irreproachable witness, before whom
she would always have remained holy? If you knew how useful the
presence of the child is to the house, you yourself would desire to
keep him. As long as that child remained there, the house was blessed.
In his presence how difficult it is to loosen the family tie! What
completes marriage and the family? The child, the object of their
hopes. Who maintains the family? The child they possess. He is the
aim and the end, the mediator--I had almost said the whole.

We cannot repeat it too often, for nothing is more true--woman is
alone. She is alone if she has a husband; she is also alone even with
a son. Once at school, she sees him only by favour, and often at long
intervals. When he leaves school, other prisons await the youth, and
other exiles.

A brilliant evening party is given: enter those well-lighted rooms; you
see the women sitting in long rows, well-dressed, and entirely alone.
Go, about four o'clock, to the Champs-Elysees, and there you will see
again the same women, sad and spiritless, on their way to the Bois de
Boulogne, each in her own carriage, and alone. These are in a calash,
those at the far end of a shop; but all are equally alone.

There is nothing in the life of women, who have the misfortune to have
nothing to do, that may not be explained by one single
word--loneliness, _ennui_. _Ennui_, which is supposed to be a
languishing and negative disposition of the mind, is, for a nervous
woman, a positive evil impossible to support. It grasps its prey, and
gnaws it to the core: whoever suspends the torment for a moment is
considered a saviour.

_Ennui_ makes them receive female friends, whom they know to be
inquisitive, envious, slandering enemies. _Ennui_ makes them endure
novels in newspapers, which are suddenly cut short, at the moment of
the greatest interest. _Ennui_ carries them to concerts, where they
find a mixture of every kind of music, and where the diversity of
styles is fatigue for the ear. Ennui drags them to a sermon, which
thousands listen to, but which not one of them could bear to read.
Nay, even the sickening half-worldly and half-devout productions, with
which the neo-Catholics inundate the Faubourg Saint German, will find
readers among these poor women, the martyrs of _ennui_. Such delicate
and sickly forms can support a nauseous dose of musk and incense; which
would turn the stomach of any one in health.

One of these young autho