"Or," retorts _Medon_, the male interlocutor, "politicians to vary the excitement! How I hate political women! "_Alda._ Why do you hate them? "_Medon._ Because they are mischievous. "_Alda._ But why are they mischievous? "_Medon._ Why?--why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs in this world than a woman run mad with politics. The number of political, intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and drawing-rooms are the _foyers_ of party spirit, is another trait of resemblance between the state of society now and that which existed at Paris before the Revolution." In another place, however, the same judicious and usually discriminating writer is betrayed into giving--more from conjecture, it would seem, than close acquaintance with the facts of her life--an historically false and singularly unjust estimate of Madame de Longueville's character. "_Alda._ Women are illustrious in history, not from what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the mischief they have done or caused. * * * Of those which have been handed down to us by many different authorities under different aspects, we cannot judge without prejudice; in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to supply; and hence inconsistencies we have no means of reconciling, though doubtless they might be reconciled if we knew the whole, instead of a part. "_Medon._ But instance--instance!