Nevertheless, seeing that woman was given to us for our companion, more or less with our consent, why should we not be able to say to her politely, amiably, but frankly, addressing her collectively in her person: Come, ladies, let us see if we cannot arrive at some understanding. What do you want? I hear you constantly loudly demanding the emancipation of your sex. You can do without us; and as for our protection, henceforth you'll none of it. For you, in times past, have we drawn the sword; to-day you hold us scarce worthy to draw cheques at your bidding. You would be man's equal, as if you ought not to be amply content with being incontestably his superior. You have graces of body and mind, in a word, you are angels, men pay you a homage that falls little short of worship. Do you crave fresh duties that you may place man under new obligations? He will go bankrupt, I assure you. Your first duties are to be tender, true, and fair to see. You have every intention of continuing to be the latter, we have no doubt, but you mean to be tender and sweet no longer. You mean to strike, as your sisters did in the days of Aristophanes. Now, on what terms will you reinstate us in your good graces? Will you change lots with us? I do not suppose we should offer much opposition to that; for if we Frenchmen have the bump of amativeness, we pay dearly enough for it to prevent our being likely to be proud of it. Does it not seem to you that, all things considered, you have the more enviable lot? Dispensers of happiness, have you not the world at your feet? You want to be learned? But you are learned, in the heart's lore, by nature. You want to be free? But we are your slaves confessed. You want to make the laws? But your lightest word is law already. And besides, between ourselves, do you not make your husbands vote pretty much as you please, in the Chamber of Deputies? You want to have more influence in the higher councils? But are you not satisfied with knowing that it was a woman who was the cause of the fall of the human race; that a woman has been the cause of every great catastrophe from the siege of Troy down to the Franco-Prussian war; that, in a word, woman has ever inspired our noblest actions and our foulest crimes? You are proud of saying that to your sex belonged Joan of Arc, Jane Hachette, Charlotte Corday, Madame de Staël, and George Sand. Quite true; but, as I have had the honour of telling you before, woman was intended to be a companion for man. Now could you find me many gentlemen who would have been happy to take to wife anyone of the ladies I have just mentioned? The rights of woman! what a fine phrase! what a pretty farce! what a sonorous platitude! No, dear ladies, be not led away by those spectacled blue-stockings who seek to estrange us from one another. The more you try to resemble us, the more you lose your charm: electric fluids of the same name repel one another; electric fluids of opposite kinds attract each other.