ntry
within their clutches, that woman still remains the subject of strange
counter-opinions, each springing from one of the three great movements
to which we have referred. Was it possible that the woman question
should be discussed and woman's political education and marriage should
be ventilated when feudalism threatened the throne, when reform menaced
both king and barons, and the people, between the hierarchy and the
empire, were forgotten? According to a saying of Madame Necker, women,
amid these great movements, were like the cotton wool put into a case
of porcelain. They were counted for nothing, but without them everything
would have been broken.

A married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen out
at service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner; a collision between
these two principles which frequently occurred, produced odd situations
by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little understood, and
what was actually sickness in her, was considered a prodigy, witchcraft
or monstrous turpitude. In those days these creatures, treated by
the law as reckless children, and put under guardianship, were by the
manners of the time deified and adored. Like the freedmen of emperors,
they disposed of crowns, they decided battles, they awarded fortunes,
they inspired crimes and revolutions, wonderful acts of virtue, by the
mere flash of their glances, and yet they possessed nothing and were
not even possessors of themselves. They were equally fortunate and
unfortunate. Armed with their weakness and strong in instinct, they
launched out far beyond the sphere which the law allotted them, showing
themselves omnipotent for evil, but impotent for good; without merit in
the virtues that were imposed upon them, without excuse in their vices;
accused of ignorance and yet denied an education; neither altogether
mothers nor altogether wives. Having all the time to conceal their
passions, while they fostered them, they submitted to the coquetry of
the Franks, while they were obliged like Roman women, to stay within the
ramparts of their castles and bring up those who were to be warriors.
While no system was definitely decided upon by legislation as to the
position of women, their minds were left to follow their inclinations,
and there are found among them as many who resemble Marion Delorme as
those who resemble Cornelia; there are vices among them, but there are
as many virtues. These were creatures as