nse! The marks that you see on
her neck are not those of a collar of servitude, but those made by the
arms of the husband and the children that clasp her round it.

Women, priests, and poultry have never enough, but in wishing to extend
her empire woman will destroy it.

Now, ladies, what do you want? I hear you constantly loudly demanding
the emancipation of your sex. You say you can do without us, and as for
our protection, you'll none of it. For you, in times past, have we
drawn the sword; to-day you hold us scarce worthy to draw cheques at
your bidding. You would be man's equal, as if you ought not to be
content with being incontestably his superior. You have graces of body
and mind, and men pay you a homage that falls little short of worship.
Your first duties are to be tender, sweet, and beautiful. You have
every intention of continuing to be the latter, we have no doubt, but
you mean to be tender and sweet no longer. In a word, you mean to
strike, as your sisters did in the good old days of Aristophanes.

'You want to be learned? But you are learned in the heart's lore by
Nature. You want to be free? But we are your slaves confessed. You want
to make the laws? But your lightest word is law already. And, besides,
between ourselves, do you not practically make your husbands vote
pretty much as you please in all the parliaments of the world? You want
to have more influence in the higher councils? But are you not
satisfied with knowing that it was a woman who was the cause of the
fall of the human race? that a woman has been the cause of every great
catastrophe, from the Siege of Troy down to the Franco-Prussian War?
that, in a word, woman has ever inspired our noblest actions and our
foulest crimes? The rights of woman! What a sonorous platitude!'

You are proud of saying that to your sex belonged Joan of Arc,
Charlotte Corday, George Sand, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Madame
Roland, Madame de Stael. Quite true; but could you find many men who
would have been happy by taking to wife any one of the ladies I have
just mentioned?

If you give a boy the education of a girl, or a girl the education of a
boy, the result will be an unsubmissive or degraded being. It is always
this result which must be reached by all who, believing that they are
protesting against laws and usages, are really in rebellion against
Nature. 'I dream of a society,' said Jules Simon, 'where women would be
the mistresses in their own house