Juliette, as she read these pages, was compelled to recognise the excellence of the writer’s style and the skill of his dialectics. But the so-called “justice” which Proudhon here metes out to women could not but infuriate so fervent a feminist. For even a cursory survey of this book will serve to reveal that the writer here carries the anti-feminist argument to its extreme verge. No self-respecting woman could possibly read these pages without being moved to indignation, unless she resolve to treat the matter as a huge joke; but unfortunately Proudhon, like most pure economists, had no sense of humour: he only stumbled into being funny. A breath of the blessed illuminating comic spirit would have saved him from many a ludicrous absurdity. Juliette’s resentment of the philosopher’s sweeping indictment of her sex was aggravated by his singling out for special condemnation the two women whom among her contemporaries she admired most. “_J’ai la folie d’admirer_,” she has said of herself; and with all the ardour of her passionate soul she admired George Sand and Daniel Stern (la Comtesse d’Agoult). It was precisely against these two distinguished writers that Proudhon directed all the vitriol of his invective. In George Sand’s work he would see nothing but _une orgueilleuse impuissance_.[37] Daniel Stern,[38] because in her _Esquisses Morales_ she had ventured to maintain that woman need not necessarily be inferior to man, he decried as _une femme savante qui parle sans raison ni conscience_.[39] Writhing under these insults, Juliette went one evening to Mme. Fauvety’s. There she said to Jenny d’Héricourt, “You ought to defend the women who are thus insulted, you who know so well how to wield a pen against the terrible Proudhon. It would be disgraceful to leave unanswered such abominable charges.” “George Sand and Daniel Stern,” replied this _vertu farouche_, “have only what they deserve. I insist upon virtue and I practise it. Proudhon has not dared to insult me, I am certain of it, though I have not yet read his book.” “Very well,” said Juliette. “I am nobody, it is true, although I am as virtuous as you, and I will reply to Proudhon. Women, they must be defended by women.” This esprit de corps, this loyalty not to her sex alone, but to any cause or party, political, social or religious with which she has chosen to identify herself, has ever characterised Mme. Adam, and the conflict of her sense of solidarity with her innate Celtic rebelliousness is one of the most interesting traits in her psychology.