although at times  the Avarm  sun
 is chilled by a touch of the north Avind's breath.   All is  life,
 but  all is  combat, too.   In  the meadoAV, groAving green
 again, there is sport and contest; kids against kids try their
 sprouting horns; the nightingales, that have come a fortnight
 before their mistresses, contend in duels of  song for priorities
 of love.
   In the midst of this pleasant  combat,  out of which pro-
 ceeds a  seeming  peace,  she appears—she, the  truce,  the
 goodness, the beauty, the living  joy of this world !  As  she
 advances, her tender  heart  is divided betAveen  two loves.
 From both sides they appeal to her.  With brimming hands
 her children bring her young floAvers, and cry, " Mamma ! see!
 see!" while 'another whispers in  her ear, and  still she smiles.
 Not. with impunity may one thus  have a  charming woman
 on his arm, so near his bosom and his heart.  Yery sweetly
 he urges her, and she is not insensible.  Devoted and tender,
 she  hearkens to all, so truly does she wish to make them all
 happy.  " Yes, my little ones—yes, my darling."  She says to
 them, " Let us play, then;"  and to him, " O, whatever  you
 wish!"
   But in her  extreme goodness,  which   renders her even
 weakly  obedient to her  children, whoever knows  how to
 observe  her may detect behind her smile  a pensive  abstrac-
 tion.  Her husband thinks only of her, but  she thinks of God.
   When the pretty festival of field  flowers, and the labors of
"haymaking, return with the warmth and mildness, she, like the
 others, comes with her rake to work.  But beautiful as she
 always  is, her form has  now assumed a  SAveet  luxuriance,
 which, while it  renews her freshness, yet  weighs her doAvn.
 Her white bosom,  whence her children have draAvn their life,
 those treasures Avhich  even he who knows them  best would
 hide away, these render her a little languid, a little indolent.
 She is soon fatigued, and they forbid her to Avork; but they
 work for her.   Her children, gay  and happy—her husband, 
The  Offices  of Nature.           227
full of tenderness—cannot pass a flower Avithout bringing it
to her, without presenting  it to the sovereign  rose.  They
load her table Avith them, they cover her bosom and her head
with them.  She runs from  the  fragrant shower, and cries,
" Enough!  enough!"  But they do  not spare her.  She can
hardly see through the flowery rain; she no longer defends
herself, and is  overwhelmed  and  drowned in caresses, kisses,
blossoms.
  Already summer is upon  them,  and the heat is extreme;
the delicate wife must not be agitated.  The three months
between  haymaking  and vintage are terribly oppressive to
man, equally to him who Avorks with his hands and him who
works Avith his mind.  Heavy and sharp, the hot  sun strikes
the brain, and that in tAvo ways: at the same  time that  it
prostrates our strength it exalts  the passions.  Her husband
is enervated by the season, by his labor, by indulgence.  She
perceives that, and it alarms her.  She hazards a Avord of ad-
vice, a word of true religion.  "At such a time  as this, when
God is perfecting his work, and completing his yearly treasure
of nourishment for the  human  race, does not the exclusive
employment of man's strength belong to Him ?"  But it is
not well  taken ; he becomes  cold, even angry.  By Avhat pious
stratagems shall she wean herself from him ?  By AAdiat charm-
ing evasions, and  lowly prayers for postponement?  Then
comes the inexorable July, and Avith it the harvest revels, the
triumph  of the year, the crowning  banquet of  plenty.  The
extreme heat stings like a Avasp, and makes her ill; and so her
petition is granted, and a little bed made for her near the cra-
dle of his children.
   O, happy autumn ! golden time of happiness and freedom !
The end of toil is come, and love Avhich, in the murderous
months, made Avar on love, may at last throw prudence aAvay,
and indulge the promptings  of the heart.  He Avho was angry
at  her refusals  Avill  never  knoAV  Avho suffered most.  She
has but one word for him—she returns to him entirely; and 
228            The Offices  of Nature.
on the promised day he reminds her.  "But, my dear, should
not the work be finished first ? This gray, uncertain weather,
veiled by a transparent gauze of mist, is so  admirable for
the vintage!   Let us make  haste.  This  mild,  pale  sun,
piercing  through the  haze, to bestow a parting kiss on the
amber grape, will kiss away the  deAV from it.  Now is just
the time  to gather them.   In the  evening Ave shall no longer
be separated.   It is not so Avarm now;  I shall  return to thee
and take refuge with thee all the winter long."—Here is joy
indeed!  In certain countries the apes and the bears are fud-
dled Avith grapes.  Why should not the wits of man be  stag-
gered?  As for this one, he  is drunk before  he has drunk;
but she is sober.   " Softly, softly, let us set a  good example,
and work."
  In the vintage there is complete fraternizing; all are equal
there, and  your smart worker is your only aristocrat.  To
her it is a great pleasure to sup in friendship with the people.
All are welcome,  even those Avho  have  not helped.   She Avill
be truly  happy to have them.  She knoAvs all the village Avell,
and misses the  absent.   So and so, what about him ? He is
unAvell.  Well, Ave will send for him.  And another is travel-
ling.   Thus she inquires for all, wishing she could have  them
all  together, united and friendly.
  The place is ample—one of those amphitheatres  of hills
from Avhich some vineyards look down upon the sea—the
weather so mild, you may dine in the open air.  A gentle breeze
favors the departure of the Avinged travellers that flit athwart
the  sky.  The day is  short;  although  not  old,  it seems
already to assume the pehsiveness of evening.
  Never Avas  she more beautiful; her eyes  beam with im-
pressive  sweetness ; and each feels that she looks on him, and
wishes him Avell, that she thinks of him, and of all.  By her
tender regards the Avhole country is blessed.
  Her daughter  had  twined for her a  charming croAvn of
vine  branches, delicate heliotropes, and the red vervain—a 
The Offices  of Nature.           229
royal  and right feminine crown, which perfumes all the air
around.  She declines it at first, but her husband insists; he
would crown her, if he could, with all the crowns of earth.
  Yet she seems sad.  " What is the matter— ?"
  "Ah, I am too happy!"
  "All our friends, all our kindred, are here.  And  all these
good people—not one has stayed aAvay."
  "Alas!  my dear, those, only those, who suffer and who
Aveep are absent.  Pardon—"
  She can say no more ; her emotion chokes her. To hide a
falling tear she bends over her glass, and  that adorable pearl
is mingled with the blood of the  vine.   Her husband snatches
the glass  from her lips, and empties it  at a draught.  But
those  who do not understand, and only know she weeps, are
moved in sympathy with her.
  And all are in communion  with her heart. 
Book  III.—Woman  in   Society.
                     -----o-----


                           I.

   WOMAN AN  ANGEL  OF PEACE  AND  CIVILIZATION.

  AYoman, in her superior aspect, is the mediator of love.
  A profound and delightful influence Avhich is manifested in
two revelations.
  In proportion  as  the  first, the attraction of sex, and plea-
sure—the sanguine  storm  of life—fades out and dies, the
second appears in all its  celestial  SAveetness—the influence of
peace,  consolation, and  mediation.  Man is, most of all, an
agent of creation. He produces, but in two senses ; for he also
produces Avars, discords, and combats.  In the midst  of the
arts and the ideas, the torrent of benefactions, that flow from
his fruitful hand, flows  also a flood of  evils, which woman
follows, to soften, console, and heal.
  I am traversing a dangerous  forest, and I  hear a stealthy
step.   Surely that must  be a man, I say, and  I stand on my
guard.  But behold, it is a woman.  " Hail, gentle angel of
peace!"
  An Englishman Avho  made a benevolent tour through Ire-
land, thirty years ago, to  inquire into the evils  of the land 
Woman an  Angel of Peace.         231
  and seek a remedy for them, described the fierce defiance of
  those indigent and miserable  creatures, Avhom the entrance
  of a stranger into their miserable huts  greatly disturbed,
  " Was he an agent of the customs ?  Was he a spy ?"
    But, happily, he was not alone.  Behind him they caught a
  glimpse  of a woman's  countenance, and they had henceforth
  nothing  to  conceal; they  Avere reassured and  full of  confi-
  dence.   They could not imagine that he would have brought
  his wife  among them if he had not wished them well.
    Livingstone met Avith the same experience, in his  admirable
  expedition to the unexplored  regions of Africa, in 1859.  A
  man, alone,  Avould have been  suspected, and probably put to
  death;  but  the  sight of  his  family  satisfied  and  pacified
  them.
    " Peace!  peace," was  the prayer, the eager cry, of those
  good people, as  they  expressed themselves  in their simple
,  language to the  European missionary who brought  them
  the protective arts.   The  women said to him,  " Give us
  sleep:" and this sleep, this peace, this complete security, they
  beheld in the train that approached, with the  rolling  house
  and the oxen.   They beheld them in Mrs. Livingstone, sur-
  rounded by her  three  children.  That  spectacle satisfied
  them; for they well kneAV that he would not have brought
  that precious nest into a den of lions, if he had not wished to
  do good to  men.
    If the mere sight of a woman has so much effect, how is it
  with her words? Avith those accents  Avhich penetrate from
  heart to heart ?
    The language  of  woman is the  universal fraxinella,  the
  peace-maker, Avhich everywhere softens and  heals.   But  the
  divine gift is free to her only Avhen she is free, Avhen she is no
  longer a dumb statue of modesty, Avhen the progress of years
  has emancipated her, untied  her tongue, and unfettered  her
  actions.
    In a moment of true nobleness and magnanimity, a woman 
232        Woman an  Angel  of Peace.
of fine genius has justly described and appreciated mature
age, and even the approach of old  age, Avhich no woman con-
templates without a shudder.   This formidable  period seems
to her to have its oavii charms—a tranquil grandeur Avhich
youth has not.
  "Youth,''  she  says,  very  nearly  (I regret that I  cannot
recall her exact words), "is  an  Alpine country, full  of sur-
prises, Avith  its rocks, its torrents,  its cascades.  But  61 d
age  is a majestic  French garden, with noble  shadows and
beautiful long stretches of promenade,  wherein we may see
afar off the friends Avho are coming to meet us—wide walks,
Avhere several may go abreast and talk together—indeed a
pleasant place for social converse."
  AYe should be wrong to  conclude from this beautiful com-
parison  that  old age is samely  and monotonous; it  is just
the contrary.  Woman has privileges then which she has not
had at any other age.  The customs of  society held her cap-
tive ; she was required to avoid certain conversations—certain
associations  were forbidden her; even the walks  of charity
were often difficult and dangerous to her.  An unjust world
Avas prone to speak evil of her.  But as she grows old she is
enfranchised, and  enjoys  all  the  privileges  of  an  honest
liberty.   The result  is, that the  Avhole scope of her mind is
brought into play; she thinks and speaks in an original and
independent manner.  Thus she becomes herself.
  All young and  pretty women are  at liberty to be fools,
because they are always sure  of  being admired.  But not so
Avith the old woman.  She  must have wit; and because she
has it, she is generally agreeable  and amusing.
  Madame de Sevigne  expresses this  idea very prettily  (I
quote from memory):  "Youth and spring,"  she says, "are
green,  uniformly green; but  Ave autumnal  people  are of all
colors."
  Such a Avoman has it in her power to exert,  on  all around
her, those amiable social influences which are a peculiarity of 
Woman an  Angel of Peace.         233
France.  These, 111 fact, are but manifestations of that  bene-
volent and  sympathizing disposition Avhich puts a man at his
ease, Avhich lends Avit even to those who have it not, and gives
them confidence, overawing the gigglers, who take thought-
less pleasure in embarrassing the timid.
  This royalty of goodness fills her parlor Avith a gentle ra-
diance.  Especially does she encourage the man Avhom the fine
talkers silence, and Avho, under the protection of a woman of
esprit,  Avho lends  him  her countenance, assumes a modest
confidence.  The conversation there is not'the vacant badi-
nage we  find everywhere else, that eternal  gossip in Avhich
empty  heads have  all the  advantage.   When some Avell-in-
formed man has stated his point clearly, Avithout prolixities or
pedantry, she adds just  one Avord from the heart, which often
makes it  clearer to himself, imparting Avarmth as Avell as light
to what he has said, and rendering it agreeable and easy to
understand.  Then they look at  each  other, and smile, and
there is mutual appreciation.
  AVe are not sufficiently sensible  of the fact  that sometimes
a simple Avord from a woman can  save  a man, and raise him
up, teach him  to  respect himself, and give him an abiding
strength, which until then he had  not.
  1 one day saw a forlorn, sickly child, Avith a timid, sly, pitiful
countenance—and  yet he had talent. His mother, Avho  Avas a
hard Avoman, said to me:  "I cannot  imagine Avhat is  the
matter Avith him."
  "I can, madam," I replied; "he has never been kissed"—
and that  Avas only too true.
  Well, in Society, that capricious  mother of genius, there are
many Avho fail (and not the smallest number either), because
they have  never  been  kissed, applauded,  encouraged.  No
one knows how this happens.   No one  has a grudge against
them;  but no sooner  do they timidly venture  a Avord, than
every one  turns a cold shoulder to them; or Avorse—they
take no notice of it, or very likely laugh at it. 
234     Last Love.—-Women's Friendships.

