In every way, indeed, Gzhatski proved a most interesting travelling companion. Men always bring gaiety and animation into the lives of lonely women, even when they are neither lovers nor husbands, but simply distant relations. This is so, because women who have no social activities to distract their thoughts are inclined to look upon life as something tragic and fatal, against which it is useless to struggle. Men, on the other hand, who, if only indirectly, make our laws and govern our countries, do not attach much importance to life, often indeed regarding it from the humorous standpoint. It is popularly supposed that men are more conservative than women, and that they care more about traditions and old customs. Actually, however, the laws and customs they passionately defend are invariably useful at the moment, and when the need for them passes, men are the first to abandon them. Women, on the contrary, cling desperately to traditions, especially inconvenient and troublesome ones, and if ever they decide to defy even some unimportant social law, they do it tragically, as though flinging themselves into an abyss. “There! I have cut off my hair, and I smoke,” thinks a newly-converted Nihilist. “The thing is done—there is no turning back. Whatever I may do now, nothing can win me back my old position, and the respect of my fellows. And so—vogue le galère!” How many perfectly modest women having once let their hairdressers persuade them to dye their hair auburn, immediately assume the manners and conversational style of “cocottes!”