happy and perfect civilization.

* * * * *

Well, if it does, all I can say is that what consoles me for getting old
is the thought that I shall not be there to see it.

CHAPTER XXIX

SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?

This momentous question has been asked, and is daily answered, in a
Paris paper called _La Fronde_, on the staff of which all the writers
are women. This is a very delicate question to ask, and I am not sure
that it is particularly politic to do so on the part of women.

That women take love more seriously than men is a fact which, I believe,
is incontestable; but what would become of women if men were to decide
in the negative and answer that love should not be taken seriously?

Their only protection, their only weapon would be taken away from them.
See what happens in countries, not civilized, I must quickly add, where
men do not take love seriously.

In these countries there is practically no difference between a woman
and a slave, and even a beast of burden. The Arab, the Kaffir, the Zulu,
the Soudanese, can be seen on horseback, or walking majestically with a
blanket slung over his shoulder, while his womankind are following,
carrying a baby on their backs, a pail of water or a cask of beer on
their heads, and the rest of the burden in their hands.

These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as
women, and their greatest source of amusement is to see a white man
carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man!

* * *

They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these
men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women
think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would
probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not
subject, and even enslave, us to women.

Indeed, this would be our right--our Divine right--and women, I repeat,
are very impolitic to compel us to remind them of what happened at the
beginning.

We men have a Divine right to rule over women, and if we use that power
given to us only with the greatest moderation, it is because we love
women seriously.

This love for you, ladies, is your only safeguard. See how imprudent of
you it is to come and ask us if we take love seriously.

Not only do we take love seriously, but I believe that there is nothing
else in this world that is taken so seriously.

Love