She will, therefore, prove
for her daughter on every occasion either a deadly example or a
dangerous adviser.
Let us stop here!--The mother-in-law requires a whole Meditation for
herself.
So that, whichever way you turn, the bed of marriage, in this
connection, is equally full of thorns.
Before the Revolution, several aristocratic families used to send
their daughters to the convent. This example was followed by a number
of people who imagined that in sending their daughters to a school
where the daughters of some great noblemen were sent, they would
assume the tone and manners of aristocrats. This delusion of pride
was, from the first, fatal to domestic happiness; for the convents had
all the disadvantages of other boarding schools. The idleness that
prevailed there was more terrible. The cloister bars inflame the
imagination. Solitude is a condition very favorable to the devil; and
one can scarcely imagine what ravages the most ordinary phenomena of
life are able to leave in the soul of these young girls, dreamy,
ignorant and unoccupied.
Some of them, by reason of their having indulged idle fancies, are led
into curious blunders. Others, having indulged in exaggerated ideas of
married life, say to themselves, as soon as they have taken a husband,
"What! Is this all?" In every way, the imperfect instruction, which is
given to girls educated in common, has in it all the danger of
ignorance and all the unhappiness of science.
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