e home is as perfected and as sacred an economic institution
as the State. To reign over one of those important units, even if deep
in the shadow of the expansive male, to maintain it on that high level
of excellence which in the aggregate does so much to maintain France
at the very apex of civilization, in spite of another code which
shocks Anglo-Saxon morality--this, combined with the desire to gratify
the profoundest instincts of woman, is the ambition of every
well-conditioned French girl.

She would far rather, did the demand of the State for male children
become imperative, give it one or more outside the law rather than
forfeit her chance to find one day a real husband and to be a
component part of that great national institution, The Family. She
would not feel in the same class for a moment with the women who live
to please men and refrain from justifying themselves by fulfilling at
the same time a duty to their depleted State.

III

The women of the noblesse, like the aristocracies of any country, and
whatever the minor shadings and classifications, are divided into two
classes: the conservative, respectable, home-loving, no matter what
the daily toll to rank; and the devotees of dress, pleasure, sex,
subdivided, orchestrated, and romanticized. As these women move in the
most brilliant society in the world and can command the willing
attendance of men in all circles; as their husbands are so often
foraging far afield; and as temptation is commonly proportionate to
opportunity, little wonder that the Parisian _femme du monde_ is the
most notable disciple of Earth's politer form of hedonism.

This is true to only a limited extent in the upper circles of the
bourgeoisie. Some of the women of the wealthier class dress
magnificently, have their lovers and their scandals (in what class do
they not?), and before the war danced the night away. But the great
majority rarely wandered far from their domestic kingdom, quite
content with an occasional ball, dinner, or play. A daughter's
marriage was the greatest event in their lives, and the endless
preparations throughout the long engagement, a subdued but delicious
period of excitement. Their social circles, whatever their birth, were
extremely restricted, and they were, above all things, the mates of
their husbands.

IV

But the war has changed all that. France has had something like a war
a generation from time immemorial, but in modern times, since woma