oman's
logic two and two may be not four, but a lamp, love, hatred, a cat,
tears, duty, scorn; in brief, you cannot foresee anything, calculate
upon anything, or guard against anything. It may be, after all,
because of these very pitfalls that their virtue is better guarded
than that of other women, if only for the reason that the beleaguering
forces get mortally tired. But what struck me, and what I resented
most, is that those pitfalls, barricades, and the whole array of
defence are not so much erected for the repulse of the enemy as to
give them the sensation of warfare. I spoke of this in a roundabout
way with a clever woman only half a Pole, for her father was an
Italian.

She listened to me for a while, then said at last:--

"It seems to me you are very much like the fox looking at the
dovecote. He does not like, and it makes him wroth, to see the doves
dwelling so high, and unlike the hens, always on the wing. All you
have said tells in favor of Polish women."

"How do you make that out?"

"The more a Polish woman seems intolerable as somebody else's wife,
the more desirable she is to have for one's own."

She had driven me into a corner, and I could not find an answer.
Perhaps she is right, and I look upon it from a fox's point of view.
There is also not the slightest doubt that if I were to marry,
especially a Pole, I not only should search for her among the high
flying doves, but I should choose a perfectly white one.

But I am like the chickens when asked in what sauce they would like to
be served; I do not want to be dished up at all. Now, to return to my
grievance against you, dear ladies, you are before everything in love
with love, and not with the lover. Every one of you is a queen in her
own rights, and in this you differ from other women; every one seems
to confer a boon and a favor in permitting herself to be loved; none
agrees to be only an addition or completion of a man's life, who,
besides matrimony, has some other aims in life. You want us to live
for you, instead of living for us. Last, but not least, you love your
children more than your husband. His final fate is that of a satellite
turning forever round in the same orbit. I have seen this and noticed
it very often in a general way; but now and then there happens to
be found a pure diamond too among the chaff. No, my queens and
princesses, permit me to worship you from a safe distance.

Fancy putting aside all other aims, all ideals,