In presence of a world that she knew so well, we must not think that Mme. de Maintenon tried to make tender plants, fragile women, ingenuously ignorant, with the morality of novices; she had, beyond all other persons, a profound sense of reality. She desired her "Dames" to speak boldly to their pupils on the marriage state; to show them the world and its divers conditions such as they are. "Most nuns," she said, "dare not utter the word 'marriage.' Saint Paul had no such false delicacy, for he speaks of it very openly." She was the first to speak of it as an honourable, necessary, and hazardous state. "When your young ladies have entered marriage they will find it is not a thing to laugh about. You should accustom them to speak of it seriously, even sadly, in a Christian manner; for it is the state in which we have most tribulations, even in the best marriage; they should be shown that three-fourths of all marriages are unhappy." As for celibacy, to which too many young girls might be condemned on leaving the Institution, for lack of a dowry ("my greatest need," she says jestingly, "is of sons-in-law"), she thinks it an equally sad state. In general, no one has ever had fewer illusions than Mme. de Maintenon. Speaking of men, she thinks them rough and hard, "little tender in their love when passion ceases to have sway." As for women, she has very fixed views of them, which are but moderately flattering. "Women," she says, "only half know things, but the little they do know makes them usually conceited, disdainful, loquacious, and scornful of solid information." The education of Saint-Cyr, after its reform, had it always been carried out in Mme. de Maintenon's true spirit, would not have sinned through too much timidity, weakness, and tender grace; its austerity was only veiled.