"Wish to take up what Blank said to-day of the superiority of man. Woman being created second. That is no mark of inferiority. Shall say, this doctrine of inequality very dangerous. Inferior position, inferior education, legal status, etc. Doctrine of morality quite opposite. If wife patient and husband not, wife superior--if wife chaste, husband not, wife superior. Each indispensable to each other, and to the whole. Gentlemen, where would you have been if we had not cradled and tended you?" "_Congress...._ Just before the end of the meeting Mr. Stuart came to me and said that Mrs. Butler wished me to speak for five minutes. After some hesitation I said that I would try. Felt much annoyed at being asked so late. Went up to the platform and did pretty well in French. The audience applauded, laughing a little at some points. In fact, my little speech was a decided success with the French-speaking part of the audience. Two or three Englishwomen who understood very little of it found fault with me for occasioning laughter. To the banquet...." "_September 23._ This morning Mrs. Sheldon Ames and her brother came to ask whether I would go to Germany on a special mission. Miss Bolte also wished me to go to Baden Baden to see the Empress of Germany." "_September 24._ A conference of Swiss and English women at 11 A.M. A sister of John Stuart Mill spoke, like the other English ladies, in very bad French. '_Nous femmes_' said she repeatedly. She seemed a good woman, but travelled far from the subject of the meeting, which was the work to be done to carry out what the Congress had suggested. Mrs. Blank, of Bristol, read a paper in the worst French I ever heard. '_Ouvrager_' for '_travailler_' was one of her mistakes." In spite of some slight criticisms on the management of this Congress, she was heart and soul in sympathy with its object; and until the last day of her life, never ceased to battle for the higher morality which at all costs protests against the legalizing of vice. Before leaving Geneva she writes:-- "To Ferney in omnibus. The little church with its inscription '_Deo erexit Voltaire_,' and the date.... I remember visiting Ferney with dear Chev; remember that he did not wish me to see the model [of Madame Du Châtelet's monument] lest it should give me gloomy thoughts about my condition--she died in childbirth, and the design represents her with her infant bursting the tomb." October found the travellers in Paris, the elder still intent on affairs of study and reform, the younger grasping eagerly at each new wonder or beauty. There were meetings of the Academy of Fine Arts, the Institute of France, the Court of Assizes: teachers' meetings, too, and dinners with deaconesses (whom she found a pleasant combination of cheerfulness and gravity), and with friends who took her to the theatre.