MEDITATION III OF THE HONEST WOMAN.

The preceding Meditation has shown that we possess in France a floating mass of one million women, exploiting the privilege of inspiring the passions that a gallant man admits without shame or hiding with pleasure. It is therefore on this million women that we must walk our diogenetic lantern, to find the honest women of the country.

This research leads us to some digressions.

Two well-dressed young men, whose slender body and rounded arms resemble the lady of a paver, and whose boots are superiorly made, meet one morning on the boulevard, at the exit of the Passage des Panoramas. - Here, it's you! "Yes, my dear, I am like myself, are not I? And to laugh more or less spiritually, according to the nature of the joke that opens the conversation.

When they have examined themselves with the insidious curiosity of a policeman who seeks to recognize a report, they are well convinced of the respective freshness of their gloves, their vests and the grace with which their ties are tied; that they are almost certain that none of them has fallen into misfortune, they take their arms; and if they leave the theater of the Varieties, they will not reach the height of Frascati without having addressed a question a little thick, of which here is the free translation: - Who do we marry for the moment? ...

As a rule, she is always a charming woman.

Who is the infantryman of Paris in whose ear he did not fall, like bullets in a day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the passers-by, and who did not seize one of those innumerable words frozen in the air, of which Rabelais speaks? But most men walk around Paris as they eat, as they live, without thinking about it. There are few skilful musicians, well-trained physionomists who know how to recognize which key these scattered notes are signed to, from what passion they proceed. Oh ! to wander in Paris! adorable and delicious existence? Flaner is a science, it's the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate; to flank is to live. The young and pretty woman, long timecontemplated by ardent eyes, would be still more receivable to claim a salary than the rôtisseur who asked twenty sous to the Limousin whose nose, swollen with all veils, aspired of nourishing perfumes. To float is to enjoy, it is to collect traits of mind, it is to admire sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's gaze into the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is all to desire, to possess everything; old man is to live of the life of young people, it is to marry their passions. Now, how many answers has an artist flaneur not heard from the categorical interrogation on which we have remained?

"She's thirty-five, but you would not give her twenty! said a fiery young man with sparkling eyes, who, freed from college, would like Cherubin to embrace everything. - How then ! but we have batiste bathrobes and diamond night rings ... "said a notary clerk -" She has a car and a box for the French! said a soldier. - Me ! exclaims another, a little old, as if he were responding to an attack, it does not cost me a penny! When we are shot like us ... would you be there, my respectable friend? And the walker hitting a light tap of the hand on the abdomen of his comrade. - Oh ! she loves Me ! says another, we can not have any idea; but she has the stupidest husband! Ah! ... Buffon has described animals, but the biped named husband ... (How nice to hear when you're married!) - Oh! my friend, like an angel! ... is the answer of a request discreetly made to the ear. "Can you tell me his name or show it to me?" "Oh! no, it's ahonest woman .

When a student is loved by a lemonade, he names it with pride and leads his friends to lunch at home. If a young man loves a woman whose husband is engaged in a business which embraces objects of the first necessity, he will answer with a blush: "She is a seamstress, she is the wife of a papermaker, a hosier , a cloth merchant, a clerk, etc.

But this avowal of a subaltern love, hatched by growing up among bales, sugar loaves, or flannel vests, is always accompanied by a pompous eulogy of the lady's fortune. The husband alone meddles in commerce, he is rich, he has fine furniture; besides, the beloved comes to her lover; she has a cashmere, a country house, and so on.

In short, a young man never misses excellent reasons for proving that his mistress will soon become an honest woman, if she is not already. This distinction, produced by the elegance of our manners, has become as indefinable as the line at which the right tone begins. What then is an honest woman?

This matter touches too closely on the vanity of women, on that of their lovers, and even on that of a husband, so that we do not establish here general rules, the result of a long observation.

Our million privileged heads represent a mass of eligible for the glorious title of honest woman, but not all are elected. The principles of this election can be found in the following axioms:

APHORISMS

I.

An honest woman is essentially married.

II

An honest woman is under forty.

III.

A married woman whose favors are payable is not an honest woman.

IV.

A married woman who has a car to her is an honest woman.

V.

A woman who cooks in her household is not an honest woman.

VI.

When a man has earned twenty thousand francs a year, his wife is an honest woman, no matter what kind of trade he owes his fortune to.

VII.

A woman who says a letter of exchange for a bill of exchange, souyer for shoe, ivy stone for stoneliais, who says of a man: "Is it a joke, monsieur such! Can never be an honest woman, regardless of her fortune.

VIII.

An honest woman must have a pecuniary existence that allows her lover to think that she will never be dependent on him in any way.

IX.

A woman lodged on the third floor (the streets of Rivoli and Castiglione excepted) is not an honest woman.

X.

