I.
An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.
II.
An honest woman is under forty years old.
III.
A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest
woman.
IV.
A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.
V.
A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.
VI.
When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand francs,
his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which his fortune
was made.
VII.
A woman who says “letter of change” for letter of exchange, who says
of a man, “He is an elegant gentleman,” can never be an honest woman,
whatever fortune she possesses.
VIII.
An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.
IX.
A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.
X.
The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits
at the cashier’s desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very large
business and she does not live over his shop.
XI.
The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for
an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her
uncle.
XII.
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
XIII.
The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.
By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can
resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.
In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely
educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to
pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of
soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she lives
in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These two
financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to be
reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of our
statistical calculations.
Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of fifteen
thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on pensions,
on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and mortgages.
Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three
thousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs each,
represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget, by the
budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt, church
funds and soldier’s pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances for
washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).
Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the capital
at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the commercial
establishments possible in France.
Here we have a million husbands represented.
But at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty, of
a hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only, from
consols or some other investment?
How many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no more
than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two hundred, or
two hundred and eighty?
At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who
are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?
How many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall we
admit? These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou,
and resemble the sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how many
brokers whose real capital does not amount to more than a thousand, two
thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? Business!--my respects to
you!
Let us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Let
us divide this million into parts; five hundred thousand domestic
establishments will have an income ranging from a hundred to three
thousand francs, and five thousand women will fulfill the conditions
which entitle them to be called honest women.
After these observations, which close our meditation on statistics, we
are entitled to cut out of this number one hundred thousand individuals;
consequently we can consider it to be proven mathematically that there
exist in France no more than four hundred thousand women who can furnish
to men of refinement the exquisite and exalted enjoyments which they
look for in love.
And here it is fitting to make a remark to the adepts for whom we write,
that love does not consist in a series of eager conversations, of nights
of pleasure, of an occasional caress more or less well-timed and a spark
of _amour-propre_ baptized by the name of jealousy. Our four hundred
thousand women are not of those concerning whom it may be said, “The
most beautiful girl in the world can give only what she has.” No,
they are richly endowed with treasures which appeal to our ardent
imaginations, they know how to sell dear that which they do not possess,
in order to compensate for the vulgarity of that which they give.
Do we feel more pleasure in kissing the glove of a grisette than in
draining the five minutes of pleasure which all women offer to us?
Is it the conversation of a shop-girl which makes you expect boundless
delights?
In your intercourse with a woman who is beneath you, the delight of
flattered _amour-propre_ is on her side. You are not in the secret of
the happiness which you give.
In a case of a woman above you, either in fortune or social position,
the ticklings of vanity are not only intense, but are equally shared.
A man can never raise his mistress to his own level; but a woman always
puts her lover in the position that she herself occupies. “I can make
princes and you can make nothing but bastards,” is an answer sparkling
with truth.
If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the
rest of them at the same time. We love with more or less intensity in
proportion to the number of chords which are touched by the fingers of a
beautiful mistress.
Biren, the jeweler’s son, climbing into the bed of the Duchesse de
Courlande and helping her to sign an agreement that he should be
proclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was already of the young and
beautiful queen, is an example of the happiness which ought to be given
to their lovers by our four hundred thousand women.
If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads
which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman
of fashion. Now we all love more or less to be at the top.
It is on this brilliant section of the nation that the attack is made by
men whose education, talent or wit gives them the right to be considered
persons of importance with regard to that success of which people of
every country are so proud; and only among this class of women is the
wife to be found whose heart has to be defended at all hazard by our
husband.
What does it matter whether the considerations which arise from the
existence of a feminine aristocracy are or are not equally applicable
to other social classes? That which is true of all women exquisite
in manners, language and thought, in whom exceptional educational
facilities have developed a taste for art and a capacity for feeling,
comparing and thinking, who have a high sense of propriety and
politeness and who actually set the fashion in French manners, ought
to be true also in the case of women whatever their nation and whatever
their condition. The man of distinction to whom this book is dedicated
must of necessity possess a certain mental vision, which makes
him perceive the various degrees of light that fill each class and
comprehend the exact point in the scale of civilization to which each of
our remarks is severally applicable.
Would it not be then in the highest interests of morality, that we
should in the meantime try to find out the number of virtuous women who
are to be found among these adorable creatures? Is not this a question
of marito-national importance?