_Damophile_, who affects to imitate _Sapho_, is only her caricature. _Sapho_ "does not resemble a '_Savante_'"; her conversation is natural, gallant, and easy (commodious). _Damophile_ always had five or six teachers. I believe that the least learned among them taught her astrology. She was always writing to the men who made a profession of science. She could not make up her mind to have anything to say to people who did not know anything. Fifteen or twenty books were always to be seen on her table; and she always held one of them in her hand when any one entered the room, or when she sat there alone; and I am assured that it could be said without prevarication that one saw more books in her cabinet than she had ever read, and that at _Sapho's_ house one saw fewer books than she had read. More than that, _Damophile_ used only great words, which she pronounced in a grave and imperious voice; though what she said was unimportant; and _Sapho_, on the contrary, used only short, common words to express admirable things. Besides that, _Damophile_, believing that knowledge did not accord with her family affairs, never had anything to do with domestic cares; but as to _Sapho_, she took pains to inform herself of everything necessary to know in order to command even the least things pertaining to the household. _Damophile_ not only talked as if she were reading out of a book, but she was always talking about books; and, in her ordinary conversation, she spoke as freely of unknown authors as if she were giving public lessons in some celebrated academy. She tries ... with peculiar and strange carefulness, to let it be known how much she knows, or thinks that she knows. And that, too, the first time that a stranger sees her. And there are so many obnoxious, disagreeable, and troublesome things about _Damaphile_, that one must acknowledge that if there is nothing more amiable nor more charming than a woman who takes pains to adorn her mind with a thousand agreeable forms of knowledge,--when she knows how to use them,--nothing is as ridiculous and as annoying as a woman who is "stupidly wise." Mlle. de Scudéry raged when people, who had no tact, took her for a _Damophile_, and, meaning to compliment her, consulted her "on grammar," or "touching one of Hesiod's verses." Then the vials of her wrath were poured out upon the "_Savantes_" who gave the prejudiced reason for condemning the education of woman, and who provoked annoying and ridiculous misconception by their insupportable pedantry; when there were so many young girls of the best families who did not even learn their own language, and who could not make themselves understood when they took their pens in hand. "The majority of women," said Nicanor, "seem to try to write so that people will misunderstand them, so strange is their writing and so little sequency is there in their words."