s. Miss
Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa. A flower should
smell sweet, and woman should have wit. I say nothing of Fantine; she
is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person; she is a phantom
possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who has
strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions,
and who sings and prays and gazes into the azure without very well
knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and who, with her eyes fixed
on heaven, wanders in a garden where there are more birds than are in
existence. O Fantine, know this: I, Tholomyes, I am all illusion; but
she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest,
everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light.
O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a
woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second piece of advice: do
not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk.
But bah! what am I saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable
on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not
prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming
of husbands studded with diamonds. Well, so be it; but, my beauties,
remember this, you eat too much sugar. You have but one fault, O woman,
and that is nibbling sugar. O nibbling sex, your pretty little white
teeth adore sugar. Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt. All salts are
withering. Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the
liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then
the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence
death. That is why diabetes borders on consumption. Then, do not crunch
sugar, and you will live. I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest,
rob each other of your well-beloved without remorse. Chassez across.
In love there are no friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman
hostility is open. No quarter, war to the death! a pretty woman is a
casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor. All the invasions
of history have been determined by petticoats. Woman is man's right.
Romulus carried off the Sabines; William carried off the Saxon women;
Caesar carried off the Roman women. The man who is not loved soars like
a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all
those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime proclamatio