  Beware lest this snubbed and flouted stranger be an angel
of genius unawares.   Oh, if at such a moment some woman,
influential by her Avit, her grace, her culture, had caught up
the remark (often forcible, sometimes profound), as it escaped
from the lips of the pariah—if taking him by the hand, she had
distinguished him, and shoAvn the sneerers and  the jeerers
that this pebble was a diamond—what a change would have
been  there.  Justified,  exalted, triumphant,  he would soon
have  shown that in  such  company he  alone was a man, and
the rest—nothing.

                      ------o------


                           II.

          LAST  LOVE.--WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS.

  The great divorce of death is so overwhelming to the Avife,
left alone and  unconsoled, it is so  bitter to her, that she de-
sires and hopes to follow her husband to the tomb. " It will
kill me," she says.
  But alas ! it is but rarely that she can  die.  If the widow
does  not mount the funeral pile of her husband, as they do
in  India, she is in  danger of surviving  him a  long time.
-Nature seems to take  pleasure in humiliating the sincerest,
and doing her a spite, by preserving her in all her youth and
beauty.   The  physical effects  of grief  are various, even
directly  opposed, according  to temperament.   I have seen a
lady buried in grief and  drowned in tears,  hopelessly pros-
trated for life, yet in a flourishing plenitude of health.  Her
entire engrossment in her sorrow, her fixity of grief, had lent
her beauty Avhat it  lacked—a lovely luxury.  She blushed,
she groaned for it, and the shame of her seeming heartlessness
added to her despair.
   'Tis a decree of nature, 'tis the will of God, that this pleas- 
         Last Love.—Women's Friendships.     235

ing floAver shall not fade and die.  She cries for death, and it
Avill not  come;  life is thrust upon her;  she must continue
to be the delight of the Avorld.  Even he Avhom she longs to
follow  forbids the sacrifice.   The  love that  has brought
her so many hopes and so many voavs, Avhich has done so much
to develop her heart and make her an individual,  would not
have her bury it all,  nor  take it out of the world with her.
If it is true love, it permits her, perhaps even enjoins her, to love
again.  Amqng our coast-people, in so many respects superior,
1 have  observed  tAvo things :  that the wife, often anxious, and
always thoughtful, for her husband, loves him and is very faithful
to him; but as soon as he dies, she marries again.  Among our
sailors engaged in the dangerous American fisheries—especially
those of Granville, that town of brave people (where there are
no illegitimate children except those of foreign emigrants), the
woman immediately remarries if her husband does not return.
The step is necessary; otherwise  the  children would  die.
Should the dead come  to life again, he is content that his
friend has adopted and supported his family.
   Even if there  Avere  no children to bring up, it is  impossible
(if only in gratitude) that he Avho had loved her,  whom she
had rendered happy, could Avish to leave her ahvays unhappy.
To-day she says no ;  and she sincerely believes that she Avill,
ahvays be  able  to fortify  herself  by sorroAV and the strength
of her remembrance.   But  he, who knows  her better than
she knoAvs herself, can  easily foresee that a violent  change
in all her feelings and habits is beyond her poAver, that she
must remain desolate.
   Can he bear to look into the future, and see her coming
home  at night, to find no  one there, and to Aveep by her cold
and lonely hearth ?
   If he reflects,  if he has the least knowledge of  human na-
ture, he Avill think Avith compassion of that mysterious suffer-
ing which Ave treat so lightly, but Avhich physicians describe
and deplore.   The craving  for love, Avhich, in a blase man, 
Last  Love.—Women's Friendships.
quickly dies out,  in a  pure woman, on  the contrary, is  pro-
longed, and often  aggravated.   A less rapid circulation, a life
less gay and  less  cerebral, less diversified by fancy, a slight
embonpoint, by which  (even in spite  of her fasting and her
tears) she is strengthened and beautified—all this agitates
and oppresses her.
  The determinations of blood to the head, the extreme ner-
vous  excitements, the  dwelling on  the past, by  which they
have profited so  little, fill their lives Avith pains and humilia-
tions, Avhich are their secret;  they are martyrs to their  own
unprofitable reveries.  Punished by their very virtue, and their
postponed duty, they too often become victims to the cruel
diseases of their time of life.   Or perhaps the poor lonesome
creatures, toys  of fate, for all  their strictness,  fall into some
sudden shame,  at which the world ruthlessly laughs.
  He who has loved his wife and is dying now, should look into
the future for her; for  he  can see better than she can, through
her tears.  He  should  foresee  and prepare for her, should im-
pose no obligations upon her, but rather deliver her from her
scruples—should  even, magnanimously, constitute himself her
father, to liberate the dear child, to direct and instruct her
beforehand, and arrange her future life for her.
  Thus the first union is  never quite dissolved.   It is main-
tained by obedience, by gratitude and affection.  If she  mar-
ries again, far from forgetting him, on the contrary living by
his law, in  the  calm  of her heart  she says to herself, I did
what he wished; whatever happiness is mine  now I owe  to
him.  To his forethought I am indebted  for the  consolations
and the tranquillity of the last love.
  It is for the  highest interest of the widoAV, if she must re-
sign herself to  a  second marriage, to take the  nearest—I do
not mean the next of kin, as in the JeAvish law—but the kin-
dred spirit.   I  mean one Avho loved  the  dead, one a\  ho Avas
part and parcel of the  husband's OAvn soul, and for whom, the
widow, from the very fact that she  once  belonged to him, 
         Last Love.—Women's  Friendships.     237

far from losing, on the contrary possesses additional charms.
That poAver of transformation, inherent in marriage, through
Avhich the woman  at length contains physically and morally
another existence, would perhaps distress the irreproachable
wife,  if the second husband were not identical with the first
in love and friendship.
  Why is the AvidoAV generally prettier than the young  girl ?
Some one  has said," because Love  has  passed over  her."
But he should also have said because " love still abides Avith
her ;" we see in her its beautifying traces.  In cultivating such
a flower time has not been wasted.  Promising but little in the
bud, love has created-from it a rose, a hundred-leaved rose, in
each leaf a seductive charm.  She is all grace, all soul.  Does
possession detract from her attractions ?  No, it rather adds
to them.  If she Avas happy Avhile Avatched over by a Avorthy
heart, render her happy again. In the brilliant freshness of her
middle age, so much richer, you Avill  have little cause to  re-
gret the meagre, frail beauty of her first youth.   Maidenhood,
itself, blooms again in a pure woman whom a tranquil life has
consoled and beautified.   She is innocently  attuned to the
harmony of her two loves.
  Has a man only one life, has the soul but one mode of per-
petuating itself ?   Apart from the persistent influence of our
immortal energy,  do Ave not at the  same time  bestoAv some
emanation from ourselves, upon  the friends Avho receive our
thoughts, and sometimes prolong the dearest affections of our
hearts ?  The gloAving historian AA7ho  inherited the last love
of his master, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, caught a  reflection
from him ; and in  the critical austerity of an eminent historian
of our own time, one may recognise a  great inheritance, if it
be true that he had the glorions  happiness of communicating
with the soul of the eighteenth century, in the person of Ma-
dame de Condorcet.
  Many, either already aged or perfectly free from the   re-
straints of youth, Avould not accept a second marriage. 
238     Last Love.—Women's Friendships.

  An adoption satisfies them.
  The widoAV  can perpetuate the soul of her first husband in
an adopted son, Avhom he may have recommended to her.
Such an interest will fill her heart, and give her an object in
life.  There are so many children Avithout parents, so  many
Avhose parents are far  aAvay.  AYe do not  realize how much,
in our severe  schools, a forlorn child has need of a Avoman's
pity.  For  a lad lost in one of those  immense colleges Avhich
are almost  armies, the best  of good  genii is a lady to keep a
maternal eye upon him, to visit and comfort him, to intercede
for him Avhen he is punished, above all to take him out into the
fields and walk Avith him, and teach him, more perhaps than he
Avould learn in  a week's study, and to watch his play and choose
his playmates.  She will  be still more useful to him when he
is transferred to the high schools.  She will preserve him there
from many perils that  even a mother could not avert; for he
will confide to her a thousand things  of Avhich his more timid
mother would never have knoAAm.   Her skilful tact Avill  guide
him safely  through that intermediate epoch, Avhen the  blind
fury of indulgence sometimes ruins the man.
  A  delicate mission, in truth, which often imparts to the
young man an admirable refinement, though a little effeminate
perhaps—but  Avhich, on the other hand,  sometimes  steeps  a
poor Avoman's  heart in bitterness.  She  finds it difficult to re-
gard herself altogether as  his  mother;  and sometimes she
loves him Avith a different love.  For her OAvn sake, 1 Avould
that this good and tender creature Avould devote herself rather
to the maternal  protection of a class, the most  unhappy and
the least  consoled—I speak of Avomen themselves.
  AVomen, who so Avell knoAV Avhat AvomeTi suffer, should love
and help  each  other.   But they do not; iheir  rivalries, their
jealousies are  so  very strong—an instinctive hostility,  which
even survives  youth.   Few ladies can  forgive a poor  Avork-
woman, or  a servant, for being  young  and pretty;  and thus'
they deprive themselves of a very SAveet  privilege Avhich be- 
         Last  Love.—Women's  Friendships.      239

longs to their condition, and is worth almost as much as love
itself—that of protecting love.  Their happiness should be to
instruct and  advise the  lovers,  to  bring them together, to
make the poor Avorkman  understand that his cafe habits are
more expensive and every way less agreeable than domestic
life.   A word from an influential person will frequently pro-
mote or strengthen love.  Often have I seen a husband, who
imagined that he was sick and tired of his wife, thus reclaimed;
a word in her praise overheard by chance, a gesture of admir-
ation accidentally observed, some exclamation of a third per-
son in envy of his happiness—either  of these sufficed to sIioav
him, what everybody else saAV, that  she was more charming
than ever, to arouse his heart AArhich only slept, and to remind
him that he had ahvays loved her.
  There  are in every household critical hours, Avhich  a saga
cious female friend may perceive or divine, and AArherein she can
happily interpose.   She  " confesses" without confessing the
young woman, directs without directing; and when  the Avife
comes to her, with her heart SAVollen, dumb; and fast locked
on its OAvn trouble, she  gently  unlocks it, unlaces it.  And
then the trouble bursts forth—some  severity of her husband,
his little regard  for her—while another, on the contrary—the
rest may be conjectured.  At such a time her friend "will enfold
her,  and take possession of her.   It  is easy enough, for a wo-
man of intelligence and experience, to take the weeping child
to her bosom, to restrain her, to dispossess her for a while of
her right over  herself.  The unforeseen  happiness of finding
a mother again  may save the young Avife  from some foolish
step, from some reckless vengeance Avhich she would for ever
regret.
  Sometimes with true pride she will not deign to  revenge
herself thus.  She demands a separation—a course too often
pursued noAV-a-days.  Indignant at the first manifestations of
folly in  her high-spirited young husband, Avhich a few quiet
words would have cured, the Avife, especially if she be rich 
240     Last Love.—Women's Friendships.

