ou-frou were innocence itself, Marion de l'Orme were
honesty, Manon Lescaut were purity, Cleopatra were chaste, and Faustine
were faithful.

She is the female Tartuffe of seduction, the Precieuse Ridicule of
passion, the parody of Love, the standing gibe of Womanhood.

* * *

She was always in debt, though she admitted that her husband allowed her
liberally. She had eighty thousand francs a year by her settlements to
spend on herself, and he gave her another fifty thousand to do as she
pleased with: on the whole about one half what he allowed to Blanche
Souris, of the Chateau Gaillard theatre.

She had had six children, three were living and three were dead; she
thought herself a good mother, because she gave her wet-nurses ever so
many silk gowns, and when she wanted the children for a fancy ball or a
drive, always saw that they were faultlessly dressed, and besides she
always took them to Trouville.

She had never had any grief in her life, except the loss of the Second
Empire, and even that she got over when she found that flying the Red
Cross flag had saved her hotel, without so much as a teacup being broken
in it, that MM. Worth and Offenbach were safe from all bullets, and
that society, under the Septennate, promised to be every bit as _leste_
as under the Empire.

In a word, Madame Mila was a type of the women of her time.

The women who go semi-nude in an age which has begun to discover that
the nude in sculpture is very immoral; who discuss "Tue-la" in a
generation which decrees Moliere to be coarse, and Beaumont and Fletcher
indecent; who have the Journal pour Rire on their tables in a day when
no one who respects himself would name the Harlot's Progress; who read
Beaudelaire and patronise Teresa and Schneider in an era which finds
"Don Juan" gross, and Shakespeare far too plain; who strain all their
energies to rival Miles. Rose The and La Petite Boulotte in everything;
who go shrimping or oyster-hunting on fashionable sea-shores, with their
legs bare to the knee; who go to the mountains with confections, high
heels, and gold-tipped canes, shriek over their gambling as the dawn
reddens over the Alps, and know no more of the glories of earth and sky,
of sunrise and sunset, than do the porcelain pots that hold their paint,
or the silver dressing-box that carries their hair-dye.

Women who are in convulsions one day, and on the top of a drag the next;
who are in hysterics for their lo