O old world! all that thou didst revere is despised; thy idols are overthrown in the dust; emaciated anchorites, dressed in rags and tatters, bleeding martyrs, their shoulders torn by the tigers of thy circuses, have perched upon the pedestals of thy beautiful, charming gods;--Christ has enveloped the world in His shroud. Beauty must needs blush for itself and put on a winding-sheet.--Ye comely youths with your limbs rubbed in oil, who struggle in the lyceum or the gymnasium, under the brilliant sky, in the sunlight of Attica, before the marvelling crowd; ye maidens of Sparta who dance the _bibase_, and who run naked to the summit of Taygetus, resume your tunics and chlamydes;--your reign is past. And ye, moulders of marble, Prometheuses in bronze, break your chisels:--there will be no more sculptors.--The palpable world is dead. A dark, lugubrious thought alone fills the immense void.--Cleomenes is going to the weavers' shops to see what folds the cloth or linen takes. Virginity, thou bitter weed, born in soil drenched with blood, whose blanched and sickly flower blossoms painfully in the damp shade of cloisters, beneath a cold shower of lustral water;--thou rose without perfume, bristling with thorns, thou hast replaced for us the lovely, joyous roses, bathed in spikenard and Falernian, of the dancing girls of Sybaris! The ancient world knew naught of thee, unfruitful flower; thou didst never form a part of its wreaths whose perfume intoxicated;--in that lusty, healthy society thou wouldst have been disdainfully trodden under foot.--Virginity, mysticism, melancholy--three unknown words--three new diseases, brought to earth by Christ.--Ye pallid spectres, who inundate our world with your frozen tears, and who, with your elbows on a cloud and your hands on your breasts, can say nothing but "O death! O death!" ye could never have stepped foot upon that earth, peopled with indulgent, madcap gods! I look upon woman, after the ancient fashion, as a beautiful slave destined to minister to our pleasures.--Christianity has not rehabilitated her in my eyes. To me she is still something dissimilar and inferior to us, whom we adore and with whom we toy, a plaything more intelligent than if it were made of ivory or gold, and having the power to pick itself up if it is dropped on the ground.--I have been told, because of that, that I have a low opinion of women; it seems to me, on the contrary, to show that I have a very high opinion of them. Upon my word I cannot see why women are so eager to be looked upon as men.--I can understand that they might long to be boa-constrictors, lions or elephants, but that they should long to be men passes my comprehension. If I had been at the Council of Trent when this important question was discussed, namely, whether woman is a man, I should most certainly have given my opinion in the negative.