Avill listen to nothing, Avill Avait for nothing, but flies into a
passion, and insists on going  home.  Her influential family
take her part, and the  servants,  her oavu creatures, testify
against her husband.  She will have her doAvry back, but not
her liberty; though still so young, she is virtually a Avidow.
And can she take back the intimacies she has shared, that
definite communion Avhich  involved  the  yielding of her per-
son,  and which  transformed her ?   Alas, no!  that  she can
never take  back, more's the pity!   Is there, then, indeed  no
alternative—cannot the young man be reclaimed ?  His faults
belong only to his  age, he is  neither wicked nor avaricious.
Let her parents have her dowry then ; it is she alone whom he
loves and regrets.   He  sees plainly and,  especially since he is
separated from  her, that he can never find another to please
him.  And in her Aery  pride, so  fatal to their  happiness, is
there not something to attract love ?
  " Love! we have nothing but love in this world.  To-morroAV
we must die; love then  to-day, for I know you still love each
other!"
  This is what her thoughtful friend says to her, and she does
more than she says. While she caresses and consoles the little
wife at her country-house, she  attires her one day, whether or
no,  and makes her beautiful.   Visitors are coming.  But  for
her only  one is coming, and who  is he ?   Guess, if you can.
" The husband ?"  No, a lover.  In countenance perhaps they
may resemble, but in soul they are  quite different persons.  If
it were the husband, would he manifest such a charming em-
barrassment, so much  love and ardor, so  violent a~ return  of
passion?  Well,  why don't they explain themselves?  Neither
knows Avhat to say; they stammer, they promise, they protest
—in short,  both have lost their wits.
  Their friend laughs, and tells them they haven't even com-
mon sense left.  It is late ; supper is soon over, for " she  has a
headache,'' she cannot entertain them,~and they are very will-
ing to excuse her, ihemselves so exhausted Avith emotion.  The 
Woman Protecting  Woman.         241
neAV lovers may safely be left alone noAv, no danger that they
will quarrel.  Give  them a hearing at your earliest conveni-
ence, but noAAr—let them repose.
  And does it end here ?   No.  The amiable friend Avho has
re-united them is determined that the storm shall not again
cloud their horizon.   So she extracts from them two promises.
First, that they Avill  abandon the influences in which this storm
Avas breAved, for such misunderstandings do not often arise be-
tAveen those Avho love, except from outside, influences.   If one
of the married pair commits an indiscretion it is almost ahvays
exaggerated by the  interference-of some unlucky friend, from
whom they must get aAvay.   Change of place will sometimes
effect a change in everything else.
  Another prevailing evil, which the friend will seek to re-
medy, is  Avant of occupation.  An idle, vacant existence is
necessarily productive of melancholy, morbid reveries, and bad
temper.  To blend their souls and lives together, the husband
and Avife should co-operate, should work together as much as
they can—but at all events Avork;  Avhen apart, each will regret
the other, and suffer a little for being separated; and in that
Avay they will continue to desire each other—full of impatience
for the hour when they shall meet, and longing for the coming
of night.

                      ------o------


                           III.

  WOMAN PROTECTING WOMAN.--CAROLINE  CHISHOLM.

  The fifth  part of the world, Australia, has, up to this time
only one  saint, one legend—an English woman, who died  I
believe this  year.
  Without  fortune or assistance, she achieved more for that
                            11 
242        Woman Protecting  Woman.
new world than the Biitish government and all its Emigration
societies.  The richest and  most poAverful among the king-
doms of the earth, mistress  of the Indies  and  an empire of
a hundred and tAventy millions of men, failed in the coloniza-
tion Avhich Avas to have redeemed her losses, Avhile an unpre-
tending woman succeeded and carried the affair by her own
intrepid courage.
  And in her let us  render homage to her persevering race.
A French or German Avoman might have possessed equal cou-
rage,  and generous pity; but I doubt if she Avould have per-
sisted against so  many obstacles Avith such admirable stub-
bornness in a good cause—such sublime obstinacy.
  Caroline  Jones Avas born  about 1800, on  a  farm in Nor-
thampton county.  At tAventy she Avas married to an officer
in the East India Company, and accompanied  him to India.
Brought up in the decent, serious orthodoxy of English coun-
try life, her lot was cast in those military  Babylons Avhere
license has full sway.  The orphan daughters of the  soldiers
Avere  for sale  in the streets of Madras; she collected them,
and filled her house Avith them; and in defiance of ridicule,
continued her  charitable work,  till  her dwelling became a
royal orphan asylum.
  The health of her husband, Captain Chisholm, demanding a
change of climate, he obtained leave to recruit  for a season in
Australia, and Avent  there in 1838, taking  his Avife and chil-
dren.   But soon obliged to return  to his post, he left  her
there alone;  and it was then that she began her  courageous
enterprise.
  Everybody  knows that Sidney  and Australia were princi-
pally  peopled  by  convicts, and criminals of a class that Avith
us Avould be convicts.  Constant  transportations took crowds
of  men there, but comparatively few women.    You  may
imagine hoAV much these feAV were sought after, and pursued.
Every vessel that arrived loaded Avith Avomen,  Avas Avaited for
at the landing, and saluted with  wild rejoicings, clamorous as 
Woman Protecting  Woman.
the cries of famine.  The most violent and revolting assaults
were  common; even the Avives of the men employed on the
island Avere not safe in their  husbands' absence; and  as for
the transported girl,  she fell among the croAvd like game
that they got on the scent of again.
  To  appreciate the horrors of such a situation, you must
know Avhat an English woman is.   She has none of the address,
the internal resources, the expedients, which characterize our
Avomen.  She does not knoAV how to work; she has absolutely
no  capacity  for any duties  except  the care of children and
housekeeping.  She is very dependent and modest, as she has
no doAvry.   Married,  she  is often beaten;  while  if not mar-
ried she is a wretched creature, without self-reliance, continu-
ally alarmed, and  continually  getting into  trouble;  morally,
she is ahyays falling doAvn  and  hurting herself.  Somebody
has called her " a lost dog," that runs about looking for his
master, and don't know how to make one for himself.
  Even the filles publiques of  England are more to be pitied
than ours.   The French girl  of this unfortunate class, pro-
tects herself by irony, and can make herself in a manner re-
spected ; but the English girl  has not the least resource, the
least defence against her shame, not a word to say—only the
Irish Avomen know how to talk.  She endures her  moral
abasement by drinking gin every fifteen minutes, Avhich keeps
her in a half stupid state, so that she hardly knoAvs Avhen she
is insulted.
  Alas! girls of only tAvelve or fifteen, driven to this mode
of life, and to petty thieving, constituted a large proportion
of those  arrested by the police, and sent Avith hasty trials to
Australia.  They often crowded  them into old  vessels like the
Ocean, Avhich  foundered off Calais, and cast upon our shores
four hundred corpses of Avomen—almost all  so very young and
pretty, that  they Avho  saw them wept and tore their hair at
the sight.
  We can guess what became  of such a human flock, helpless 
244        Woman  Protecting Woman.
as  young lambs,  driven  into  that  community of convicts.
Pursued in the streets of Sidney, they only escaped continual
outrage by  going outside  of the town at night, to sleep on
the rocks, under the beautiful stars.
  Caroline Avas insulted, both  as to her woman's heart and
her English modesty, by this  revolting spectacle.   She ap-
pealed to the authorities:  but they, Avholly occupied Avith the
surveillance of so many dangerous men, had  too much to do
to trouble themselves about those miserable women.   She
appealed to the clergy: but/ the English Church, like every-
thing English, believes too much in the inherent depravity
of human nature, to repose confidence in human  remedies.
She  appealed  to  the press, and provoked from the journals
ironical ansAvers.
  Yet so positively she insisted that it should not cost a cent,
that finally the government magnificently placed at her dis-
posal an old magazine.   In this she  immediately gave shelter
to one hundred girls, who thus had at least a roof over their
heads.  Married women, in the absence of their  husbands,
were permitted to encamp in the court, to be  out of the reach
of night attacks.
  Biit hoAV to feed this troupe of girls, most of Avhom could do
nothing, Caroline, a plain captain's wife, and burdened with
three children, Avas sorely at a loss.  So she explored the coun-
try for married people Avith families, Avho would employ them,
and thus made room for more.  In less than a year she had
saved seven hundred girls: three hundred English Protestants,
and four hundred Irish Catholics.  Many of these married, and
in their turn threAV open their OAvn homes to their poor trans-
ported sisters.
  Having supplied all the families near Sidney,  she had to go
farther for asylums. Travelling is  scarcely practicable  for a
young woman  in a country thus peopled, where the dAvellings,
often  many miles apart, render all public oversight and pro-
tection impossible.  But she was not afraid; mounted  on  a 
Woman Protecting  Woman.         245
 good 1 orse, AAdiich she called  " Captain" (in remembrance of
 her absent husband), she set out in search of charity, travelling
 by the roads sometimes, but often Avhere there were none, and
 frequently crossing rapids.   The boldest feature of these jour-
 neys Avas that she took her young girls Avith  her, sometimes
 as many as sixty, to hire them as servants in families, or to
 marry them.  She Avas everywhere received,  by men  not so
 bad as they seemed, as a very Providence, Avith love and reve-
 rence.  But she never slept except in a sure place, and ahvays
 with  her girls, preferring to pass  the night in  her  badly-
 covered wagons, to being separated from  them.   Then the
 people began to perceive the grandeur, the beauty of her en-
 terprise.  Up to that time they had done nothing;  everything
 Avas  in  a transition state, for  they had continually reneAved
 their  fruitless colonies only to see them  again and again de-
 stroyed. Moreover, there Avas  no improAement in intelligence,
 manners, or customs among them.   Vice remained vice; pros-
 titution Avas  even more shameful  and wasteful  than in Lon-
 don.  The revolution effected by this excellent woman may
 be thus summed  up:  Death to  sterility, and  to unchaste
 bachelorism !
  The Governor had replied to the first petitions she addressed
 to him, "Hoav does it concern me?  Is it my business to find
 Avives for them ? "  And yet everything depended upon that;
 for it contained  the  secret of life, of progress, for that neAV
 Avorld.  So this Avoman, chaste and holy before all men, did
 not hesitate to constitute herself the universal match-maker
 of the colony, a very minister of marriage.  She endeavored
 to advise judiciously as to choice in these hasty matches. But
 Avhat: could she do ?   She believed that in  complete solitude,
 Avhere, there Avas  no third person to intrigue  and  make mis-
 chief,  kind nature Avould arrange everything—the pair Avould
try to love each other;  in time they Avould become attached,
and they Avould end by  adoring each other.
  Especially did she endeavor to bring families together again
v 
 246         Woman Protecting  Woman.

 She Avould assist a young  girl, Avho  Avas well married,  and
 mistress of a house, to send for her parents.  She also sent tc
 England for unfortunate needle-Avomen,-vvho were dying there
 of hunger, as ours are to-day.   And for her recompense, they
 came near  killing her.   The populace of Sidney were indig-
 nant  because she  brought out  so many emigrants,  Avhich
 reduced their Avages.  Bands of ruffians  collected under her
 AvindoAvs  and demanded her life, but she  courageously ap-
 peared  before them, talked to them, and made them listen to
 reason.   They retired, full  of respect  for her.
   At the expiration of seven years she Avent to London to
 convert the ministry to her ideas,  and gave a course of
 lectures to  diffuse them.   Lord Grey, the minister, and the
 committees of the House  of  Lords, saAV fit to  give  her
 audience, and consult Avith her.  Her husband became her first
 disciple, and returned alone to Australia—a rare and beautiful
 circumstance.  This couple, so attached to each other, imposed
 upon themselves a  painful  separation for the sake  of doing
 the more good.  She was on her way  to rejoin him when she
 fell ill, and it is said mortally.   (Blosseville, ii, 170, 1859.)
   Hers  is one of the world's stories, and her memory will
 groAv the brighter with time.
   One "peculiarity which we  must not overlook, is  that this
 inspired woman  Avas of a most practical mind, Avholly devoid
 of chimeras and exaggerations.   She had,  in the highest
 degree, the executive talent; did all her own writing, and kept
in order endless details Of business and personal accounts, aa-ith
the utmost exactness.   And here follows a trait of character
purely English: Believing herself responsible to her husband
and children for the small  family patrimony, she estimated
that,  on the  whole,  notwithstanding the  large  advances
she had made, all  had been returned to  her except a \rery
trifling  sum.  During her  entire  apostleship, she had  impo-
verished her family only to the amount of sixteen pounds.
That was not dear for the making of a world. 
Consolation for  Imprisoned  Women.    247
                          IV.

        CONSOLATION FOR IMPRISONED WOMEN.

  In her Memoires, approved by the Institute, Madame Mal-
let said, in 1845: "Ten thousand Avomen enter our  French
prisons every year.  The  Avorst criminals are treated best;
for they occupy the central establishments.  The less guilty,
to the number of eight thousand,  are placed in branch pri-
sons—damp, dilapidated convents, where they live in  forlorn,
corrupting idleness, Avithout Avork, Avithout linen, and some-
times Avithout beds."  Let us hope that since  that time they
are better provided for.
  Even  in 1840 they were guarded by men! and to this day
a woman arrested and put in durance, is under the protection
of the Avisdom of ten boys, tAventy years old.   (See  the sad
case  of  Oslinda,  tried 14th  of September,  1858.)  In the
general account  of crimes and offences, the  Avomen  number
very feAV (seventeen in a, hundred)—a remarkable fact, seeing
that  women earn  much  less than men,  and are, therefore,
more tempted by poverty. A\Then Ave examine, with Madame
Mallet, into the details  of trials, this number still further
diminishes, and in great  part  disappears.  The majority of
these crimes or  misdemeanors are involuntary.  In  some
instances,  prostitute mothers  beat their children of tAvelve
years, or knock their  teeth out Avith blows  of their  fists, to
compel them to go on the streets, and steal.  In others, it is
the lover,  Avho, though he does not commit the crime himself,
causes it to be committed, by forcing the woman to  steal for
his benefit: if she  refuses he breaks a stick  over her  back.
AVith some, it  is hunger alone that drives  them into evil
Avays; Avith others, it is goodness of heart, and even  piety—
for they prostitute themselves to maintain their parents, and
their vices are entitled to the rewards of virtue. 
248 "   Consolation  for Imprisoned  Women.

