If he turns up his sleeves and by chance tangles your curls, where really
is the harm? Thank Heaven if in the marriage which you have hit upon you
find a laughing, joyous side; if in your husband you find the loved
reader of the pretty romance you have in your pocket; if, while wearing
cashmere shawls and costly jewels in your ears, you find the joys of a
real intimacy--that is delicious! In short, reckon yourself happy if in
your husband you find a lover.

But before accepting my theories, ladies, although in your heart and
conscience you find them perfect, you will have several little prejudices
to overcome; above all, you will have to struggle against your education,
which is deplorable, as I have already said, but that is no great matter.
Remember that under the pretext of education you have been stuffed, my
dear sisters. You have been varnished too soon, like those pictures
painted for sales, which crack all over six months after purchase. Your
disposition has not been properly directed; you are not cultivated; you
have been stifled, pruned; you have been shaped like those yew-trees at
Versailles which represent goblets and birds. Still, you are women at
the bottom, though you no longer look it.

You are handed over to us men swaddled, distorted, stuffed with
prejudices and principles, heavy as paving-stones; all of which are the
more difficult to dislodge since you look upon them as sacred; you are
started on the matrimonial journey with so much luggage reckoned as
indispensable; and at the first station your husband, who is not an
angel, loses his temper amidst all these encumbrances, sends it all to
the devil under some pretext or other, lets you go on alone, and gets
into another carriage. I do not require, mark me, that you should be
allowed to grow up uncared for, that good or evil instincts should be
suffered to spring up in you anyhow: but it were better that they should