me Leverdet_ [_indignantly_]--You are simply a monster!

_De Ryons_--Oh no, oh no, oh no, I am not!

_Madame Leverdet_--According to your own account, you have no faith in
women.... Wretch! Ungrateful creature! And yet it is woman who
inspires all the great things in this life.

_De Ryons_--But somehow forbids us to accomplish them.

_Madame Leverdet_--Go out from here, my dear De Ryons, and never let
me see you again.

_De Ryons_ [_rising promptly and making a mocking bow_]--My dear
lady--

_Madame Leverdet_--No, I will _not_ shake hands with you.

_De Ryons_--Then I shall die of chagrin--that's all about it.

_Madame Leverdet_--Do you know how you will end, you incorrigible
creature? When you are fifty years old you will have rheumatism.

_De Ryons_--Yes, or sciatica. But I shall find some one who will
embroider me warm slippers.

_Madame Leverdet_--Indeed you will not! You will marry your cook.

_De Ryons_--That depends on how well she cooks. Again farewell, dear
madam.

_Madame Leverdet_--No, stay one moment.

_De Ryons_--It is you who are keeping me; so look out.

_Madame Leverdet_--Let me have really your last word on the whole
matter.

_De Ryons_--It is very easily given. There are just two kinds of
women: those who are good women, and those who are not.

_Madame Leverdet_--Without fine distinctions?

_De Ryons_--Without fine distinctions.

_Madame Leverdet_--What is one to do in the case of those who are
not--good women?

_De Ryons_--They must be consoled.

_Madame Leverdet_--And those who are?

_De Ryons_--They must be guaranteed against being anything else; and
as to that process of guarantee I have taken a patent.

_Madame Leverdet_--Come now, if you are playing in parlor theatricals,
say so. What are you trying to be,--Lovelace or Don Quixote?

_De Ryons_--I am neither the one nor the other. I am a man who, having
nothing else to do, took to studying women just as another man studies
beetles and minerals, only I am under the impression that my
scientific study is more interesting and more useful than that of the
other savant--because we meet your sex everywhere. We meet the mother,
the sister, the daughter, the wife, the woman who is in love; and it
is important to be well informed upon such an eternal associate in
our lives. Now I am a man of my time, exercised over one theory
or another, hardly knowing what he must believe, good or bad, but
inclined to believe in good when occ