Clearly the method employed will vary according to circumstances, situation, possibilities, temperaments. Different women will pursue different aims, and avail themselves of different weapons; but, in the long run, none was neglected. While therefore we cannot hope to produce a thoroughly accurate picture, we shall pass in review the principal circumstances which provide a lady with her means of action, starting in logical order with the material and proceeding to the intellectual facts. In the material universe, it is woman’s capital duty to possess what pleases men; for here we are entering a purely practical field, and the quest of the ideal is of much less moment than the skilful dressing of the hook! Physical beauty is not an indispensable condition of pleasing; on the contrary indeed, a certain homely plainness does not come amiss, platonically speaking. If many of the celebrated women whom we know only in their portraits were to come to life again, perhaps we could not resist their fascinations; but they are dead, and to us they are plain; their plainness served them as a sort of lightning-conductor. We may go even farther; true beauty was held suspect. As Anne of France severely says, it is the most prejudicial and least valuable grace that God can bestow on a woman, especially a princess. It is made too much of; it inevitably jumbles the sentiments, mixing with the purest an alloy of instability; there is always a risk of its upsetting the best-laid schemes. A princess acknowledged as a beauty cannot choose her servitors; she knows neither how far they will go nor perhaps how far she will go herself. She seats her empire on very precarious foundations, since the less sensual love is, the longer it endures. In fine, women are what they are, and it is impossible to ask them to change. But any woman who knows her duty may be asked to practise the feminine art, and this art is called charm.