Notice what progress she had made; she has been shown how to paint
roses, and to embroider ties in such a way as to earn eight sous a
day. She has learned the history of France in _Ragois_ and chronology
in the _Tables du Citoyen Chantreau_, and her young imagination has
been set free in the realm of geography; all without any aim,
excepting that of keeping away all that might be dangerous to her
heart; but at the same time her mother and her teachers repeat with
unwearied voice the lesson, that the whole science of a woman lies in
knowing how to arrange the fig leaf which our Mother Eve wore. "She
does not hear for fifteen years," says Diderot, "anything else but 'my
daughter, your fig leaf is on badly; my daughter, your fig leaf is on
well; my daughter, would it not look better so?'"
Keep your wife then within this fine and noble circle of knowledge. If
by chance your wife wishes to have a library, buy for her Florian,
Malte-Brun, _The Cabinet des Fees_, _The Arabian Nights_, Redoute's
_Roses_, _The Customs of China_, _The Pigeons_, by Madame Knip, the
great work on Egypt, etc. Carry out, in short, the clever suggestion
of that princess who, when she was told of a riot occasioned by the
dearness of bread, said, "Why don't they eat cake?"
Perhaps, one evening, your wife will reproach you for being sullen and
not speaking to her; perhaps she will say that you are ridiculous,
when you have just made a pun; but this is one of the slight
annoyances incident to our system; and, moreover, what does it matter
to you that the education of women in France is the most pleasant of
absurdities, and that your marital obscurantism has brought a doll to
your arms? As you have not sufficient courage to undertake a fairer
task, would it not be better to lead your wife along the beaten track
of married life in safety, than to run the risk of making her scale
the steep precipices of love? She is likely to be a mother: you must
not exactly expect to have Gracchi for sons, but to be really _pater
quem nuptiae demonstrant_; now, in order to aid you in reaching this
consummation, we must make this book an arsenal from which each one,
in accordance with his wife's character and his own, may choose
weapons fit to employ against the terrible genius of evil, which is
always ready to rise up in the soul of a wife; and since it may fairly
be considered that the ignorant are the most cruel opponents of
feminine education, this Meditation will serve as a breviary for the
majority of husbands.
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