elease herself from the
worldly surroundings amid which she suffered, goes on speaking long and
passionately. There is a note of pain in her voice as she says:

"Everything separates us and removes us one from the other, education
even more than instinct. If woman only knew how she lessens her power by
blindly respecting the petty social laws of which she is nevertheless
the sole judge and dictator! Whereas she hands them down meekly, from
mother to daughter, with all their wearisome restrictions, and grows
indignant if some one bolder ventures to transgress them. And yet it is
in this domain, which is hers, that she might extend her power by
gradually overthrowing the old idols."

And she also says:

"Almost always, in defending a woman, we have occasion to strike a
mortal blow at some ancient prejudice. For my part, I must confess that
I take a mischievous delight in bestowing special indulgence on things
which often are too severe a test for that indulgence in others; for,
rather than be suspected of impugning ever so lightly some worn-out
principle, they will wound and wound again the most innocent of their
sisters."

3

It is almost dark. I leave my companions in order to call for the lamps
and I stop near Rose as I pass through the next room. Here, all the
girls are clustered round Hermione, who is telling them a story of her
travels.

Anne and Marie are listening respectfully, while the two inseparables,
only half-attentive, are sharing a box of sweets.

Roseline throws her arms round me and, shrugging her shoulders, says:

"All this strikes me as such utter nonsense!"

She is certainly right, with her Normandy common sense; but does she not
need just a touch of this same nonsense to bring her faculties into
play, her powers into action?

4

When I return to the drawing-room, Blanche calls me with a laugh of
delight:

"Oh, look!" she cries. "I've found a book with a portrait of my beloved
Elizabeth Browning. Look at that sweet, gentle face, surrounded with
ringlets: it's just as I imagined her. I love her all the better now."

They had opened other books written by women and, leaning over the
table, were comparing the frontispiece portraits of the authors,
interesting or handsome, grave or smiling, young or old. Even so do
certain little volumes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries open
nearly always with an engraving faded by time and representing charming
faces all of the same class