  Most of them are  good, affectionate, charitable creatures,
The poor are Avell aAvare of that, and appeal to  them with
confidence and from  choice.   Among these dregs of the city,
there is abundant benevolence; in the country, on the con
trary, much cruelty—the people give a little lest they should
be burned out; but they let their parents die of hunger.
  The true and frequent cause, Avhich drives these Avomen to
a ice, and even to crime,  is  the  ennui and sadness of their
lives.  Yirtue, for a poor girl, means, to sit  fourteen hours
a-day making the same stitch for ten  sous—her head doAvn,
her chest bent, her bench hot and tiresome.  Sedet a'ternum-
que sedebit.   Add to this, in  winter, that miserable charcoal-
pan, all the fuel she  has, though shivering Avith cold—which
is the cause  of so many diseases.  One  fifth of all the female
criminals are seamstresses.
  AYoman, poor  child that she is, requires constant moving
about, constant change of position;  every neAV sensation  is
delightful to her. Still  she does  not need much novelty to
make her happy.  Her paradise is in the trifling variety that
the household affords her, With its many little cares, and the
rearing of children.   Love her—make  her life a little more
pleasant, a little less  fatiguing, and she will do no evil. Take
out  of her  fingers,  for at least  a few hours  in the day, the
everlasting needle, that penance of eternal monotony.  Which
of us could endure it ?
   Madame  Mallet  has thoroughly explored our prisons, for
Avhich she is greatly to be praised.  Would that more of our
ladies Avould  imitate  her, that  they would overcome then
rep agnance, and enter that hell, Avhich, bad as it is, contains
many angels—fallen angels—some of them nearer heaven than
■your comfortable saint.
   The defect of her good book, is its timidity, its caution. 
        Consolation for  Imprisoned  Women.     24^

She approves, and she does not approve, religious superin-
tendence.  She folloAvs the custom of the time and the opinion
of its judges, for the most  part favorable to the "cellular"
system, Avhich produces, by its deficiency of air and light.
emaciated and entirely artificial beings.
  The remedy, on the contrary, is to tear doAvn the walls, and
to let in fresh air and sunshine; for light moralizes.
  Another remedy is labor, under very different conditions—
severe, but someAvhat varied, and lightened with music. (This
plan has been successful in Paris, through  the liberality of
some Protestant ladies.)  Imprisoned  women  are crazy  for
music; it soothes them,  restores their moral equilibrium, and
calms their heart-burnings.
  Leon Faucher has wisely said,  that " Prisoners from the
country, men and Avomen, should be put to field labor, not
immured in your horrible Avails, Avhich are only consumption
factories.  Yes,  set the  peasant to tilling the earth again—in
Algeria at least." I would add, that even the Avorking Avoman
can be very profitably colonized under a semi-agricultural sys-
tem, where, several hours in the day,  she might do  a little
gardening, Avhich would contribute to her support.
  We have no need  of costly penitentiaries at the antipodes,
as the English have.   Let us colonize the shores of the Medi-
terranean. Africa supported the Empire; and sh6 will again
be populous  and fruitful, from the day that Ave seriously try
to render her healthy.
   But the great, the decisive, the sovereign remedy, is—love
and marriage.
   " Marriage! and who would desire that ?"  Many a thought-
ful person.
   Broussais said :  " The disease which is excess of strength
in one man  may  be weakness in  another;  or in a different
temperament, and under different physical circumstances, it h
no longer disease."
   I also think that a person Avho, in the suffocation of our cities,
                           11* 
250     Consolation for Imprisoned Women.

and in a  society so contracted, has sinned by violence and ex-
cess of strength, would  be precisely in  the right place, and
perhaps estimable, in the freedom of the Atlas, or the adven-
turous life of a military colony.   Madame  Mallet  remarks,
that " In general, passionate Avomen, who, excited by rage or
jealousy, have committed a criminal act, are not at all de-
praved."  Place them, then, Avhere they may healthily expend
their energy ;  they Avould  concentrate it on lo\re and a family,
and become the veriest lambs of gentleness.
  And those martyrs, those saints of prostitution, who have
yielded from filial piety or  maternal love—Avho will believe
them irredeemable ?   Ah! those unfortunates, on whom vir-
tue itself has  inflicted such  tortures, may be virgins among
the purest.   Their broken but pure  hearts,  more  than any
other woman's, long  for honor and love;  and none have a
better right to be loved.
  Even the truly guilty, if they are sent out of Europe, and
placed under  a neAV sky, in a land Avhich knows nothing  of
their faults—if they feel that Society, though a mother Avho
punishes, is still a mother—if they see, at the end of their trial,
forgetfulness of the past, and lovTe perhaps—their hearts will
melt, and in their abundant tears they will be purified.
  When I behold those  bald  Mediterranean shores,  those
mountains, arid indeed, but Avhich, retaining their springs, may
always be reAvooded, I feel that twenty new nations might be
founded  there Avith  little difficulty.  Instead  of returning
home a miserable  Avorkman, our soldier may become a pro-
prietor in Africa or Asia.  He will like much better to take,
as a Avife and  helpmeet, not some statue from the Orient, but
a true living wife, a  soul  and a mind,  an energetic French
Avoman, softened by trial and pretty with happiness.
  This is my romance for the future.  It pre-supposes,  I con-
fess,  one condition—that  Medicine  Avill busy itself Avith the
great  objects  of this  century:  the art  of acclimating man,
and  of improving races  by intermarrying  among different 
        Consolation for  Imprisoned  Women.     251

nations, the art  of  harmonizing families by  associating  dif-
ferent  races, conditions,  and  temperaments.   It  requires
more skill to contract marriages for us than for those English
—such as the  marriages that Caroline Chisholm improvised.
I long  for a French Caroline here, Avho, surrounded by the
aids of science, and  enlightened by physicians, Avould  skilfully
place liberated women in the  most advantageous positions.
For example, if  the passionate  Avoman is married, in the ex-
citing air of the mountains, to  a violent  man, Ave must anti-
cipate  reneAved  excesses  on her part; mate her rather in
the plain Avith a quiet man, whose gentle force and noiseless
energy she Avill respect.
  These  are the only reliable  remedies.  The present plan
improves nothing;  the authorities admit that it multiplies
offenders.  (Mallet.)  The silence  imposed upon them in the
central prisons is torture to the Avomen ; many become insane
from it.  And Avhat does  this lady propose ?   To aggravate
this evil, Avhich makes maniacs, by putting them into cells, to
be catechised by a chaplain.
  In general, what  could he bring to bear upon them  but
vague  generalities?  He  does not vary  his discourse ac-
cording to the class and person.   The work-Avoman is only
bored by it; the peasant Avoman does not understand a Avord.
Should one  address a vicious girl, hardened in  guilt, in the
same Avords that he uses to a quick-tempered girl, in nowise
vicious, who has struck  one unlucky bloAV ?   Is even  the best
chaplain, Avhose profession it is to ignore love, the world,  and
life, capable of  understanding antecedents so complicated,
situations so diverse?  Hoav much less the  nuns,  Avho  are
employed as superintendents.   Madame Mallet,  Avho recom-
mends  them, acknoAvledges that they understand nothing of
it—that they hate the convicts, having no idea  of  the  cir-
cumstances that brought them there, nor of the temptations
of poverty.
  Every member  of a corporation is,  by that very  fact, 
 252     Consolation for Imprisoned  Women.

 moulded in certain general forms, in Avhich he possesses infi-
 nitely less  of that special and  individual  character which  is
 everything in the medicine of souls.
   A man, even a layman, with our uniformity of education,
 is much less fitted for this  duty than a Avoman.  I mean a
 Avoman  of the Avorld, Avho has  age and experience, Avho has
 seen and felt much, avIio  knows life, who has more than one
 heart at her finger ends,  who is acquainted AA'ith a thousand
 delicate  secrets that  men Avould never imagine.  "Do  you
 believe,  then, that you  could  find  many  ladies devoted
 and courageous enough to visit these sad  places  often,  and
 come face to face Avith these  unhappy  creatures ?    Un-
 doubtedly, it is a  grand thing to feel that one is  doing good;
 but the strength  to  persevere  is also Arery necessary."  I
 dare say that this necessary strength will be found, not in the
 heart only, but irf the mind. To an elevated, pure, enlightened
 woman, who  has  reached the age when  she may command,
 it is a  marvellously instructive  study, and  in the  highest
 degree affecting, to read  in this living book.  Lay aside your
 drainas and your theatricals—the great play is here. Reserve
 your  interest and your  tears—all  fiction  palls in the pre-
 sence of such realities; so tragic, alas! so delicate also, are
the destinies of these women.  AVill it not be a true happi-
ness  for you, madam, to  gently unravel these tangled skeins
that  I put into your hands, and if it be possible, with your
skill to take  up these  poor broken threads  and hind them
together again ?   O, madam,  the angels would envy yon.
  Angel of goodness, pardon me for speaking  to you on  a
most sad, harroAving, and terrible subject.   But all is purified
in the fire of charity, AA'ith Avhich your heart is agloAv.  Thera
can be no reformation in prisons if means cannot be founa
to restore the state of nature there, and put an end to that
execrable  tyranny of the  strong over the Aveak, who  are
beaten and made sport of.
  All the Avorld knows it, but no one likes to  say it.  A 
        Consolation* for  Imprisoned Women.    253

man of sad memories (of great political faults, but he had a
heart), the man best acquainted Avith prisons, Avhen we Avere
friends, more  than once explained to me, Avith blushes and
tears, that mystery of  Tartarus—those bottomless pits  of
despair.
  The effects are different; the man falls so  low that a little
child can make him tremble, the woman  becomes a fury.
  It is not by walls and dungeon-bars that Ave should put an
end  to that.   There would be instead  only the shameful sui-
cide, the cripple, and the idiot.  What is necessary is air and
labor—fatiguing  labor.  And for the married prisoner, it is
necessary to restore what no  one has  a right to take  away
from him—marriage.  I submit to the lawyers, my illustrious
colleagues of the Academy of Moral Sciences, the folloAving
question : " Does the law, in committing this  man  to prison,
in suppressing the civil effects of his  marriage, mean to con-
demn him to celibacy ?"  As for me, I do not believe it.
  Many of these unfortunate people cling tenaciously to their
families, and continue to make honorable sacrifices for them.
I saAV,  at Mont-Saint-Michael, a convict,  a very skilful hatter,
Avho, in the depths of  his  prison, by depriving  himself of
everything, worked to maintain his  Avife, and  Avaited patiently
for the time Avhen he should be re-united to her.
  The Catholic  Church believes marriage to  be indissoluble ;
then its rights should be permanent. AVhy has she  not expos-
tulated here, in the name of religion, of morality, and pity ?
  The thing has practical difficulties, I  know.   A wise consi-
deration is necessary; Ave should not indiscreetly introduce to
the prisoner a perverse husband, Avho  might  exercise an evil
influence upon her.
  An administration burdened Avith so  many generalities can-
not easily enter into the minute information Avhich this Avould
demand, such as seeking at a distance for information, and keep-
ing up, for one  woman, a delicate and disagreeable  corres-
pondence.  It is here that the services of a Avoman of kind heart 
254        The  Healing  Art  in Woman.

and approved virtues are necessary.   If the prisoner is in a great
city, or not too far off, she should procure Avork for her husband
there, so that the prisoner may have  the pleasure  of  his visits
on such days of the month as the intelligent superintendent
may indicate.  AVoman is love itself.  Give that back to her,
and you may make her all you Avish.  They are worth the trou-
ble ; they retain a great elasticity, are sometimes  exalted and
very capricious in their loving, but neArer  qast doAvn like men,
nor ignobly pusillanimous.  She Avho should bestOAV on this
Aveak flock  one  ray of happiness,  would be so beloved and
adored that she could lead them at her will.  Madame Mallet
understands this Avell;  it is her great means of discipline and
regeneration.  She  advises that  it should be employed—and
that the husband should be admitted to the prisoner.  But she
imposes upon the privilege so many fetters and restrictions, that,
to see him thus would be, perhaps, to suffer still more. If bestow-
ed at all, it should not be grudgingly.  Surveillance, if there is
any, should not  be exercised by officials,  mockers, who would
be all eyes and ears for  their raptures, and Avhose Aery faces
Avould freeze them.  It should be left to the sagacious goodness
of a  reliable and respected lady, Avho will take  everythiug
upon herself, Avhose indulgent  virtue will guard her  poor hu-
miliated sister in her supreme consolation, and who should be
responsible  only to God.


                      ------o------


                            V.

              THE  HEALING ART  IN WOMAN.

