APHORISMS.

I.
An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.

II.
An honest woman is under forty years old.

III.
A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest
woman.

IV.
A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.

V.
A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.

VI.
When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand
francs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which
his fortune was made.

VII.
A woman who says "letter of change" for letter of exchange, who says
of a man, "He is an elegant gentleman," can never be an honest woman,
whatever fortune she possesses.

VIII.
An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.

IX.
A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.

X.
The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits
at the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very
large business and she does not live over his shop.

XI.
The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for
an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her
uncle.

XII.
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.

XIII.
The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.

By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can
resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.

In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely
educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to
pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life
of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she
lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These
two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to
be reckoned