rs the reproach of it to the last hour. If her husband is not a man
of a hundred thousand, he some time or other upbraids her with it. If he
has children, they fail not one way or other to hear of it. If the
children are virtuous, they do their mother the justice to hate her for
it; if they are wicked, they give her the mortification of doing the
like, and giving her for the example. On the other hand, if the man and
the woman part, there is an end of the crime and an end of the clamour;
time wears out the memory of it, or a woman may remove but a few
streets, and she soon outlives it, and hears no more of it."

He was confounded at this discourse, and told me he could not say but I
was right in the main. That as to that part relating to managing
estates, it was arguing _a la cavalier_; it was in some sense right, if
the women were able to carry it on so, but that in general the sex were
not capable of it; their heads were not turned for it, and they had
better choose a person capable and honest, that knew how to do them
justice as women, as well as to love them; and that then the trouble was
all taken off of their hands.

I told him it was a dear way of purchasing their ease, for very often
when the trouble was taken off of their hands, so was their money too;
and that I thought it was far safer for the sex not to be afraid of the
trouble, but to be really afraid of their money; that if nobody was
trusted, nobody would be deceived, and the staff in their own hands was
the best security in the world.

He replied, that I had started a new thing in the world; that however I
might support it by subtle reasoning, yet it was a way of arguing that
was contrary to the general practice, and that he confessed he was much
disappointed in it; that, had he known I would have made such a use of
it, he would never have attempted what he did, which he had no wicked
design in, resolving to make me reparation, and that he was very sorry
he had been so unhappy; that he was very sure he should never upbraid me
with it hereafter, and had so good an opinion of me as to believe I did
not suspect him; but seeing I was positive in refusing him,
notwithstanding what had passed, he had nothing to do but secure me from
reproach by going back again to Paris, that so, according to my own way
of arguing, it might die out of memory, and I might never meet with it
again to my disadvantage.

I was not pleased with this part at all, for I had no mind