   Everybody knoAvs that my good and learned friend, Dr.
Lortet, of Lyons, has the most bountiful heart in the  Avorld, in
its benevolent devotion.   His  mother was, his inspirer.   Such 
The  Healing  Art  in  Woman.        255
as he is she made him.  This lady is a legend of science and
charity.
  The father of Madame Lortet, Richard, a manufacturer of
Lyons, a grenadier, and nothing else, took it into his head,
Avhile in his regiment, to learn mathematics, and soon after-
Avard gave lessons to his officers and others ; and Avhen he re-
turned to Lyons and married, he bestoAved on his daughter a.
similar education.  She commenced exactly like Froebel's ba-
bies, with a study in Avhich children delight, geometry ; arithme-
tic, on the contrary, fatigues them extremely.  She became the
Avife  of a  manufacturer,  leading  an  active  life  of trade.
During the civil convulsions of Lyons, she risked her own safety
for both sides, saving sometimes royalists, sometimes jacobins,
intrepidly forcing the doors of the authorities,  and extorting
pardons-from them.  The terrible exhaustion  that followed
these agitations is Avell knoAvn.  ToAvards 1800, it seemed as ft
the Avorld was coming  to an end.   Senancour  wrote his des-
perate book, LAmour, and Granvdlle the Dernier Homme.
Madame  Lortet  herself, notAvithstanding  her  indomitable
courage, sank amid the  universal  ruin.  A nervous malady
took possession of her, and seemed incurable.  She was then
thirty years old.  The learned Gilibert, whom  she consulted,
said : " Nothing is the matter Avith you.  To-morrow, go with
your child to the gates of Lyons, and collect me such and
such plants."  She could scarcely Avalk ; but she  obeyed.  Next
day he sent her to collect other plants, a quarter of a league
further; and eATery day he  increased the distance—till in less
than a year the invalid had become a botanist, and, Avith her
child of tAvelve years, Avalked  her eight leagues a day.
   She learned Latin, in order to read botanical works and
teach her son.   For  him, also, she studied chemistry, astro-
nomy,  and medicine.   Having thus prepared him  for  the
medical profession, she  sent  him to study  in Paris  and  in
Germany, and she Avas Avell repaid.   AVith the same impulse
the mother and son, during all the fighting at  Lyons, nursed,
• 
256        The Healing Art in  Woman.
concealed,  and served the wounded of both  sides.  In  all
things  she  was associated Avith  the  adventurous generosity
of the young doctor.  If she had lived with him in the centre
of a great  medical  community, she Avould have pursued the
study of medicine, and confined herself less to botany.  Now,
she was the herbalist  of the poor; she would then have been
their physician.
  I have been reminded of all this by Avhat I have uoav under
my OAvn observation.   I am Avriting  in a very beautiful place
on the  banks of the Gironde.   Neither here nor in the neigh-
boring villages is there a physician ; but they are all gathered
in a small tOAvn, by no means central, AAThere they have almost
nothing to  do. Before one can be obtained, and his expensive
journey paid for, the  poor patient dies.  In many  cases the
disease, if  attacked in time, would have been  but a trifle—a
fever, A\'hich a little  quinine  would have arrested—a croup,
which, cauterized at once, would have disappeared; but they
are very slow, and the child dies.  Where is Madame Lortet ?
  An American lady, with an income of a thousand livres—rich,
too, in  heart, and general information, and who, moreover,
had the delicate mind and timid reserve of English modesty—
resolved, notAvithstanding, to give her daughter a medical
education.   In that land  of action and immigration, AA'here
circumstances often carry one very far from the great civilized
centres, suppose  her daughter should marry a  manufacturer,
established on one of  the western rivers; the thousand opera-
tives, the thousands of laborers engaged in clearing the land,
should be provided Avith  medical aid on the spot, and not be
suffered to  die while waiting for a doctor, who, perhaps, would
be a hundred leagues  off.   In those  very severe  Avinters, no
aid is to be expected; and how much less in other countries,
Russia for  example, Avhere the muddy grounds of spring  and
autumn interrupt all communication for at least six months.
  In the United  States, lectures on anatomy are attended by
both sexes indiscriminately.  If prejudice debars them from
• 
The  Healing  Art  in Woman.        257
 dissection, they have a substitute in  the admirable models of
 Auzoux.   He told me that he made  as many of these for the
 United States as for all the rest of the Avorld together.
   Supposing the knoA\dedge equal, who is the best physician ?
 The  one  who  loves most.  This beautiful saying of a great
 teacher would  lead  us to infer that  Avoman is the true physi-
 cian.  So  she  is,  in all  barbarous  nations; there it is  the
 Avoman who knoAvs and applies the  secret virtues of  simples.
 So has she been in  other nations not barbarous, but of high
 civilization—in Persia, for instance, the guardian of all  the
 sciences, and mother of the magi.
   In fact,  man, much less sympathetic, as a result of his phi-
 losophic and generalizing culture, so easily, consoled  himself,
 inspires the sick with much less confidence than a Avoman.
   She  is  more  easily touched, but,  the  misfortune is,  too
 easily—she is  liable to be gravely affected,  to  contract  a
 nervous malady from the suffering  she beholds, and become
 ill herself.  Then there are those cruel, bloody, shocking acci-
 dents, which, at times, it would be dangerous for a woman to
 look upon.  So we must relinquish the pleasing prospect.
 Although woman certainly brings a consoling, healing power
 into the Avorld, she is no physician.
   But how useful would she  be as an auxiliary.  How much
 would her intuition, as to a thousand delicate things, take the
 place of man's education.  In him, instruction  develops more
 than one faculty, but in her it smothers many.  This is espe-
 cially noticeable in the  diseases of women.   To penetrate
 their elusive secret, that mysterious Proteus, one must be the
 Avoman herself, or love her dearly.
   The priest  of medicine requires  gifts so various, and even
 so opposed, that to exercise  them successfully, he  must be
 double, or rather,  complete—a man-woman—the Avife asso-
 ciated Avith the husband, like Madame Pouchet, or Madame
- Hahnemann—or the mother associated Avith the son, like
 Madame  Lortet.  I can  conceive also that  a  Avidow lady  of 
258        The Healing Art in Woman.
advanced age might practise medicine with an  adopted son,
whom she herself has formed.
  AATill our physicians, incontestably the first men in France,
the most enlightened, be Avilling that an ignorant person, whom
they themselves haAre instructed and  taught to  think, should
say what one has in his heart ?   As to that, here is the true
aspect of the case.  To the physician belong two offices, not
sufficiently considered.   1st. Confession—the art of drawing
from the patient those disclosures of antecedent circumstances
Avhich throAv light  on the physical crisis.'2d. Moral  intui-
tion—to complete such confessions, to see beyond them, and
force the patient to deliver up the tiny kernel, often impercep-
tible, which  is at the very bottom of the trouble, and Avhich,
as long  as  it remains  there,  A\ill, in spite of  all  the  most
successful remedies,  continually produce  relapse.
  O hoAV much better could a Avoman, a good woman, not too
young, but Avith a young, emotional, and tender heart (Avho has
tact and patience even in her pity) perform  this office.  Man
is naturally stern.  He must coldly, gravely observe, and decide
from the physical ajmearances and the little the patient may
choose to say.  But if the Avife of the doctor were there, if
she could remain near the invalid, hoAV much more Avould  she
discover!   Hoav  much more would her compassion  elicit,
especially from another woman!  Sometimes a feAV tears would
suffice to melt the ice and get at all the story.
  I had  for a neighbor  at Paris, a collier, about  thirty  years
of age, who had an  estate in Auvergne, and a stall here, Avhich
Avas quite profitable.  In  his OAvn country he  had married a
pretty Auvergne Avoman, rather  short, but handsome, Avhose
countenance, clouded  at times, her  flaming eyes  in a mo-
ment rendered the more brilliant.  She was good enough,  but
she knew that she was much noticed, and Avas not displeased.
They  dwelt in a dirty, narroAv, dark, and unwholesome street.
Sometimes the collier,  young and strong as he Avas, had spells
of fever; and these became more frequent, till  he greAV pale 
The  Healing  Art  in Woman.         259
 and ill.   A good physician, Avhom they called in, explained to
 them that the dampness of their lodgings had caused the fever,
 and that the fogs of Paris Avere  not good for -a man avIio had
 so long  breathed  the  bracing fresh air  of Cantab  He told
 them, also, that he could easily break up the  fever then, but
 that it would soon make its appearance again if the patient
 did not return  to  the  country.   To this the collier said no-
 thing ; and his  fever increased.
   A lady neighbor, Avhom the collier's Avife served with coal,
 saw that, behind the judicious observation of the doctor, there
 was yet something else.  And so she said, " My little friend,
 don't you knoAV why your husband has this fever, and why it
 will stick to  him, and he will have it more and more ?   It is
 because  your pretty eyes are too fond of being looked into.
 And  don't you know why the fever has been increasing for
 some days ?  Because of his struggle betAveen love  and ava-
 rice.  He is afraid he will earn too little  down there ; so he
 Avill stay here and die."
   Neither the man nor his Avife Avould have taken a decided
 step in the matter ; but the lady did take one.  She apprised his
 relations of the true state of the case, and they wrote to the
 collier, that his property Avas in bad hands, that it Avas being
 frittered away, that Avhile  he thought  himself  thriving  in
 Paris he was going to ruin in Auvergne.   This Avoke the man
 up  and settled  the matter.   His fever left him, he gave up his
 little  stall, took his little Avife,  and departed.   Both  Avere
 saved.
   To save others is to save one's self; it  is a great comfort to
 a Avounded heart to  be healed by healing.  The woman who
 has a great sorrow, sharp troubles, and  heavy losses, seldom
 knows what Avondrous  pharmacy, if I may use the  word, is
 in them, for the evils and the pangs  of others.   A poor mother
 has lost a child, and a lady goes  to her and Aveeps.   The
 mother scarcely dares to cry any more—perhaps the lady has
' lost all of hers, and is  left utterly alone ;  while she, for all this 
260        The Healing Art in  Woman.
trouble, has still the happiness to see  around her a beautiful
family.  She has her husband ; she has the consolations of his
loA'e, revived, re-animated by this very loss.   So she compares
herself Avith the lady, and says: "I  have  still a great deal
left."
  We are advancing towards a better time, a time more in-
telligent, more humane.   This very  year  the  Academy of
Medicine has discussed a most important question—the reno-
vation  of hospitals.  They Avould do  aAvay Avith those lugu-
brious structures, reservoirs of disease, impregnated Avith the
miasmas of so  many generations, Avhere sickness and death are
aggravated and multiplied tenfold,  by terrible obstructions;
they would attend  the poor patient at his own  house—an im-
mense  advantage for him, for there they become acquainted
with him, and  see  him in his  needs, amid  the  surroundings
Avhich cause his disease, and renew it as soon as he returns
from the hospital.  Finally, for those  rarer cases, in which it
is necessary to remove the patient, they  Avould erect small
hospitals around the -city, Avhere the  sick person, no longer
SAvallowed up and  lost in  a crowd, would be regarded in  a
different light—would become a man again, and no longer be
a number.
  I never  enter without terror  those old  and gloomy con-
vents, Avhich to this day serve for hospitals.  The admirable
cleanness of the beds,  the floors,  the ceilings, is useless.  It is
the walls I  fear; for there is the  spirit of the dead, the trace
of so many departed  generations.   Do you think it  is for
nothing that so many dying people have fixed on the same
spots their  melancholy eyes and their last earthly thoughts, as
though they saAV some imperious beckoner„there, to whom, in
the words of the Roman gladiator, they said, " Ave, Caesar!
Morituri te salutant!"
  Small, healthy hospitals, outside of the city, surrounded by
gardens, would be  a humane reform—and, first of all, for wo-
men.   Crowds of women are carried off by contagious fevers 
The  Healing Art in  Woman.        261
during confinement, because Avoman is much  more liable to
contagions than man.  She is more imaginative, more quickly
affected by the thought of being there, lost in  an ocean of
disease, among the dying and the dead;  that alone is enough
to kill her.  Her relatives, if she has any, can visit her but
twice a week. The sisters are occupied Avith their professional
duties, and  rather worn out besides  Avith seeing so  much
misery.  The house-surgeon is but a young man—but that is
well; precisely because  he is young and  not yet hardened,
can he, if he is good, effect the most, morally.  And what an
immense amount of instruction may he draw from it all! what
ennoblings of the heart!
  Dr. L., then a young surgeon in a Paris hospital, saw a girl
of twenty, in the last stage of consumption, come into the hall.
No woman  friend had  she, nor relations. In  her  absolute
loneliness, amid that dismal  crowd, in the  shadow of her  ap-
proaching end, she surely saw, Avithout  a  Avord from him to
her, a gleam of compassion in his eyes—and thenceforth she
always watched him, going and coming through the hall, and
never  again thought herself quite alone.  And so, with this
pure and solitary sympathy, she gently departed.  One day
as he was passing, she made a sign.  " What do you wish ?"
he said.  " Your hand,"—and then she  died.  That pressure
of the  hand was not for nothing; it was the token of a passing
soul, and a tarrying soul profited by it. Even before I knew of
this circumstance, in looking on this man, as charming as he is
skilful, I have felt  that he was one of those Avhom woman  has
endowed, and Avho find  treasures of healing in the tenderness
of their  hearts.  The best man  is still  a  man, and  a woman
cannot tell him everything.  There are times especially when
the  patient, doubly  ill, is vulnerable to  everything—weak,
easily  affected, and yet not daring to speak.  She is  ashamed,
then she is afraid ;  she weeps,  she dreams; not even to the
sister of charity, the official sister, can  she tell all; a sworn
celibate she could not understand, and  has no time to listen. 
262                  The  Simples.
No, she needs a good woman, a true Avoman, who knows all
about it, AAdio feels it all, Avho can make her tell  all—avIio Avill
cheer her up, and say to her, " Don't fret, I will go see your
children, I will find you Avork; you shall not Avant hereafter."
Such  a Avoman, as delicate  and penetrating as  she is  good,
Avould also guess what she Avould not dare to tell, that having
just  seen her neighbor die, she is afraid of death.  " Never
fear, you shall not die, my dear; we will save you."  And a
thousand other simple, tender things out of a mother's  heart.
The  sick Avoman is like  a child; you must talk to her as to
a child, and caress and soothe her; a Avoman's caress, her tender
embrace, has often a marvellous poAver.   And if the lady has
influence, authority, acknowledged  intellectual ascendency,
from that position her benevolence is so much the more effi-
cient.  The invalid is very happy in her bed, quickly recovers
strength and courage, and gets Avell, to please her.


