I do not believe that men like a woman to be wise. They seem to take it as a personal insult—as though every spark of intellect added to our brains left theirs duller. And a woman’s mission in life is, _of course_, to please the men,—not to make the most of herself as an individual human soul. That is treason, usurpation, impertinence. They will see what they will see. _I_ can live without them. And I mean to do. *CHAPTER VI.* _*THE PERVERSITY OF PEOPLE*_*.* "’Do one good’! Is it good, if I don’t want it done? Now do let me grumble and groan: It is all very well other folks should have fun; But why can’t they let me alone?" Damoiselle Melisende and I have been busy all morning in laying out dried herbs under the superintendence of Lady Judith. The herbs of this land are not like those of Poitou. There was cassia,—of which one variety,[#] Lady Judith says, is taken as medicine, to clear the system and purify the blood,—and garlic, which they consider an antidote to poison,—and the wild gourd,[#] which is medicine for the liver,—and hyssop, spikenard, wormwood (a cure for vertigo), and many others. Two curious fruits they have here which I never heard of in Poitou; the one is a dark, fleshy stone-fruit, very nice indeed, which they call plums or damascenes;[#] they grow chiefly at Damascus. The other grows on trees around the Dead Sea, and is the apple of Sodom, very lovely to the eye, but as soon as you bite it, you find nothing but a mouthful of ashes. I was so amused with this fruit that I brought some home and showed them to Marguerite. [#] Senna. [#] Colocynth. [#] Introduced into Europe by the Crusaders. "Ah, the world is full of those!" she said, when she had tried one, and found out what sort of thing it was. "Thou art quite mistaken, Margot," said I. "They are found but in this country, and only in one particular spot." "Those that can be seen, very likely," said she. "But the unseen fruit, my Damoiselle, grows all over the world, and men and women are running after it all their lives." Then I saw what she meant. They have no apples here at all; but citrons and quinces, which are not unlike apples. The golden citron[#] is a beautiful fruit, juicy and pleasant; and Lady Judith says some people reckon it to be the golden apples of the Hesperides, which were guarded by dragons, and likewise the "apples of gold," of which Monseigneur King Solomon speaks in Holy Writ. There are almonds, and dates, and cucumbers, and large, luscious figs, and grapes, and melons, and mulberries, and several kinds of nuts, and olives, and pomegranates. Quinces are here thought to make children clever. They make no hay in this country. [#] Oranges.