APPARENTLY nature, in giving man an absolutely irradicable taste for women, must have foreseen that, without this precaution, the contempt inspired by the vices of their sex, vanity in particular, would be a great obstacle to the maintenance and propagation of the human species. * * * * * A MAN who professed to esteem women highly was asked if he had enjoyed the favours of many. “Not so many as if I had despised them,” he said. * * * * * WHATEVER evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more. * * * * * YOUNG women have a misfortune which they share with kings, that of having no friends; but happily they feel this misfortune as little as the kings: the latter’s pomp and the former’s vanity spare both that emotion. * * * * * MADAME DE MONTMORIN said to her son: “You are going into society: I have only one piece of advice to give you, and that is to be in love with all the women.” * * * * * A WITTY woman told me one day what may well be the secret of her sex: it is that every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own. * * * * * THE woman who esteems herself more for her gifts of soul or intelligence than for her beauty is above her sex. She who esteems herself more for her beauty than for her intelligence or soul is of her sex. But she who esteems herself more for her birth or rank than for her beauty is outside her sex, beneath it. * * * * * MADAME DE TALMONT, seeing M. de Richelieu neglecting her to pay attentions to Madame de Brionne, a very beautiful woman, but said to be rather stupid, remarked to him: “You are not blind, Marshall, but I cannot help thinking you a little deaf.” * * * * * MADEMOISELLE DUTHÉ having lost a lover, and the affair causing some talk, a man who called to see her found her playing the harp, and said with surprise: “Good heavens! I was expecting to find you desolated with grief.” “Ah,” she exclaimed in a pathetic tone, “you ought to have seen me yesterday!” * * * * * A WOMAN was at a performance of the tragedy of _Mérope_, and did not weep: surprise was expressed. “I could cry my eyes out,” she said, “but I have to go out to supper to-night.” * * * * * A YOUNG man was advised to ask a woman of forty, with whom he had been head over ears in love, to return his letters. “I don’t suppose she has them any longer,” he said. “Oh yes,” was the reply, “about the age of thirty women begin to keep their love letters.” * * * * * “HE who has not seen much of _demi-mondaines_ does not understand women at all,” gravely remarked to me a fond admirer of his own wife, who was unfaithful to him.