The preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France a
floating population of one million women reveling in the privilege of
inspiring those passions which a gallant man avows without shame, or
dissembles with delight. It is then among this million of women that we
must carry our lantern of Diogenes in order to discover the honest
women of the land.
This inquiry suggests certain digressions.
Two young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms
suggest a paver’s tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one
morning on the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.
“What, is this you?”
“Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn’t it?”
Then they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the
nature of the joke which opens the conversation.
When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police
officer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of the
newness of each other’s gloves, of each other’s waistcoat and of the
taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty certain
that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and if they
start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reached Frascati’s
before they have asked each other a roundabout question whose free
translation may be this:
“Whom are you living with now?”
As a general rule she is a charming woman.
Who is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped,
like bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the
passer-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings
which, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air? But the majority
of men take their way through Paris in the same manner as they live and
eat, that is, without thinking about it. There are very few skillful
musicians, very few practiced physiognomists who can recognize the key
in which these vagrant notes are set, the passion that prompts these
floating words. Ah! to wander over Paris! What an adorable and
delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it is the
gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to
live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with ardent eyes,
would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than the cook who
asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with inflated
nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to enjoy life;
it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime
pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque
physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand
existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for
the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their
passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to
the categorical question which is always with us?
“She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more
than twenty!” said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who,
freshly liberated from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.
“Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the
evening!” said a lawyer’s clerk.
“But she has a box at the Francais!” said an army officer.
“At any rate,” cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he
were standing on the defence, “she does not cost me a sou! In our case
—wouldn’t you like to have the same chance, my respected friend?”
And he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.
“Oh! she loves me!” said another. “It seems too good to be true; but
she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah!—Buffon has admirably described
the animals, but the biped called husband—”
What a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!
“Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!” is the answer to a request
discreetly whispered into the ear.
“Can you tell me her name or point her out to me?”
“Oh! no; she is an honest woman.”
When a student is loved by a waitress, he mentions her name with pride
and takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves a
woman whose husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles of
necessity, he will answer, blushingly, “She is the wife of a
haberdasher, of a stationer, of a hatter, of a linen-draper, of a
clerk, etc.”
But this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows in the
midst of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats is always
accompanied with an exaggerated praise of the lady’s fortune. The
husband alone is engaged in the business; he is rich; he has fine
furniture. The loved one comes to her lover’s house; she wears a
cashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.
In short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove
that his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This
distinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become
as indefinite as the line which separates _bon ton_ from vulgarity.
What then is meant by an honest woman?
On this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of
their husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon
some general rules, which are the result of long observation.
Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are
eligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all
are elected to it. The principles on which these elections are based
may be found in the following axioms: