_I._--Not so good. _He._--Let your daughter have masters. _I._--Not yet; it is her mother who looks to her education, for one must have peace in one's house. _He._--Peace in one's house? You have only that, when you are either master or servant, and it should be master. I had a wife--may heaven bless her soul--but when it happened sometimes that she played malapert, I used to mount the high horse, and bring out my thunder. I used to say like the Creator: Let there be light, and there was light. So for four years we had not ten times in all one word higher than another. How old is your child? _I._--That has nothing to do with the matter. _He._--How old is your child, I say? _I._--The devil take you, leave my child and her age alone, and return to the master she is to have. _He._--I know nothing so pig-headed as a philosopher. In all humility and supplication, might one not know from his highness the philosopher, about what age her ladyship, his daughter, may be? _I._--I suppose she is eight. _He._--Eight! Then four years ago she ought to have had her fingers on the keys. _I._--But perhaps I have no fancy for including in the scheme of her education a study that takes so much time and is good for so little. _He._--And what will you teach her, if you please? _I._--To reason justly, if I can; a thing so uncommon among men, and more uncommon still among women. _He._--Oh, let her reason as ill as she chooses, if she is only pretty, amusing, and coquettish. _I._--As nature has been unkind enough to give her a delicate organisation with a very sensitive soul, and to expose her to the same troubles in life as if she had a strong organisation and a heart of bronze, I will teach her, if I can, to bear them courageously. _He._--Let her weep and give herself airs, and have nerves all on edge like the rest, if only she is pretty, amusing, and coquettish. What, is she to learn no dancing nor deportment? _I._--Yes, just enough to make a curtsey, to have a good carriage, to enter a room gracefully, and to know how to walk. _He._--No singing? _I._--Just enough to pronounce her words well. _He._--No music? _I._--If there were a good teacher of harmony, I would gladly entrust her to him two hours a day for two or three years, not any more. _He._--And instead of the essential things that you are going to suppress?... _I._--I place grammar, fables, history, geography, a little drawing, and a great deal of morality. _He._--How easy it would be for me to prove to you the uselessness of all such knowledge in a world like ours? Uselessness, do I say? Perhaps even the danger! But I will for the moment ask you a single question, will she not require one or two masters?