                    ------o------


                           VI.

                     THE  SIMPLES.

  The good  often die in solitude, and those who would console
are not  ahvays consoled.  Their sweetness, their resignation,
their harmony, preserve  them longer than they desire.   Too
often does the pure Avoman who has lived only to  do good, and
Avho  should be surrounded and supported when her oavii hour
comes, behold then all friendships and  relationships depart,
and find herself left to approach the  solemn bourne alone.
  But she needs no  support; and by herself she goes.  She
has no thought but to obey God ; she  knoAvs that she  is in
good  hands, and so she  hopes and trusts.  All  that  she still
has of tender and holy aspiration, all that  she  has dreamed 
The  Simples.
263
of, longed for in vain, for the happiness of others, all that she
has planned but failed to execute—in these is tie promise of
the future, through these the entrance to the other Avorld.
  The eloquent Avords of pious men, concerning this solemn
time (the Migrations of Reynaud, and the  Consolations of
Dumesnil), sustain her and give her hope.  In that book of
metamorphoses [The Insect), has she not read: " How many
things are in me Avhich have never been developed!—another
and a better soul, perhaps, which has  not strength to rise.
Why are not these upAvard soarers, these poAverful wings, that
I have  sometimes felt, stirred in  life and action ?  These
delayed germs remain in me, too late for this life, but in time
no doubt for another."
  A Scotchman (Ferguson) has  made this ingenious, but
striking and truthful observation:—" If the embryo, captive
in its  mother's womb, could reason, it Avould say:  ' I am pro-
vided with organs, but they serve me not here—with  legs,
but I cannot  walk—Avith teeth, but I cannot eat; but patience!
for they speak, and tell me that nature calls  me out of my
present life.  A time Avill come, when I shall ahvays live, and
this machinery be busy. Now it rests, it waits—for I am but
the chrysalis of man.'"
  Of  these  prophetic  senses,  the one which  aspires  most,
hesifetes least,  and resolutely promises everything, is love.
" On this globe, love is the true motive for being; sc long as
one loves, he cannot die." (Grainville.)  Such  is earth, and
such man.   How can he come to an end, Avhen he has within
him so profound a reason  for duration ?  AYhy, enriched by
tenderness, by  charity, by  every  sympathy, would  he  have
amassed this treasure of vitality, if so many vibrating cords
Avere to be broken at last ?
  And so she has no fear of  God; but advances peacefully
tOAvards Him, wishing only Avhat He Avishes, but sure of the
life to come, and saying : " Lord, I still love thee."
  Such is  the faith of the heart; but it does not prevent the 
264
Ine  Simples.
feebleness of age and sex from operating occasionally to pro-
duce melancholy hours.  At  such times she goes out to see
her floAvers; and she talks to them, because she trusts them.
Her thoughts grow calmer in such discreet society, for they
are not inquisitive—they smile, but they are silent.   At least
they speak  so  Ioav, these floAvers, that Ave can  hardly hear
them.  They are earth's silent children.
  As she fondles them, she says : " My dumb darlings, in me
avIio have so much to say to you, you may have perfect con-
fidence.  If you brood over some mystery of  the future,
speak! I  will  not tell."
  And one of the Avisest of them, some old sibyl of the Gauls
(vervain  or heather, no matter Avhich), replies :  "Thou lovest
us;  and  Ave, too,  love  thee, and Avait on thee.   We  are
thy  future,  thy immortality  here below.    Thy  spotless
life, thy pure breath, thy sacred  person,  shall return to  us.
And when the superior part of thee, set free, shall spread its
wings, the gift of our friend  will remain to us : thy precious
and  halloAved remains, widowed of thee, shall  flourish again
in us."
  No vain poetry  is  this, but literal truth.   Our physical
death is but a return to vegetable life.   There is but little of
solid matter in this changing envelope; most of it is fluid
and  evaporates. Thus  exhaled,  in  a little while  we  are
eagerly appropriated by the  greedy absorption of herbs and
leaves.   The various world of verdure by which Ave are sur-
rounded, is the  mouth and  the  absorbing lungs of nature,
Avhich has continual need of us, and finds her reneAval in our
physical  dissolution.  She  lies in wait, and is eager.   She
does not let  that escape which is so  necessary to her;  she
attracts it by her love, transmutes it by her desire, and blesses
it Avith happy processes of appropriation.   She inhales  us in
the sprout, and  exhales us in the  blossom.  For the body as
Avell as for the soul, to die is  but to live again.  There is
nothing but life  in this world. 
The  Simples.                 265
  A barbarous ignorance has made  death  a spectre.  The
loathing, the terrors of the grave  should  disappear.  Man,
Avho made the tomb, is afraid of it.   Nature makes nothing
of the sort.  AAny do you  talk to me of shadows, of outer
darkness,  and the cold bosom  of  earth ?  Thank  God  I
can smile at that.   There is nothing there to detain me ;  I
shall hardly leave  my trace  in it.  Go on, then, and pile up
stone, marble, and brass; you  cannot hold me.  Even Avhile
you Aveep, and look for me beloAV, I am already a shrub,  a
tree, a flower, a child of light—and have uprisen to the daAvn.
  Antiquity, so far-seeing, so enlightened, so advanced by a
kind gleam from  God, expressed this simple mystery by ap-
propriate images:  Daphne became a laurel, and was not the
less beautiful for it; Narcissus, melted in tears, remains the
charm of fountains.  This is poetry, but it is no deceit.  La-
voisier might have said it;  Berzelius could not have put it
better.
  Science!  science!  SAveet  consoler of the  world, and true
mother of content, thou hast been called cold, indifferent, un-
sympathetic for  the Moral; but Avhat repose was there for
the heart in the night of ignorance, thick with  chimeras and
monsters ?   There is no joy but in the True, the light from
God.
  The toughest of animal  remains, those which most obsti-
nately preserve  their forms, even shells, yield at  last, and
dissolving into dust and atoms, enter upon the vegetable life.
  Even noAv I have an example of this under  my eyes.  In
the very place Avhere I am Avriting, at that port  of France
where the ocean and the great Gironde meet in a  combat of
love, that  everlasting Avrestle that continually unites them,
the torn rocks give up to the waves  their old stony race, and
become sand.  Then a hundred vigorous plants  fix  their roots
in this sand, to appropriate it to themselves, and take strength
from it; and they become so Avildly fragrant that the traveller
on the road, the sailor in his  bark, inhale  the  odor and are
                             12 
266
The  Simples.
delighted, and the very sea is intoxicated.   What, then, are
these potent plants?   The least, the most  humble  of  our
Gallic simples—rosemary, sage, mint, Avild thyme in abundance
—and so many, so very many immortelles, that  whether they
live  or die is neither here nor there.  Old Gaul hoped and
believed.  The first av ord she ever wrote was " Hope," on an
antique medal; the second, in the great book which inaugurates
the Renaissance :  " Here lies Hope!"
  May not you and I, then, find it in the tomb ?
  But the good, sweet Avoman who is left alone,  who, without
fault of her own, has been betrayed by fate, where shall she
find Hope ?
  Here, among these sands, on this  poor hut perfumed land,
which indeed is  not even land, but only sea sand that  once
lived ;  no earth at all—nothing but life.
  The  poor little soul of all  these marine lives becomes a
flower, and is exhaled in odors.
  In bright, sunny places, screened by oaks from the  north
wind, very late in the season she breathes again in  the fra-
grance and life-giving virtues of simples.   Their wholesome
perfumes, sharp hut agreeable, do not cloy the heart as those
of the  south do.  These,  our spirits,  are  true souls, per-
sistent beings, Avhich convey  to the brain the desire  of life.
The phantasmagoria of tropical plants, their ephemeral qua-
lities, inspire us with languor.  It is only here  in the  north
that a virtuous vegetation counsels us to create  in our Avorks
new reasons for  existing.  And not to exist alone,  but to
continue  in  natural groups—groups of souls—loving and
beloved, acting out together a composite immortality, Avherein
many are united.
  Though  separately feeble, they  combine and  live by force
of love.
  Medicine may laugh at  our simples.   Yet,  though they
act but slightly on constitutions hardened by " heroic " reme-
dies, and burnt by " heroic"  alimentation, they are  enough 
The  Simples.                  267
for sober people, for women of gentle manners, regular habits,
and healthy organs—Avomen sensible and pure in spite of the
times.   Let  woman then  in her innocence trustfully store
them.   It is a  feminine grace to gather and preserve these
treasures of France.
  On stony  hills Avell sheltered, in the early  morning,  she
shares with the bee the rosemary—Avhose blue floAvers flavor
the honey of Narbonne—to  distil from it that celestial spirit
which soothes the most  distracted brain.  Early  in autumn
she gathers berries from the bushes,  in company with  the
bird, beseeching him not to  devour  all, but leave  her  a part.
From these she prepares  those useful conserves, Avhich we  too
easily forget.
  Gentle cares are these, which prolong life and render it de-
lightful.  If the  humbler plants do not ahvays heal the body,
they assuage and fortify the heart, and smoothe for it the broad
road to vegetable existence.
  Every  morning, all alone,  with the  rising of the sun,  she
offers up  her heart to God, and dreams of her cherished past,
and the approaching future;  and then she turns a kindly  eye
upon her  pretty heirs, Avho are so soon to inherit her life;
for these  touching symbols of vegetable love are also those
of our animal absorption—Avhat we call death.   How can we
hate it, fresh and charming  as it is, and SAveeter under  the
turf than the gentlest sleep!   A  worn-out, agitated life expe-
riences among this friendly people the attractions of profound
peace.
  Meanwhile, every good office is fulfilled which a sister may
perform or require, every interchange of friendship  effected.
She waters them herself, covers and protects them in winter,
heaps up around them the  fallen leaves and floAvers, Avhich at
the same  time shelter and nourish  them, and takes what is
her OAvn  from them only with  thanks.   If, Avith  her  still
beautiful hand,  she gathers  fruit from peach or cherry tree,
she smiling says:  "Lend this to  your sister; Avith  all  her
heart, when her turn comes,  she will restore it to you." 
268        Children—Light—The  Future.


                          VII.

           CHILDREN---LIGHT---THE  FUTURE.

