These four stuck firmly to it, and, as far as lay in their power, they scrupulously observed the rules which had been laid down at the beginning of their curious association. They had sworn, hand-in-hand, to turn aside every woman they could from the right path, and their friends' wives for choice, and more especially those of their most intimate friends. For this reason, as soon as any of them left the society, in order to set up in domestic life for himself, he took care to quarrel definitely with all his former companions. Besides this, they were pledged at every dinner to relate most minutely their last adventures, which had given rise to this familiar phrase amongst them: "To lie like an old bachelor." They professed, moreover, the most profound contempt for woman whom they talked of as an animal made solely for their pleasure. Every moment they quoted Schopenhauer, who was their god, and his well-known essay "On Women;" they wished that harems and towers might be reintroduced, and had the ancient maxim: "Mulier, perpetuus infans,"[10] woven into their table-linen, and below it, the line of Alfred de Vigny's: _La femme, enfant malade et douze fois impure._[11] So that by dint of despising women they lived only for them, while all their efforts and all their desires were directed towards them. Those of them who had married called them old fops, made fun of them, and--feared them. When they began to feel the exhilarating effects of the champagne, this was the moment that their old bachelor experiences began. On the day in question, these old fellows, for they were old by this time, and the older they got the more extraordinary _good fortune_ in the way of love affairs they had to relate, were quite inexhaustible. For the last month, to hear them, each of them had played the gallant with at least one woman a day; and what women! the youngest, the noblest, the richest, and the most beautiful! After they had finished their tales, one of them, he who having spoken first had been obliged to listen to all the others, rose and said: