that the wise woman will
conceal superfluous learning and especially avoid pedantry, she defines
the limit to which a woman may safely go in knowledge without losing her
right to be regarded as the "ornament of the world, made to be served
and adored."

One may know some foreign languages and confess to reading Homer,
Hesiod, and the works of the illustrious Aristee (Chapelain), without
being too learned. One may express an opinion so modestly that, without
offending the propriety of her sex, she may permit it to be seen that
she has wit, knowledge, and judgment. That which I wish principally to
teach women is not to speak too much of that which they know well, never
to speak of that which they do not know at all, and to speak reasonably.

We note always a half-apologetic tone, a spirit of compromise between
her conscious intelligence and the traditional prejudice which had in
no wise diminished since Martial included, in his picture of a domestic
menage, "a wife not too learned..." She is not willing to lose a woman's
birthright of love and devotion, but is not quite sure how far it might
be affected by her ability to detect a solecism. Hence, she offers
a great deal of subtle flattery to masculine self-love. With curious
naivete she says:

Whoever should write all that was said by fifteen or twenty women
together would make the worst book in the world, even if some of them
were women of intelligence. But if a man should enter, a single one,
and not even a man of distinction, the same conversation would suddenly
become more spirituelle and more agreeable. The conversation of men
is doubtless less sprightly when there are no women present; but
ordinarily, although it may be more serious, it is still rational, and
they can do without us more easily than we can do without them.

She attaches great importance to conversation as "the bond of society,
the greatest pleasure of well-bred people, and the best means of
introducing, not only politeness into the world, but a purer morality."
She dwells always upon the necessity of "a spirit of urbanity, which
banishes all bitter railleries, as well as everything that can offend
the taste," also of a certain "esprit de joie."

We find here the code which ruled the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the very
well-defined character of the precieuse. But it may be noted that Mlle.
de Scudery, who was among the avant-coureurs of the modern movement
for the advancement of women, always pre