  Our cradle impressions are, omnipotent on our death-beds.
Light, that universal mother, by Avhom  the child was Avarmly
caressed  at its life-waking, who  received  it before its own
mother, Avho even revealed its mother to it, in the first inter-
change of glances—light Avarms and blesses its decline, Avith
the mildness of this life's tAvdlight, and the dawn of the future
life.
  AYe have the future, the vita nuova in advance, in the society
of children.  They are already the angels, the pure souls Ave
hope  to see.  Life is so active in these moving flowers, these
eager birds,  so indefatigable  in  their  sport, that  a  sort of
youth seems to emanate from them.   The most afflicted heart,
one that broods most over the lost treasures of its memory,
and cherishes its Avounds, is, in spite of itself, refreshed arid
renewed by them.  Won from itself by their innocent  gaiety,
it exclaims,  astonished: "Is it possible that I had forgotten
all this ?"
  It would seem that God  permits the misfortune of orphan.
age, expressly for the consolation.of childless Avomen.  True,
they  love all children, but much  more those  Avhose affec-
tions  a mother does  not engross.  The unexpectedness, the
lucky chance, of this late maternity, the exclusive possession
of a young heart, happy to recline  on  the bosom of a lovino"
Avoman, is  to  them a  felicity more intense than any other
happiness in nature.  To the joy of being a mother after all,
is added something ardent, like the raptures of the last love.
  Nothing approaches nearer to infancy, or loves it more, than
that second infancy, full  of experience  and reflection, Avhich
we  call old age, and Avhich  by its Avisdom best  understands
the voice of the young age.  By a natural inclination, children 
Children—Light—-The  Future.       269
and aged persons are draAAm toAvard each other—these charmed
by the spectacle of innocence, those attracted by the  indul-
gence they are sure to find.   And herein is  one  of the most
beautiful of earth's harmonies.  To realize it, I should wish—
indeed it is my dream—that orphans might no longer be col-
lected in great establishments, but distributed in  small houses
in the country, each under the moral direction of a lady who
would find her true happiness in her office.  The studies, the
seAving, and the husbandry (I mean a little gardening for the
family, as the Enfants  of Rouen do), should  be conducted by
a young schoolmistress,  assisted  by her husband.   But the
religious and moral part of the education, its freer part, read-
ing for amusement and instruction, recreations and walks,
should be the business of the lady.  For children, especially
for girls, there must be  certain indulgences, a  certain elasticity,
and everything cannot be provided for.   The mistress,  repre-
senting as she does absolute  order, Avould hardly be  the best
judge of these.  There should be by her side the children's
%iend, who  would never decide Avithout the mistress, but
Avould obtain from her such concessions, such reasonable in-
dulgences as nature might seem to require.  A woman of tact
would thus leave to her upon Avhom devolved all the  care and
all the trouble, the honors  of government; but at the same
time  making herself  beloved  by her,  and rendering  good
offices to the whole household, she would exert a quiet influ-
ence, would control without appearing to do so, and at  length
form the mistress herself, and set her OAvn moral seal upon
hen
   Never called upon  to punish—on the contrary interfering
only to soften the severities of discipline—this lady Avould win
the complete confidence  of the little ones.  They would be
happy to open  their little hearts  to her, concealing from her
none of their troubles, none of their faults even—so that she
could advise them.  To know is  everything.  As soon as we
knoAV, and see to the bottom  of the difficulty, we  may, by 
270       Children—Light—The  Future.

modifying habits a little, render punishment superfluous, and
induce the child to reform himself. He will do so by choice—
especially if he Avishes to please and be loved.
  There are, in such a house, a hundred  delicate matters
which the mistress cannot attend to, which require the exer-
cise  of goodness, patience, and ingenious tenderness.  Ima-
gine a child of four years old brought to such a place.  In its
distraction of grief,  the imaginary fears with Avhich  its for-
lornness fills  it, it will be a wonder if it lives.   It must have
some one to  envelop it Avith  kindness  and caresses, and gra-
dually calm it with quiet diversions, until the stricken flower,
torn from its parent stem, shall thrive on  another by a kind
of graft.  This is  difficult, and is never effected by  general
rules.   I saw one of these poor desolates Avho died in a great
establishment at Paris.  The kind sisters had put some toys
on his  bed,  but he  would  not touch them.  He Avanted a
woman to hold him in  her arms, kiss  him, mingle  her heart
with his, and take him back again into the maternal bosom.
  When they live and  groAV, then comes another danger—^i
kind of hardening.  All Avho feel deserted, and knoAV  that
their friends have been cruel to  them, enter upon life by the
iron gate of war, and  are prone to regard society as their
enemy.  Other children fling in  their  faces the odious " bas-
tard ;" and they are soured,  embittered, filled  Avith hate for
their comrades and all human nature.   Thus are they on the
high road to crime, and  in a fair Avay to deserve the  scorn
that at first Avas so  unjust.   Such is misanthropy at ten.   If
the  child is a girl, the  scorn of any one is enough to  make
her self-abandoned, reckless, and ripe for evil.  Oh! for a good
heart to care for her young soul,  to make her feel by tender-
ness all the good there still is in her, to shoAv her that in spite
of her  misfortune the  Avorld is  still her friend, to teach her
to respect herself and honor those Avho love her.
  There comes a time, a peculiarly critical  time, Avhen collec-
tive kindnesses are entirely inadequate, and personal affection is 
            Children—Light—The Future.        271

necessary.   Imagine the poor child subjected to the unfriendly
formalities of a common table, the great croAvded dormitories,
those dreary galleries  Avherein a chilling cleanliness is the
only idea of health: subject to harsh rules,  rising early to
be Avashed  in the  cold, shivering, trembling, yet afraid to
speak, ashamed of her OAvn suffering, and Aveeping, she knoAArs
not why.  Where, at this moment, are the dear old family com-
forts, a mother's heart  melting in sweet caresses, in excesses
of attention, in a  thousand  useful  and  useless  cares—all
around  the  little one an atmosphere of warmth, eager solici-
tudes, and anxious oversight ?  But for mother and family, the
orphan has only the hospital,  Avith its great grim  walls and its
grimmer officials, who,  according to rule,  distribute their ser-
vices indifferently,  fond of no one,  and cold to all.  It is not
easy, especially in those establishments in which order is every-
thing, to be kind without appearing unjust and partial.   Noav
nature demands strict  personality in kindness, that ardor of
tenderness and Avarmth of love with which  a mother  clasps
her  child to her bosom.  Hoav necessary then, that there
should  at least be one friend, some  conscientious, tender,
intelligent woman,  to supply, hoAvever imperfectly, Avhat the
poor thing needs so much.
  And this need is  the more  serious because, just at this time,
that only mother to the orphan, the LaAV, is going to desert
her.  The State  has done its duty, and  now the hospital is
about to exclude the child from its cold shelter and bar its
doors against  her.  She must go forth  into the unknoAvn,
the  vast mysterious World, Avhich to her ignorance seems a
frightful chaos.
  And  Avhere will  you put her ?  In a farmer's family ?  In
some respects that Avould be well;  but those  rude peasants,
Avho  are doing  their  best  to exterminate themselves, will
treat her as they treat  each other, and kill her off Avith labor.
She is but  poorly prepared for so  terrible a life, wavering as
she  still is in her crisis  of transition.  But there are greater 
272        Children—Light—The Future.

dangers  than this for her ; if, for instance, she is draAA'n into
some great industrial vortex, if her lot is to confront the cor-
ruption of cities, that pitiless Avorld Avherein every Avoman is
fair game.  A girl without relatives is so little respected!  Even
the head of the family to Avhich she hasbeen entrusted, Avill often
abuse his authority ;  the man Avill  make  sport  of her,  the
Avomen will drive her in,  the " young gentleman " will run her
doAvn; and so behold her taken.  Otherwise she will find her-
self engaged in an implacable Avar—a very hell—Avhile outside,
there is another hunt, of passers-by and all, and (worst of all)
offriends, Avho attract, console, caress, only to betray her.
  I do not  knoAV  on the face of the earth  anything more
pitiful  than this poor bird, without a nest, Avithout a refuge—
this innocent young flower, ignorant of all things, incapable
of protecting itself—this poor little  Avoman  (for she is one
already),  abandoned to chance, just  at the critical moment
Avhen nature  endoAvs her Avith  a charm and a peril.
  Behold her, alone, on  the threshold of the hospital Avhich
she has never passed before,  and Avhich noAv she steps over
trembling, her little  bundle in her  hand; already tall and
pretty,  and,  alas ! so much the  more exposed,  she goes—
A\rhither ?  God only knoAvs.
  No,  she shall not go !  The good fairy Avho serves her for a
godmother shall save her.   If our orphan, having  led a half
rural life, can support herself,  partly by the needle, partly by
gardening, it will cost the establishment but little to keep for
a Avhile a skilful, industrious young  girl;  Avho can maintain
herself.  And meantime her protectors "will cultivate her, and
complete in her that  sort of education which  will render her
a desirable Avife for some worthy laborer, manufacturer, mer-
chant,  or farmer,  Avho  will find his true safety  in  taking
from such a house, and from such worthy  hands, a girl care-
fully fitted for a life  of toil.  Never having had fireside  or
family, she Avill  so  much the more delight  in  her home,
and, even in  the humblest circumstances,  will be altogether 
Children—Light—The  Future.       .273
happy, a hundred times gayer and more charming than the
young lady who always thinks she is conferring a favor, and
is never satisfied.   At present, our good farmers are at a loss
to find Avives in their OAvn class, or if they do find them they
are ruined; for their Avomen  look higher—to marry a black
coat or a clerkship (that is gone to-morroAv).   They have
not the simple, energetic habits, nor the intelligence, that
the noble life  of agriculture requires.   But  our  orphan,
instructed in all useful things, zealous for her husband, proud
to manage a large farm-house, would make the man's happi-
ness and his fortune also.
  If our good lady were only good, she would simply adopt
the child,  and take this nice  girl home, to make a jewel of
her, that she herself might every hour have a festival of inno-
cence and gaiety in the possession of a  daughter who adored
her, and who, under her hands,  would become an  elegant
young lady.
  But she is wary of that; she  chooses rather to deny her-
self, and not force the child into a condition where marriage
would be  difficult.  Let her but put on a hat some day, and
all Avould  be  lost.  So she leaves her  to her cap, or better
still, her own pretty hair;  she leaves her half peasant, with
all the possibilities of reading and music, as Ave see in Switzer-
land and Germany.  And thus the future is rendered easy to
her;  midway of all, she may easily  rise, or descend, if it be
necessary.
  To see Avhat has not yet come to pass, is a gift of advanced
age, of a  various experience and a pure life.  Now the admi-
rable and delightful woman of whom this book is a biography,
is clearly  impressed with the approaching future of European
societies.  Great and  profound  renewals  there  are to be.
Women and families will necessarily be surrounded by new
circumstances.   AYill the rudimentary woman of " L' Amour,'
or the cultivated lady of " La Femme," suffice ?  By no means.
The latter, herself, clearly perceives that the wife of the com-
                            12* 
274       Children—Light—The  Future.

ing man must be  more complete and  stronger, harmonized
Avith him in thought and action ; and  such she would have
her orphan be.  Her prudent effort,  is to render this beloved
child  different from herself, and ready for  a better state of
things, for a society more masculine  by labor and equality.
  And Avhat then ? is this but a dream of hers ? in the reali-
ties around us Ave note already the forecast shadow, the imper-
fect image, of the coming beauty.
  In the " Backwoods " of the west, on the very confines of a
savage world, the American Avoman—wife or Avidow—who
Avorks and tills the ground all day, in  the evening none the
less reads, none the less explains the Bible to her children.
  Once passing  into SAvitzerland, over the dreariest of fron-
tiers, the fir forests of Jura, I Avas surprised to see in the fields
the daughters of watchmakers, beautiful and Avell-bred girls,
Avell-informed, and quite ladies, working in velvet bodices, at
hay-making.  Nothing could be more charming.   By that amia-
ble alliance of art and agriculture, the earth seemed to flourish
under  their delicate hands, and evidently  the  floAvers were
proud to be handled by a clever person.
  But what impressed  me most, and made me fancy for  a
moment  that I Avas already " assisting " at the  next century,
was a meeting I had, on Lake Lucerne,  with a Avealthy family
of Alsatian peasants.  The picture was in no respect unAVorthy
of the sublime frame in which I had the happiness to see it.  The
father, mother, and young daughter wore, with proud simpli-
city, the  ancient but beautiful costume of their country.  The
parents were true Alsatians, of stout hearts, fair talents, and
wise heads,  square  and  solid; the daughter much  more
French, refined at Lorraine, her iron changed to steel.  De-
cidedly young,  she Avas slender, active, and full of vitality;
Avith a slight figure and yellow arms, astonishingly  strong;
but they were  very brown.  Her father said: "That  is be-
cause she will work in the fields; she lives in the fields, labors
there, and reads there. 
            Children—Light—The  Future.        275

   " The oxen knoAV her well and love her.  When she is tired
she mounts one, and they draw all the better for that.  But
that does  not hinder  the  little one from  reading Goethe or
Lamartine to me in the evening, or playing Weber or Mozart
for me."  I  Avish our lady-patroness of  orphans had  seen
that charming realization of her own ideal.  It is doubtless
tOAvards an analogous or identical type that the world to come
Avill tend.
   To form such  a  treasure, to realize in her that vision of a
pure and  vigorous life, with its fruitful equalities and noble
simplicities, which shall free man, and prompt him to produce
works  of  liberty in the  name of love, is a great religious
act.  For  so  long  as  our  women take no part  in labor and
action, we are serfs and can do  nothing.
   Give that vision to the world, Madam.   Let it be your che-
rished thought, the worthy occupation of your declining years.
Put into it all the graces of your heart, your matured wisdom,
your strong and noble will.  Should you serve God by doing
so much good in the land, with what confidence could yon
return unto Him I
  I picture to myself this beloved lady, on a beautiful winter
day, when the weather is mild; she has had an attack of fever,
and is still weak, but convalescent, and wishes to go down
and sit  in the garden.  Supported by  the  arm of her dear
adopted daughter, she  is  going to  see her little ones  play
again, her children whom  she has not seen  for a week.  As
she approaches their  sports cease, and  her  darlings encircle
her.   She looks upon them, but sees them  only confusedly;
still she fondles them, and  kisses  those  of four or five years
old.  Is she in pain ?   Not at all; but her sight is failing.
She Avishes  most of all  to  see the  fading light, which is
Btill reflected  from  her silver hair.  She gazes in vain, in 
276       Children—Light—The Future.

vain—dimmer and dimmer.  A kind of twilight has tinted her
pale cheeks, andher hands are joined.  Thenher little ones speak
very low:  " Oh!  how she has changed! And how young and
beautiful she is!"  A youthful  smile has indeed passed over
her lips, as though she communed with an invisible spirit.
  For her own spirit, emancipated by God, has taken its free
flight, and soared upwards into light. 
Notes.
* 
 
Notes .
                          ---o----

                           NOTE I.

