e Colleville, who was for long attached to one of the famous
orators of the left, Keller the banker. Others are spurred by vanity,
like Madame de la Baudraye, who remained almost respectable in spite of
her elopement with Lousteau. Some, again, are led astray by the love of
fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of keeping a house going
on obviously too narrow means. The stinginess of the State--or of
Parliament--leads to many disasters and to much corruption.

At the present moment the laboring classes are the fashionable object
of compassion; they are being murdered--it is said--by the manufacturing
capitalist; but the Government is a hundred times harder than the
meanest tradesman, it carries its economy in the article of salaries to
absolute folly. If you work harder, the merchant will pay you more in
proportion; but what does the State do for its crowd of obscure and
devoted toilers?

In a married woman it is an inexcusable crime when she wanders from the
path of honor; still, there are degrees even in such a case. Some
women, far from being depraved, conceal their fall and remain to all
appearances quite respectable, like those two just referred to, while
others add to their fault the disgrace of speculation. Thus Madame
Marneffe is, as it were, the type of those ambitious married courtesans
who from the first accept depravity with all its consequences, and
determine to make a fortune while taking their pleasure, perfectly
unscrupulous as to the means. But almost always a woman like Madame
Marneffe has a husband who is her confederate and accomplice. These
Machiavellis in petticoats are the most dangerous of the sisterhood; of
every evil class of Parisian woman, they are the worst.

A mere courtesan--a Josepha, a Malaga, a Madame Schontz, a Jenny
Cadine--carries in her frank dishonor a warning signal as conspicuous as
the red lamp of a house of ill-fame or the flaring lights of a gambling
hell. A man knows that they light him to his ruin.

But mealy-mouthed propriety, the semblance of virtue, the hypocritical
ways of a married woman who never allows anything to be seen but the
vulgar needs of the household, and affects to refuse every kind of
extravagance, leads to silent ruin, dumb disaster, which is all the more
startling because, though condoned, it remains unaccounted for. It is
the ignoble bill of daily expenses and not gay dissipation that devours
the largest fortune. The father of a family ruins him