umbrellas and now like table bells.

_Madame Leverdet_ [_scornfully_]--So you really think you understand
women, do you?

_De Ryons_--I rather think I do. Why, just as you see me this instant,
at the end of five minutes' study or conversation I can tell you to
what class a woman belongs,--whether to the middle class, to women of
rank, artists, or whatever you please; what are her tastes, her
characteristics, her antecedents, the state of her heart,--in a word,
everything that concerns my special science.

_Madame Leverdet_--Really! Will you have a glass of water?

_De Ryons_--Not yet, thank you.

_Madame Leverdet_--I suppose, then, you are under the impression that
you know me too.

_De Ryons_--As if I did not!

_Madame Leverdet_--Well, and I am--what?

_De Ryons_--Oh, you are a clever woman. It is for that reason that I
call on you [_aside:_ every two years].

_Madame Leverdet_--Will you kindly give me the sum of your
observations in general? You can tell me so much, since I am a clever
woman.

_De Ryons_--The true, the true, the true sum?

_Madame Leverdet_--Yes.

_De Ryons_--Simply that woman of our day is an illogical, subordinate,
and mischief-making creature. [_In saying this De Ryons draws back and
crouches down as if expecting to be struck._]

_Madame Leverdet_--So then, you detest women?

_De Ryons_--I? I detest women? On the contrary, I adore them; but I
hold myself in such a position toward them that they cannot bite me. I
keep on the outside of the cage.

_Madame Leverdet_--Meaning by that--what?

_De Ryons_--Meaning by that, that I am a friend of the sex; for I have
long perceived that just as truly as women are dangerous in love, just
so much are they adorable in friendship, with men;--that is to say,
with no obligations, and therefore no treasons; no rights, and in
consequence no tyrannies. One assists, too, as a spectator, often as a
collaborator, in the comedy of love. A man under such conditions sees
before his nose the stage tricks, the machinery, the changes of
scenes, all that stage mounting so dazzling at a distance and so
simple when one is near by. As a friend of the sex and on a basis of
friendship, one estimates the causes, the contradictions, the
incoherences, of that phantasmagoric changeableness that belongs to
the heart of a woman. So you have something that is interesting and
instructive. Under such circumstances a man is the consoler, and gives
his advice; he wipes