o start
aside like a steam engine wrecked by an obstacle. The strategies of
love, the coquetting which form half the composition of a Parisian
woman, are utterly unknown here."

"That is true," said Lousteau. "There is in a country-bred woman's heart
a store of surprises, as in some toys."

"Dear me!" Dinah went on, "a woman will have spoken to you three times
in the course of a winter, and without your knowing it, you will be
lodged in her heart. Then comes a picnic, an excursion, what not, and
all is said--or, if you prefer it, all is done! This conduct, which
seems odd to unobserving persons, is really very natural. A poet, such
as you are, or a philosopher, an observer, like Doctor Bianchon, instead
of vilifying the provincial woman and believing her depraved, would be
able to guess the wonderful unrevealed poetry, every chapter, in short,
of the sweet romance of which the last phrase falls to the benefit of
some happy sub-lieutenant or some provincial bigwig."

"The provincial women I have met in Paris," said Lousteau, "were, in
fact, rapid in their proceedings--"

"My word, they are strange," said the lady, giving a significant shrug
of her shoulders.

"They are like the playgoers who book for the second performance,
feeling sure that the piece will not fail," replied the journalist.

"And what is the cause of all these woes?" asked Bianchon.

"Paris is the monster that brings us grief," replied the Superior
Woman. "The evil is seven leagues round, and devastates the whole
land. Provincial life is not self-existent. It is only when a nation is
divided into fifty minor states that each can have a physiognomy of its
own, and then a woman reflects the glory of the sphere where she reigns.
This social phenomenon, I am told, may be seen in Italy, Switzerland,
and Germany; but in France, as in every country where there is but
one capital, a dead level of manners must necessarily result from
centralization."

"Then you would say that manners could only recover their individuality
and native distinction by the formation of a federation of French states
into one empire?" said Lousteau.

"That is hardly to be wished, for France would have to conquer too many
countries," said Bianchon.

"This misfortune is unknown in England," exclaimed Dinah. "London does
not exert such tyranny as that by which Paris oppresses France--for
which, indeed, French ingenuity will at last find a remedy; however, it
has a worse diseas