unknown. Love is her religion; she thinks how to please the
one she loves. To be beloved is the end of all her actions; to excite
desire is the motive of every gesture. She dreams of nothing excepting
how she may shine, and moves only in a circle filled with grace and
elegance. It is for her the Indian girl has spun the soft fleece of
Thibet goats, Tarare weaves its airy veils, Brussels sets in motion
those shuttles which speed the flaxen thread that is purest and most
fine, Bidjapour wrenches from the bowels of the earth its sparkling
pebbles, and the Sevres gilds its snow-white clay. Night and day she
reflects upon new costumes and spends her life in considering dress and
in plaiting her apparel. She moves about exhibiting her brightness and
freshness to people she does not know, but whose homage flatters her,
while the desire she excites charms her, though she is indifferent to
those who feel it. During the hours which she spends in private, in
pleasure, and in the care of her person, she amuses herself by caroling
the sweetest strains. For her France and Italy ordain delightful
concerts and Naples imparts to the strings of the violin an harmonious
soul. This species is in fine at once the queen of the world and the
slave of passion. She dreads marriage because it ends by spoiling her
figure, but she surrenders herself to it because it promises happiness.
If she bears children it is by pure chance, and when they are grown up
she tries to conceal them.

These characteristics taken at random from among a thousand others are
not found amongst those beings whose hands are as black as those of apes
and their skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an _olim_; whose
complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like
that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice is hoarse;
whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the bread box,
and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who dig; who
harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the bread and
strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and men, dwell
in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; to whom it is of little
importance from what source children rain down into their homes. Their
work it is to produce many and to deliver them to misery and toil, and
if their love is not like their labor in the fields it is at least as
much a work of chance.

Alas! if there are throughout the world m