ndividuals,
to be reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve the appetites of the
base. We must even comprise among those, without fear that they will
be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the milliners, the shop
girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls of the opera, the
ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc. Most of these
creatures excite the passions of many people, but they would consider
it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an ecclesiastic or a laughing
world of the day and hour when they surrendered to a lover. Their
system, justly blamed by an inquisitive world, has the advantage of
laying upon them no obligations towards men in general, towards the
mayor or the magistracy. As these women do not violate any oath made
in public, they have no connection whatever with a work which treats
exclusively of lawful marriage.

Some one will say that the claims made by this essay are very slight,
but its limitations make just compensation for those which amateurs
consider excessively padded. If any one, through love for a wealthy
dowager, wishes to obtain admittance for her into the remaining
million, he must classify her under the head of Sisters of Charity,
ballet-dancers, or hunchbacks; in fact we have not taken more than five
hundred thousand individuals in forming this last class, because it
often happens, as we have seen above, that the nine millions of peasant
girls make a large accession to it. We have for the same reason omitted
the working-girl class and the hucksters; the women of these two
sections are the product of efforts made by nine millions of female
bimana to rise to the higher civilization. But for its scrupulous
exactitude many persons might regard this statistical meditation as a
mere joke.

We have felt very much inclined to form a small class of a hundred
thousand individuals as a crowning cabinet of the species, to serve as
a place of shelter for women who have fallen into a middle estate,
like widows, for instance; but we have preferred to estimate in round
figures.

It would be easy to prove the fairness of our analysis: let one
reflection be sufficient.

The life of a woman is divided into three periods, very distinct from
each other: the first begins in the cradle and ends on the attainment
of a marriageable age; the second embraces the time during which a
woman belongs to marriage; the third opens with the critical period,
the ending with which nature clos