Italian platonism was no enemy to laughter; it was quite the other way. In the evening after dinner (the time when in these days men are lighting their cigars), men who had wit and gaiety and no cares (three conditions for which the cigar alone would hardly be a sufficient substitute), laughed without stint and told pretty warm stories as a relaxation from the ideal; but as the ladies were present and no one would have dreamt of doing without them, form was always more carefully studied. Platonism was nothing if not fastidious, correct, and ceremonious; and a platonist, even when retailing a broad joke or when there was no occasion to put himself about, did not cease to employ exquisite phraseology. The French, on the contrary, laughed somewhat boisterously after dinner, or on one of those oppressive afternoons when the dull sky seems to seize us like mice in a trap. Our passion for broad wit has never allowed itself to be cooled by the exhortations of moralists[266] or preachers. Nor were ladies more successful in selecting subjects for conversation; they had either to leave us to our own devices and be regarded as nuisances, or to pitch their tune to the same key. An awkward dilemma for them! They faced the music, and contented themselves with declining to laugh when the jest displeased them; but in their hearts they preferred a lady’s man who knew how to show them tenderness and respect. Conversation is naturally composed of dialogues. Whenever it attains a certain height, contradiction is necessary to keep the ball rolling. Some one has said that contradiction is woman’s forte, and in this connection La Fontaine retold the old fable about the drowned woman whose corpse, from sheer perversity, insisted on floating up stream. That may be true of worn, untutored women, good housewives to whom the artifices of taste are a sealed book. The woman of fashion, preferring to profit by all her privileges, hovers over a conversation, mingling with it only to throw out a suggestion, a criticism, a reflection, an argument, or to give a finishing touch. Margaret, for instance, launched this aphorism in the midst of a discussion on love: “Women of large heart yield rather to the spirit of vengeance than to the tenderness of love.”[267]