statistics of marriage so far only set down the number of those
creatures with which society has really nothing to do. Is it not true
that in France the honest people, the people _comme il faut_, form a
total of scarcely three million individuals, namely, our one million
of celibates, five hundred thousand honest women, five hundred
thousand husbands, and a million of dowagers, of infants and of young
girls?

Are you then astonished at the famous verse of Boileau? This verse
proves that the poet had cleverly fathomed the discovery
mathematically propounded to you in these tiresome meditations and
that his language is by no means hyperbolical.

Nevertheless, virtuous women there certainly are:

Yes, those who have never been tempted and those who die at their
first child-birth, assuming that their husbands had married them
virgins;

Yes, those who are ugly as the Kaifakatadary of the Arabian Nights;

Yes, those whom Mirabeau calls "fairy cucumbers" and who are composed
of atoms exactly like those of strawberry and water-lily roots.
Nevertheless, we need not believe that!

Further, we acknowledge that, to the credit of our age, we meet, ever
since the revival of morality and religion and during our own times,
some women, here and there, so moral, so religious, so devoted to
their duties, so upright, so precise, so stiff, so virtuous, so--that
the devil himself dare not even look at them; they are guarded on all
sides by rosaries, hours of prayer and directors. Pshaw!

We will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous from
stupidity, for it is acknowledged that in love all women have
intellect.

In conclusion, we may remark that it is not impossible that there
exist in some corner of the earth women, young, pretty and virtuous,
whom the world does not suspect.

But you must not give the name of virtuous woman to her who, in her
struggle against an involuntary passion, has yielded nothing to her
lover whom she idolizes. She does injury in the most cruel way in
which it can possibly be done to a loving husband. For what remains to
him of his wife? A thing without name, a living corpse. In the very
midst of delight his wife remains like the guest who has been warned
by Borgia that certain meats were poisoned; he felt no hunger, he ate
sparingly or pretended to eat. He longed for the meat which he had
abandoned for that provided by the terrible cardinal, and sighed for
the moment when the feast was over a