Restore their right then to the wives who have no need of your protection, since the law protects them, even against you; to the wives whom you do not maintain, since they bring you either a dowry, or a profession, or services which you would be obliged to recompense if any other rendered them to you. And if to be maintained by another, suffices to deprive an individual of his right, take it away from the host of men who are maintained by the incomes or the labor of their wives. 6. Man, in the exercise of certain rights, is the proxy of woman. Gentleman, a proxy is chosen freely, and is not imposed on an individual; I do not accept you as proxies: I am intelligent enough to transact my business myself, and I pray you to restore to me, as well as to all the women who think as I do, an authority which you use unworthily. If married women, to have peace, are willing to continue you as their authority, it is their business; but none of you can legitimately retain that of widows and unmarried women who have attained majority. 7. Woman has not the same rights as man, because she has no more time than capacity to exercise them. Has woman less time and capacity than your working men, pinned twelve hours a day to their petty and stultifying tasks? Affirm it if you dare! Does it need less time and capacity to make a deposition in a criminal suit, as woman does, than to witness a civil act or a notarial contract, a right that woman has not. Does it need less time and capacity to be the guardian of sons and to administer their fortune, as woman does, than to be the guardian of a stranger or of a nephew, and administer their property, a right that woman has not. Does it need less time and capacity to superintend a manufactory, a commercial establishment, workmen, as do so many women, than to be at the head of an office, or of a public administration, and to superintend its officials, a right that woman has not? Does it need less time and capacity to devote one's self to instruction in a large boarding school, as do so many women, than in the chair of a professorship, as man alone has the right to do? Woman proves, _by her works_, that she lacks capacity and time no more than you. Facts stifle affirmations for which you should blush. Fie! I am glad that I am not a man, lest I might say like things and be led to pretend that an instructress, a literary woman, a woman artist, an experienced female merchant has not the capacity of a porter or a rag-picker because she has not a beard on her chin. 8. The rights of woman are in her beauty and in the love of man. Rights, based on beauty, and on that fragile thing styled man's love! What are these worth, I ask you, gentlemen? Then woman shall have rights if she is beautiful, and as long as she shall continue so; if she is beloved, and as long as she shall continue so? Old, ugly and forsaken, she must be thrown into the car of the condemned to be transported to the guillotine?