"But they are not the less wrong at first: the importance they attach to courage leads many boys and young men into murderous affrays--just as their satirical comments upon 'milky dispositions' lead thousands into vice." "Oh, Ernest!" "Do you deny it?" "Wholly." "Well, that only proves to me once more that you know nothing of women." "Do you think so?" said Hoffland, smiling. "Yes: what I have said is the tritest truth. That women admire these qualities excessively, and that men, especially young men, shape their conduct by this feminine feeling, is as true as that sunlight." "I deny it." "Very well; that proves further, Charles, that you have not observed and studied much." "Have you?" "Extensively." "And you are a great master in the wiles of women by this time, I suppose," said Hoffland satirically. "No, you misunderstand me," replied Mowbray, without observing the boy's smile. "I never shall pretend to understand women; but I can use my eyes, and I can read the open page before me." "The open page? What do you mean?" "I mean that the history of the modern world, the social history, has a great key-note--is a maze unless you keep constantly in view the existence of this element--women." "I should say it was: we could not well get on without them." "The middle age originated the present deification of woman," continued Mowbray philosophically, "and the old knights left us the legacy. We have long ago discarded for its opposite the scriptural doctrine that the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; and we justify ourselves by the strange plea, 'they are so weak.'" "Well, are they not?" "Woman weak? Poor Charles! Parliaments, inquisitions, secret tribunals and executioners' axes are straws compared to them. They smile, and man kneels; they weep, and his moral judgment is effaced like a shadow: he is soft clay in their hands. One caress from a girl makes a fool of a giant. Have you read the history of Samson?" "Vile misogynist!" said Hoffland, "you are really too bad!" Mowbray smiled sadly. "Do not understand me to say that we should return to barbarous times, and make the women labor and carry burdens, while we the men lounge in the sun and dream," he said; "not at all. All honor to the middle age! The knight raised up woman, and she made him a reproachless chevalier in return; but it did not end there. He must needs do more--he loved, and love is so strong! Divine love is strongest--he must deify her." "You are a great student, forsooth!" "Deny it if you can: but you cannot, Charles. The central idea of the middle age--the age of chivalry--is woman. That word interprets all; it is the open sesame which throws wide the portals. Without it, that whole era is a mere jumble of bewildering anomalies--events without causes--actions without motives. Well, see how truly we are the descendants of those knights. To this day our social god is woman." "Scoffer!"