The wife of a banker is always an honest woman; but a woman sitting in a counter can only be so long as her husband has a very extensive business, and does not lodge over his shop.

XI.

The unmarried niece of a bishop, and when she lives at home, may be considered an honest woman, because if she has a plot, she is obliged to deceive her uncle.

XII.

An honest woman is one who is feared to compromise.

XIII.

The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.

By applying these principles, a man from the department of Ardèche can solve all the difficulties that will arise in this matter.

For a woman not to make her own cooking, to have a brilliant education, to have the feeling of coquetry, to have the right to spend hours in a boudoir, lying on a divan, and to live a life of the soul, he needs at least a revenue of six thousand francs in the provinces or twenty thousand livres in Paris. These two terms of fortune will show us the number of honest women in the million, the gross product of oure statistic.

Now, three hundred thousand annuitants at fifteen hundred francs represent the total sum of pensions, lifetime and perpetual interest, paid by the Treasury, and that of mortgage rents;

Three hundred thousand proprietors enjoying three thousand five hundred francs in land revenue represent all the territorial fortune;

Two hundred thousand stakeholders, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs, represent the sharing of the state budget and that of municipal or departmental budgets; subtraction of the debt, the funds of the clergy, the sum of the heroes at five sous a day, and the sums allotted to their linen, armaments, provisions, clothing, & c. ;

Two hundred thousand commercial fortunes, at the rate of twenty thousand francs of capital, represent all the possible industrial establishments of France;

That's a million husbands.

But how many annuities will we have at ten, fifty, a hundred, two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs a year, inscribed on the ledger and elsewhere?

How many proprietors do not pay more than one hundred sous, eighty francs, one hundred, two hundred, and two hundred and eighty francs of taxes?

How many budget implementers will we suppose to be poor plumitives who have only six hundred francs of salary?

How many will we admit of traders who have only fictitious capital; who, rich in credit, do not have a penny and look like screens through which Pactole passes? and how many traders who have only a real capital of one thousand, two thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? O Industry! ... hi.

Let us make more fortunate than there is perhaps, and share this million in two parts: five hundred thousand households will have from one hundred francs to three thousand francs a year, and five hundred thousand women will fulfill the conditions required to to be honest.

According to the observations which finish our Meditation of statistics, we are authorized to deduct from this number a hundred thousand units: consequently, we can consider as a mathematically proved proposition that there exist in France only four hundred thousand women whose Possession may procure for delicate men the exquisite and distinguished enjoyments which they seek in love.

Indeed, this is the place to point out to the adepts for whom we write that love is not composed of a few solicitous chats, a few nights of pleasure, a caress more or less intelligent and a spark of self-love baptized with the name of jealousy. Our four hundred thousand women are not among those we can say: "The most beautiful girl in the world gives only what she has. No, they are richly endowed with the treasures which they borrow from our ardent imaginations; they know how to sell dear what they do not have, to make up for the vulgarity of what they give.

Is it by kissing the glove of a grisette that you will feel more pleasure than exhausting the pleasure of five minutes that offer all women?

Is it the conversation of a merchant who will make you hope for infinite enjoyment?

Between you and a woman below you, the delights of self-esteem are for her. You are not in the secret of the happiness you give.

Between you and a woman above you by her fortune or social position, the vanity tickles are immense and are shared. A man has never been able to raise his mistress to him, but a woman always places her lover as high as her. "I can make princes, and you will never do more than bastards! Is a sparkling answer of truth.

If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters them all together. We love because of more or less strings that the fingers of our beautiful mistress attack in our heart.

Biren, the son of a goldsmith, rising in the bed of the duchess of Courland and helping him to sign the promise of being proclaimed sovereign of the country, as he was that of the young and pretty sovereign, is the type of happiness that our four hundred thousand women must give to their lovers.

To have the right to make a floor of all the heads that crowd in a living room, you must be the lover of one of these elite women. But we all like to enthrone more or less.

And so it is on this brilliant part of the nation that all the attacks of men, to whom education, talent, or spirit have acquired the right to be counted for something, are directed. in this human fortune of which the peoples pride themselves; and it is in this class of women alone that there is one whose heart will be defended to the utmost by our husband.

Whether or not the considerations given by our female aristocracy apply to other social classes, what does it matter? What will be true of these women so much sought after in their manners, in their language, in their thoughts; in whom a privileged education has developed a taste for the arts, the faculty of feeling, comparing, reflecting; who have so high a sentiment of propriety and politeness, and who command morals in France, must be applicable to women of all nations and all species. The superior man to whom this book is dedicated necessarily possesses a certain optics of thought which enables him to follow the degradations of light in each class and to grasp the point of civilization to which this observation is still true.

Is it not, then, of great interest to morality to seek now the number of virtuous women who can be among these adorable creatures? Is not there a marito-national question?