It is in the midst of this million we are bound to investigate:
The number of honest women;
The number of virtuous women.
The work of investigating this and of arranging the results under two
categories requires whole meditations, which may serve as an appendix
to the present one.
MEDITATION III.
OF THE HONEST WOMAN.
The preceding meditation has proved that we possess in France a
floating population of one million women reveling in the privilege of
inspiring those passions which a gallant man avows without shame, or
dissembles with delight. It is then among this million of women that
we must carry our lantern of Diogenes in order to discover the honest
women of the land.
This inquiry suggests certain digressions.
Two young people, well dressed, whose slender figures and rounded arms
suggest a paver's tool, and whose boots are elegantly made, meet one
morning on the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.
"What, is this you?"
"Yes, dear boy; it looks like me, doesn't it?"
Then they laugh, with more or less intelligence, according to the
nature of the joke which opens the conversation.
When they have examined each other with the sly curiosity of a police
officer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of
the newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and of
the taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty
certain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and
if they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have not reached
Frascati's before they have asked each other a roundabout question
whose free translation may be this:
"Whom are you living with now?"
As a general rule she is a charming woman.
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