              The Moral Character of this Work.

                    [See Translator's Preface.]


                           NOTE 2.

        Education, Children's Workshops and Gardens.

  The true exponents of the Middle Ages were Speech and Imitation;
those of the  present age, Action  and Creation.  What  education ia
suited to a creative age ?  That which teaches how to  create.   It is
not sufficient to appeal to the inspiration of the moment (as according
to Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Jacotot, Fourier, Coignet, and Issaurat), but
we must assist the mind to discover the rail on which it may dash for-
ward.  The genius of Froebel has effected this.  When in last January
his amiable folloAver, Madame de Marenholz, explained his system to
me, I saw at once that it was the education for the times, the only true
method.  Rousseau, with his system, creates a Robinson Crusoe, a her-
mit ; Fourier has recourse to the apish instinct, and makes the child a
mere imitator; Jacotot developes the specialty of speech and argu-
ment.  But  Froebel puts an end to all this nonsense, by proscribing
imitation; his system of education is neither external  nor imposed,
but evolved  from the child itself;  nor is it arbitrary.   Thus history has
a new beginning in the child, in the creative activity of the human race.
Read the charming Manual of Madame de Marenholz—not to follow it
servilely, but to derive suggestions from it.  And see the Paris School,
under the direction of Madame Kcechlin. 
280
Notes.
                             NOTE 3.

             Justice in Love, and the Husband's Duty.

   In  this age,  apparently a cold one, love has nevertheless revealed
 itself under countless new aspects of passion.   Never before has  it
 spoken in such mighty tones; never has it so longed for the infinite.
 She was living only yesterday—she who wrote such burning measures
 —she, the muse of eternal love, Avith its tempests and its tears, Madame
 Valmore.
   The striking feature of our time is, that love now suffers and weeps
 for  a profound and absolute possession,  which  hitherto was neither
 desired  nor thought of.   To this demand Science replies with her sa-
 cred revelation: " You long for perfect unity; and you have it already,
' in that absolute interchange of lives, that transmutation of beings which
 constitutes marriage."  But is love satisfied with this ?  No, not  yet:
 the ordained oneness of the flesh is a sacrilege if there be not with it
 a free union of hearts.
   And in order that this may exist, lovers should create in themselves,
 by life-long study, a common basis of ideas, and a language which will
 incite them continually to communicate with each other.   The silent
 tongue of love, its communion, must again assume its sacred function,
 which, ignoring all selfish pleasure, implies the  alliance of two wills.
   The casuist, without heart or soul, has made no stipulation on behalf
 of the woman.  But to-day it is the man himself, who in magnanimous
 justice must plead her cause—even, if necessary, against himself; for
 she has a right to three things:—
   1st. She should never be impregnated-without her unqualified assent.
 It is for her to say whether or not she is strong enough to accept that
 chance  of death.  If she is ill, feeble, or badly  formed, her husband
 should spare her—especially at  the  time when the ovum is exposed
 (during menstruation and  the ten days following).  Is the intermediate
 period sterile ?  It certainly ought to be, since the ovum is wanting;
 but passion may cause its  reappearance.  M. Coste thinks it is in this
 condition for at least three days previous to menstruation, which is also
 the opinion advanced  in  the Memoir approved by the Academy of
 Sciences.
   2d. The husband owes his wife enough of the etiquette of love not 
Notes.
281
to make her a passive minister to his pleasure;  there  should  be none
for him unless shared by her.  A Catholic physician of Lyons, a regu-
lar professor, gives it as his deliberate opinion, in a popular work pub-
lished this year, that the  scourge Avhich decimates  women originates
chiefly in the fact, that the greater part of them, though married, are in
reality widows.  Solitary in pleasure itself, the selfish impatience of
the man, desiring only self-gratification, and  that for a single instant,
arouses her emotions only to disappoint.  To  excite, but always in
vain, is to provoke disease, irritate the body, and desiccate the soul.
The Avife submits to it; but she becomes melancholy and sarcastic, and
her bitterness affects  her blood.  With  the  exception of occasional
business talk, there is no conversation between them; at heart, no mar-
riage.  For  marriage  exists only through the sustained study  of the
heart's duties, in the  interchange  of those salutary raptures which re-
new life. If this be wanting, the espoused pair become estranged, and
ill at ease Avith each other; the children of such a marriage are to be
pitied, for the family is dissolved.  Does the man pretend to be satisfied
with the brief pleasure he takes  by force from  ice  and marble ?  He
derives from it only wretchedness, for though practically a materialist,
his mind has all the requirements of a far-advanced age, which  demands
in everything the very depths of the profound; in a word, he  would
penetrate even to the soul.
   3d. Another  physician, himself an excellent  husband, said to me:
" The best  thing in  your  work  (JJ Amour)  is what  everybody has
laughed at—that portion about the half-maternal duties of love, those
willing offices Avhich suppress the dressing-maid.  That tiresome and dan-
gerous third person is as a Avail between husband and wife, rendering
their relations quite fortuitous;  so that a man gets to visiting  his Avife,
as if she were his kept mistress.   The  advantage of marriage is to be
able to be together at  all times,  and  consequently at those  rare mo-
ments  when your wife—like all women, somewhat cold—may be in-
spired by a natural longing.  Affection and gratitude have much effect
with women in this  respect.  They are much more promptly  moved
by him Avho understands the  management of  their httle mysteries, and
who tenderly nurses them during their periods of weakness.
   If you wish to understand women, remember how, in natural his-
tory, moulting enfeebles, and destroys life among animals.   Terrible in
the inferior species, it leaves  them wholly at  the mercy of their ene- 
282
Notes.
mies.  Man, in whom, fortunately, it is  not violent, changes continu-
ally as to his  skin, and even his internal epidermis.  In his intestinal
processes, day by day he " sheds" part of himself, and is enfeebled by
it.  Woman loses far more than he, having in addition her peculiar
function  every month.   She has at such times, in common with all
animals during their moulting season, a desire to hide herself, but  also
to lean upon something.  She  is the Melusina  of the fairy tale :  the
beautiful fay, who on earth often assumed the form of a pretty,  timid,
little adder, and  hid  herself to cast her skin.   Happy he  Avho  can
soothe his Melusina, who can comfort her, and make himself her  nurse.
Who, indeed,  can supply his place ?  It is profanation to expose her
beloved person, so timid about so innocent a matter, to the tricks of a
silly maid, who Avould make a  jest of her.  Such an extreme of inti-
macy should be  granted  only to him to Avhom it can be a joy and a
favor—a  favor, which  at first costs her some pain, but  which, little by
little, she Avill  find so full  of comfort,  that  she  would on no account
Avithdraw it.   Nature loves habit; and she makes free use of the per-
fect liberties of childhood.
  Those  are happy moments of grace and complaisance, and easy com-
pliance, Avhen  her cherished confidant enthrals  her with his harmless
magnetism.  The  charming humility of her who knows so well that
she is queen, is without defence, and yields without a struggle—in pro-
found  forgetfulness, abandonment Avithout reserve !   Love, hitherto
experienced only  as a half-conscious dream, has now a chance to  assert
itself in complete bliss—in that salutary crisis (so profound with Avoman)
in which  she gives up her very life, to have it returned to her a  thou-
sand fold, in new beauty and  new embellishments according to  the
law of Nature.
                            NOTE 4.

                      Woman in Society.

  What society ?  Past or future ?  I have not spoken of the first,
nor repeated the  history of the Salons, which  is given  at sufficient
length in my Louis XIV.  There is much talk of the good these Salons
effected, none of the good they prevented, of the genius they stifled.
Madame  Henriette  exerted a  happy influence for  ten  years.  But
Madame  de Montespan, by  her viciousness, and Madame de Mainte- 
Notes.
283
non, by  her negative mediocrity,  rendered France barren for forty
years.  The society of the future, we can only imagine.  In the third
book it has been my endeavor simply to point out the  position which
the widow and the single woman will occupy—that of an emancipator,
through  goodness, of all enslaved souls;  for even in a free society
there will always be slaves—slaves to poverty, to age, to prejudice, to
passion.   In a perfectly harmonious community, a great-hearted wo-
man would be the good genius of maternal power, interposing in every
case that the law does not reach,—a supplement to Liberty, a higher
order of  Liberty, a direct interposition of God.
THE END. 
 
IN  COURSE  OF  PUBLICATION.
                THE NOVELS AND  TALES

                              OF

  M.   HONORE   DE   BALZAC.

            Translated from the  Original French, by
      0. W. WIGHT (Translator of Cousin's Philosophical Works),
                              AND
              FRANK B.  GOODRICH, (" Dick Tiuto.")
                          ----o----
                 FROM THE LONDON CRITIC.
  "That de Balzac's novels are immeasurably the greatest works of
the kind that France—indeed, we would add, any other country, has
ever  seen, does not admit  of the slightest dispute.  That they go
deeper into the human heart, represent more truly the human pas-
sions, and reflect  with greater accuracy the phases of human life,
than  any other novelist has ever been  able to do, is admitted  by all
who  know anything about the matter."
           FROM THE LONDON  SATURDAY REVIEW.
  "No  living Englishman has Balzac's extreme vividness of con-
ception.  Nothing contributes so powerfully^to the reality of novels;
and  in Balzac's case, the union of this temper with great dramatic
power, produces an effect  which can only be estimated by a careful
study of his more remarkable works."
                          ----o----
  Published in handsome duodecimo  volumes, each novel complete
in itself, and sold separately or by the set.  Printed from new and
elegant  type upon fine paper with uniform  binding,  designed ex-
pressly for  this work, the series  will be unusually attractive.
                          ----o----
  The  initial volume, " CESAR  BIROTTEAU," will be followed
by   "THE  LILY   OF  THE   VALLEY,"  "EUGENIE
GRANDET," "LE   PERE  GORIOT,"  "ILLUSIONS  PER-
DUES," "BALTHAZAR," etc., etc., etc.
                          ---o----

  price per volume,  in muslin,  gilt back, .  .  .   .   $1 oo
   "    "     "     HALF CALF,  ANTIQUE,   ....    2 OO
                          ----o----
                 RUDD  &  CARLETON, Publishers,
                                130 Grand Street, New York. 
 
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          NEW  BOOKS
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              BOOK OF THE  CHESS  CONGRESS.
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^        WOMAN'S  THOUGHTS  ABOUT WOMEN.
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    ADVENTURES OF  VERDANT  GREEN.
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   CURIOSITIES OF  NATURAL  HISTORY.
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           LIFE  OF HUGH  MILLER.
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    AFTERNOON OF UNMARRIED  LIFE.
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                 SOUTHWOLD.
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             DOESTICKS'  LETTERS.
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                PLU-RI BUS-TAH.
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            THE  ELEPHANT CLUK.
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        THE WITCHES OF  NEW YORK.
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         TWO  WAYS  TO  WEDLOCK.
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     HAMMOND'S POLITICAL  HISTORY.
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   ROMANCE  OF  A POOR YOUNG  MAN.
From the French of Octave Feuillet.  An  admirable
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6              LIST OP BOOKS PUBLISHED
             THE CULPRIT FAY.
By Joseph Rodman Drake.  A charming edition of thii
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          THE NEW AND THE OLD;
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      UP  AND  DOWN THE IRRAWADDI;
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      THE HABITS  OF GOOD  SOCIETY.
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  RECOLLECTIONS OF  THE REVOLUTION.
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             HARTLEY  NORMAN.
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   MOTHER GOOSE  FOR GROWN  FOLKS.
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