if they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to
individual character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep;
others are grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning
indifference to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end
by lying to themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority
to everything at the very moment when they are trembling for the
secret treasures of their love? Who has never studied their ease,
their readiness, their freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments
of life? In them, nothing is put on. Deception comes as the snow from
heaven. And then, with what art they discover the truth in others!
With what shrewdness they employ a direct logic in answer to some
passionate question which has revealed to them the secret of the heart
of a man who was guileless enough to proceed by questioning! To
question a woman! why, that is delivering one's self up to her; does
she not learn in that way all that we seek to hide from her? Does she
not know also how to be dumb, through speaking? What men are daring
enough to struggle with the Parisian woman?--a woman who knows how to
hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: "You are very
inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you are
jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?"--in short, a
woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying
_No_, and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not a
treatise on the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic,
logographic, and moral work, still waiting to be written? But to
accomplish this work, which we may also call diabolic, isn't an
androgynous genius necessary? For that reason, probably, it will never
be attempted. And besides, of all unpublished works isn't it the best
known and the best practised among women? Have you studied the
behavior, the pose, the _disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it.