II.

LONELINESS OF WOMAN.--EASY DEVOTION.--WORLDLY THEOLOGY OF THE JESUITS
AND HOME.--WOMEN AND CHILDREN ADVANTAGEOUSLY MADE USE OF.--WAR OF
THIRTY YEARS, 1618-1648.--GALLANT DEVOTION.--DEVOUT NOVELS.--CASUISTS.

Hitherto we have spoken of a rare exception--the life of a woman full
of action, and doubly employed; as a saint and foundress, but
especially as a wife, the mother of a family, and prudent housewife.
The biographers of Madame de Chantal remark, as a singular thing, that
in both conditions, as wife and as widow, she conducted her own
household herself, directed her dependents, and administered the
property of her husband, her father, and her children.

This indeed was becoming rare. The taste for household and domestic
cares which we find everywhere in the sixteenth century, but especially
among citizens and the families of the Bar, grows much weaker in the
seventeenth, when every one desires to live in great style.

The absence of occupation is a taste of the period, proceeding also
from the state of things. All society is ever idle on the morrow of
religious wars, each local action has ceased, and central life, that is
to say, court life, has hardly begun. The nobility have finished their
adventures, and hung up their swords; the citizens have nothing further
to do, being no longer engaged in plots, seditions, or armed
processions. The _ennui_ of this want of occupation falls particularly
heavy upon woman; she is about to become at once unoccupied and lonely.
In the sixteenth century she was kept in communication with man by the
vital questions that were debated, even in her family, by common
dangers, fears, and hopes. But there was nothing of the sort in the
seventeenth century.

Add to this a more serious circumstance which is likely to increase in
the following ages; namely, that in every profession the spirit of
speciality and detail, which gradually absorbs man, has the effect of
insulating him in his family, and of making him, as it were, a mute
being for his wife and kindred. He no longer communicates to them his
daily thoughts; and they can understand nothing of the minute
intricacies and petty technical problems which occupy his mind.

But, at least, woman has still her children to console her? No; at the
time we are now speaking of, the mansion, silent and empty, is no
longer kept alive by the noise of children; instruction at home is now
an exception, and gives way daily to the fashi