The possibilities of misfortune are a hundred times greater for the woman than for the man, for she is always more ignorant of things genital than we are, and goes to the altar or municipality ignorant of all, dragged like a lamb to the slaughter-house. At the present day, under the customs to which our society conforms, the only profession of woman is that of wife and mother; and to this calling she is instructed from infancy, not to be an exemplary wife or perfect mother, but, if possible, to find a husband, and that an ideal one, one who is handsome, young, and above all rich. She is secretly and cleverly instructed in the art of hunting that rare game, a good husband; not in order to make him or herself happy, but to increase her income and to rise a step or two in the social scale. If in comfortable circumstances, she must become rich; if rich, a millionaire; if civilian, a countess; if countess, marchioness or princess. This is what she is to aim at; all her education has been directed to this end. Now, marriage should rise from its lower position of a business transaction to the higher one of a union of hearts and thoughts, and neither of the two companions ought to be able to look at each other with anger and think: _You bought me._ _I sold myself._ Nothing can cleanse us from this original sin, which contaminates matrimony. In vain do the comforts of riches, the pride of a high position, the excitements of domestic sensuality, throw flowers over the wound to hide it. At the least quibble, the least cloud that covers the heaven of the double life, one hears the fatal words: _You bought me,_ _I sold myself,_ arising from the depths of the troubled conscience like a voice evoked by some evil spirit. And when neither riches, sensuality, nor vanity have a rag wherewith to cover the cancerous sore, the naked and dreadful spectre of an unsuccessful speculation, of unsuccessful business—then bitterness is added to bitterness, and the domestic warfare which has become permanent, angry, and poisonous, developes into a chronic despair, the most heart-rending form of human pain. Even this is not all; as in an attack of neuralgia the deep-seated and continual pains become sharper and more intolerable at certain moments, taking on a piercing and stab-like character, so it is with the deep-seated and dumb despair of those two unfortunate beings. Every now and then the inexorable cry sounds, and thus it goes on until the last breath. Let divorce come then, and quickly, to set all these slaves free; let there be a wiser and more liberal education, to teach girls what they do not know or know indifferently; so that they, like ourselves, can freely say their _yes_ before the altar or the magistrate with perfect knowledge and understanding. CHAPTER II. SEXUAL CHOICE IN MARRIAGE.—THE ART OF CHOOSING WELL.