"No, It isn't decent, and for many reasons, That womankind should study and know too much. To teach her children what is right and wrong, Manage her household, oversee her servants, And keep expenses within bounds, should be Her only study and philosophy. Our fathers, on this point, showed great good sense; They said a woman always knows enough If but her understanding reaches To telling, one from t'other, coat and breeches. Their wives, who couldn't read, led honest lives, Their households were their only learned theme, And all their books were thimble, thread and needles. With which they made their daughters' wedding outfits. But now our women scorn to live like that; They want to write and all be authoresses. They think no knowledge is too deep for them."[77] Moliere's intention in writing these justly famous comedies was not, as is so often asserted, to ridicule women of learning, but only those superficial pedants who affected knowledge or loved to make a display of the little knowledge they happened to possess. The result, however, was quite different from what had been intended, for the poet's pleasantries were taken so seriously, that even women of real learning, in order to avoid ridicule, were condemned to absolute silence. The comic dramatist, Destouches, expressed the prevailing opinion when he wrote: "Une femme savante Doit cacher son savoir, ou c'est une imprudente."[78] Few French women thereafter had the courage to defend their sex, as did their sisters in Italy, and the result was that, with a few exceptions, like Mme. du Chatelet, Sophie Germain, and Mme. Lepaute, there were no more learned women in France for fully two centuries. Never did satire and ridicule accomplish more, except probably in the case of _Don Quixote_--that masterly creation of Cervantes which dealt the death-blow to knight-errantry--than did _Les Femmes Savantes_ and _Les Precieuses Ridicules_. The learned woman became as much an object of derision in France as was the knight-errant in Spain. It was not, however, in the nature of the French woman, with all her vivacity and energy, to be suppressed entirely or to be relegated for long to the background in things of the mind. But, not then daring to face the ridicule which was inevitable, if she devoted herself to science or philosophy, she sought a substitute for her intellectual activity in the salon.