"I am meditating; and it is on the position which unmarried women hold in France." "Unmarried women?... You will scarcely find any such in France," said she. "Are not those young ladies who have just finished their quadrille unmarried?" "Ah!... But you cannot call them unmarried women. _Elles sont des demoiselles._" "Well, then, my meditations were concerning them." "Eh bien...." "Eh bien.... It appears to me that the ball is not given--that the music does not play--that the gentlemen are not _empressé_, for them." "No, certainly. It would be quite contrary to our ideas of what is right if it were so." "With us it is so different!... It is always the young ladies who are, at least, the ostensible heroines of every ball-room." "The ostensible heroines?"... She dwelt rather strongly upon the adjective, adding with a smile,--"Our ostensible, are our real heroines upon these occasions." I explained. "The real heroines," said I, "will, I confess, in cases of ostentation and display, be sometimes the ladies who give balls in return." "Well explained," said she, laughing: "I certainly thought you had another meaning. You think, then," she continued, "that our young married women are made of too much importance among us?" "Oh no!" I replied eagerly: "it is, in my opinion, almost impossible to make them of too much importance; for I believe that it is entirely upon their influence that the tone of society depends." "You are quite right. It is impossible for those who have lived as long as we have in the world to doubt it: but how can this be, if, upon the occasions which bring people together, they are to be overlooked, while young girls who have as yet no position fixed are brought forward instead?" "But surely, being brought forward to dance in a waltz or quadrille, is not the sort of consequence which we either of us mean?" "Perhaps not; but it is one of its necessary results. Our women marry young,--as soon, in fact, as their education is finished, and before they have been permitted to enter the world, or share in the pleasures of it. Their destiny, therefore, instead of being the brightest that any women enjoy, would be the most _triste_, were they forbidden to enter into the amusements so natural to their age and national character, because they were married." "But may there not be danger in the custom which throws young females, thus early and irrevocably engaged, for the first time into the society, and, as it were, upon the attentions of men whom it has already become their duty not to consider as too amiable?" "Oh no!... If a young woman be well-disposed, it is not a quadrille, or a waltz either, that will lead her astray. If it could, it would surely be the duty of all the legislators of the earth to forbid the exercise for ever."