_De Ryons_--What! Do you not know that I am making women my particular, my incessant study, and that I am reckoning on leaving some new and very interesting documents dealing with that branch of natural history?--a branch very little understood just at present, in spite of all that has been written on the topic. My friend, I cannot sacrifice the species to the individual; I belong to science. It is quite impossible for me to give myself wholly and completely--as one certainly should do when he marries--to one of those charming and terrible little carnivora for whose sake men dishonor themselves, ruin themselves, kill themselves; whose sole preoccupation, in the midst of the universal carnage that they make, is to dress themselves now like umbrellas and now like table bells. _Madame Leverdet_ [_scornfully_]--So you really think you understand women, do you? _De Ryons_--I rather think I do. Why, just as you see me this instant, at the end of five minutes' study or conversation I can tell you to what class a woman belongs,--whether to the middle class, to women of rank, artists, or whatever you please; what are her tastes, her characteristics, her antecedents, the state of her heart,--in a word, everything that concerns my special science. _Madame Leverdet_--Really! Will you have a glass of water? _De Ryons_--Not yet, thank you. _Madame Leverdet_--I suppose, then, you are under the impression that you know me too. _De Ryons_--As if I did not! _Madame Leverdet_--Well, and I am--what? _De Ryons_--Oh, you are a clever woman. It is for that reason that I call on you [_aside:_ every two years]. _Madame Leverdet_--Will you kindly give me the sum of your observations in general? You can tell me so much, since I am a clever woman. _De Ryons_--The true, the true, the true sum? _Madame Leverdet_--Yes. _De Ryons_--Simply that woman of our day is an illogical, subordinate, and mischief-making creature. [_In saying this De Ryons draws back and crouches down as if expecting to be struck._] _Madame Leverdet_--So then, you detest women? _De Ryons_--I? I detest women? On the contrary, I adore them; but I hold myself in such a position toward them that they cannot bite me. I keep on the outside of the cage. _Madame Leverdet_--Meaning by that--what?