We complain of the vanity of women, of their luxury and coquetry; but for what else do we prepare them, what else do we inculcate in their education? We leave them no other resource on earth. Far from elevating, developing, strengthening, and ennobling them, we dissipate, enervate, and debase them; nor am I speaking of the most fatal kind of debasement. Far from forming in them a taste for serious things or even for subjects worthy of interest, we teach them to ridicule those who have such tastes. We reduce them to coquetry, gossip, every kind of mediocrity and _ennui_. The world is positively irritated against those who sometimes remind women what they are in the estimation of God, what they are capable of doing, what they owe to God, to society, to France, to their husbands and sons, and to themselves; against those who dare to assert that it is for them, daughters of that Eve to whom humanity owes the chastisement of toil, to accept and make others accept this fruit, which, though perhaps a little bitter, is expiatory, honorable, and salutary; that it is for them to follow its holy practices from infancy, and, later, to inspire in others a taste for it, or, at least, courage to endure it; that it is for them to speak that noble language of reason and of faith which calls labor the primordial law of humanity, at once a dominion and a reward. The world is angry with those who teach women that they should use the gift of _influence_ with which they are endowed, not to become queens of the ball-room, and shine beneath the candelabra of a drawing-room or behind foot-lights, but to become in their own homes skilful and patient advocates of everything noble, just, intellectual, and generous; not to _futilize_, if I may so express myself, the spirits of men, already too inclined to futility, but to remind them constantly that life is composed of duties, that duty is serious, and that happiness is only found in the performance of duty. Instead of this, what are they? Stars of a day, meteors too often fatal to the repose, the fortune, and the honor of families. We may say that these women who have the brilliancy and the passing influence of comets exercise also their sinister power. Instead of enervating them with nonsense, tell them that they will not always remain twenty years old, and that they will soon need other resources than their own beauty and caprices. Tell them that, even supposing they can always rule their husbands so easily, this sophistical authority will never gain a hold upon their children; and yet it is a woman's true aim, her first duty, often, alas! her sole happiness, to possess influence over her children and _especially over her sons_. But to obtain that, she needs not only goodness, tenderness, and patience, but reason, reflection, good sense, and enlightenment. To obtain these, real instruction, attentive study, serious education are necessary. {38}