Are the rights of love equal in man and woman? No! a thousand times no! I say so in a loud voice and after the first white hairs and a wide experience permit me to believe that I speak without anger or love. No; the sin of infidelity is not the same in Adam and in Eve: in the latter it is a hundred times greater. As a right and before the courts all parties are equal, but man and woman differ too greatly to be punished in the same measure. If the code is one, the jurors are a thousand; many are the accusers, many the lawyers; and the sentence of amorous betrayal has already been pronounced by all civilized nations and always in the same manner. This unanimous consent was not imposed by the arrogance of men, who alone were the legislators before the courts and judges in the forum of public opinion. No; this unanimous consent was dictated by a deep consciousness of social necessities, by a more profound and subtler justice that descends into the inmost recess of things to find the roots of that awkward and superficial justice which asserts that all men are equal before the law. How false this dogma is can be sufficiently proved by the history of the jury system, one of the institutions on which our century seems to pride itself. From man society exacts a hundred different and difficult virtues: he must give his blood for his country and the sweat of his brow for his family and for society; he must be strong, ambitious; he must not allow himself to be corrupted by gold or the seductions of vanity. A physician, he must throw himself into the inglorious and tremendous battle of epidemic; a soldier, he must hold his head high in the face of murderous fire; a lawyer, he must resist the temptations of gold and ambition; a statesman, he must fight against himself, against his family, for the welfare of his country. Defender of the weak, of the shipwrecked, of the poor, natural defender of the female half of the human species and of all the individuals who are of no value to society, he is a warrior perpetually under arms, and should he neglect one of his duties, he is branded as a coward; society despises him, woman does not want him, everyone ignores him. Woman, on the contrary, can be a coward in the face of fire, of work, of contagion, and of all the battles of life; she can be ignorant and timorous and still be loved and esteemed by all; for in her weakness approaches grace, and it is so sweet to us to take the faint-hearted dove to our bosom and comfort her with our courage, defend her with our strength!