In short, at whatever point of view one placed oneself, marriage excluded every idea of personal fancy; indeed, of all the contracts of life, marriage was the least tolerant of any such idea. Its traditional character as a business transaction no one would have dreamed of contesting. So far as the woman was concerned, the practical consequences of this principle were very simple. It was not for her to seek a husband, but merely to accept the man whom fate, that is to say, Providence, had destined for her. Nothing was more ridiculous than here and there to find some portionless girl, or one who, like Mademoiselle de Clermont, was no longer in her first bloom, waxing sentimental and speaking with a sigh of the “unaccustomed pleasure” of loving the man one married. “This pleasure,” she says, raising her eyes to heaven like a virgin martyr, “if it sets at nought human wisdom, is inspired by wisdom from on high; so fine, so exquisite must it be, that of a truth it is keener than sorrow at the loss of the loved one—a commonplace and everyday sorrow.” Whereupon, whatever sympathy may have been inspired by Mademoiselle de Clermont’s misfortune, her friends cannot help smiling: “So you mean to say,” they exclaim, “that a woman has more pleasure in the embraces of her husband than pain at seeing him slain before her eyes!”[15] The idea that a young girl should submit passively to be married was almost the only one on which there was complete agreement. Everyone was thoroughly convinced that in adopting any other course she would almost invariably be committing a folly sure to bring repentance. If young and unsophisticated, she would allow herself to be lured and snared by mere illusions from which there would be a speedy awakening; if she had lost something of her youth and innocence things were still worse, for then she inevitably said and thought and did ridiculous things, like poor foolish Mademoiselle de Clermont. A spinster of twenty-five or thirty, seized with a yearning for marriage,[16] would be subject to attacks of mental vertigo springing rather from vanity than from love; one could believe her capable of the veriest follies and the most surprising judgments.[17] That was the opinion of all serious women, from Louise of Savoy to Anne of France,[18] whether they were of matter-of-fact intellect, spiritual in their affections, or somewhat wayward in their imagination. The whole mechanism of life exemplified this fundamental principle: a young girl should have “no choice, ambition, or wish” of her own; “experience, failing God and the Law, proves to girls the necessity of discretion, and of not marrying to please themselves; their marriage should be left to their relatives, or in default of relatives, to their friends.”[19]