9. What is your marriage, _the first form given by Nature to the religion of the human race_, in which woman is an idol who does the cooking and mends the stockings of her priest? What is this institution, in which man is reputed to defend his wife and children with his sword, whom the law defends, even against him? In which man is reputed to support by his labor those who often labor more than he, or who bring him a dowry? _The wife and children are under the jurisdiction of the tribunal of man!_ May the gods preserve us from this frightful return to the manners and customs of the patriarchs and Romans. Women and children are under the jurisdiction of the social tribunal, and it is safer for them: the French wife has not at least to fear that her Abraham will sacrifice her little Isaac, nor that her domestic despot, leaving the child on the ground, like the ancient Roman, will thus condemn it to death. Society has a heart and generous proctors who, happily, no longer see the family tribunal in the same light as Proudhon. It is true that our author is an Epimenides, awaking after a sleep of more than two thousand years. I have finished, Master; have you anything more to say? PROUDHON. Certainly. I have to speak of the sphere of woman. This sphere is "the care of the household, the education of childhood, the instruction of young girls under the superintendence of the magistrates, the service of public charity. We dare not add the national festivals and spectacles, which might be considered as the seed-time of love. "Man is the worker, woman the housewife. "The household is the full manifestation of woman. "For woman, the household is an honorable necessity. "As all her literary productions are always reduced to a domestic novel, the whole value of which is to serve, through love and sentiment, to the popularization of justice, so her industrial production is brought back in conclusion, to the labors of the household; she will never depart from this circle."--_Id._ AUTHOR. Pardon my astonishment, Master, that woman, whose mind is _irremediably false_, who is _immoral_, who composes nothing but _medleys_, _monsters_, who _takes chimeras for realities, who does not even know how to write a novel_, knows how, notwithstanding, by your own admission, to write a novel in order to popularize justice through sentiment and love. She therefore comprehends, feels, and loves justice? I remark next, that the cares of the household are _labor_; That education is _labor_; That the service of public charity is _labor_; That the arrangement and superintendence of festivals and spectacles presume varied _labors_; That to popularize justice through a domestic novel is _labor_;