imous consent of rhetoricians, there
is but one sex the sex, the fair sex, the unfair sex, the gentle sex,
the barbaric sex. We men do not form a sex, we do not even form a sect.
We are your mere hangers-on, camp-followers, satellites--your things,
your playthings--we are the mere shuttlecocks which you toss hither and
thither with your battledores, as the wanton mood impels you. We are
born of woman, we are swaddled and nursed by woman, we are governessed
by woman; subsequently, we are beguiled by woman, fooled by woman, led
on, put off, tantalised by woman, fretted and bullied by her; finally,
last scene of all, we are wrapped in our cerements by woman. Man's
life, birth, death, turn upon woman, as upon a hinge. I have ever been a
misanthrope, but now I am seriously thinking of becoming a misogynist as
well. Would you advise me to-do so?"

"A misogynist? What is that, Signorino?" asked Marietta.

"A woman-hater," he explained; "one who abhors and forswears the sex;
one who has dashed his rose-coloured spectacles from his eyes, and sees
woman as she really is, with no illusive glamour; one who has found her
out. Yes, I think I shall become a misogynist. It is the only way of
rendering yourself invulnerable, 't is the only safe course. During my
walk this afternoon, I recollected, from the scattered pigeon-holes of
memory, and arranged in consequent order, at least a score of good old
apothegmatic shafts against the sex. Was it not, for example, in the
grey beginning of days, was it not woman whose mortal taste brought
sin into the world and all our woe? Was not that Pandora a woman, who
liberated, from the box wherein they were confined, the swarm of
winged evils that still afflict us? I will not remind you of St.
John Chrysostom's golden parable about a temple and the thing it is
constructed over. But I will come straight to the point, and ask whether
this is truth the poet sings, when he informs us roundly that 'every
woman is a scold at heart'?"

Marietta was gazing patiently at the sky. She did not answer.

"The tongue," Peter resumed, "is woman's weapon, even as the fist is
man's. And it is a far deadlier weapon. Words break no bones--they break
hearts, instead. Yet were men one-tenth part so ready with their fists,
as women are with their barbed and envenomed tongues, what savage
brutes you would think us--would n't you?--and what a rushing trade
the police-courts would drive, to be sure. That is one of the go