Yet society was not wholly averse to granting women what we call the right to a career. The Salic law was exclusively a French invention, and the product of special circumstances; in the political world there was nothing to prevent the acceptance of aid from women, even in the midst of the gravest perils. It was a woman—and a woman to the finger-tips—Isabel of Bavaria, who all but ruined us; Joan of Arc was our salvation. It is not too much to say that, in later years, the honour and might of France were saved by Anne of Beaujeu and Louise of Savoy. The same thing holds from top to bottom of the social ladder. In certain towns women might have been seen taking part in elections in the public square;[1] in many of the châteaux the lady of the place, in the absence of her husband, fulfilled the most trying and masculine of tasks, administering justice, commanding the men-at-arms. Christine de Pisan speaks of this, not as a right, but as a rigorous duty.[2] Among the working classes female labour was extensively employed, at a fairly high rate of pay. But no one saw in this, as the opinion of Christine de Pisan shows, a direct and natural outlet for women’s activities. A woman was regarded as the subject of her husband, and his deputy in case of need; hers was not a personal part; she was only the shadow or the extension of another person—a sort of half-man, or, as caustic folk said, an _homme d’occasion, mas occasionnatus_—a man marred in the making. (It must be confessed that this idea is rather hard on the ladies, and even on us men, more particularly because Providence does not take us into consultation in these matters, and all of us, men and women alike, have the assurance of remaining to the end of our days male or female as God made us.) On that system, it was allowable for women in cases of absolute necessity to perform the tasks of men, though the men could scarcely offer to reciprocate; if there was no help for it, women might adopt a trade or profession, but that appeared undesirable. All the countries faithful to these ideas were utilitarian countries, where men had incontestably the upper hand, and where no great need was felt for lofty flights.