Are you certain that after your wife has left boarding
school, her young friends have not there been admitted to those
confidences, in which an attempt is made to learn in advance, at least
by analogy, the pastimes of doves? And then her friends will marry;
you will have four women to watch instead of one, four characters to
divine, and you will be at the mercy of four husbands and a dozen
celibates, of whose life, principles and habits you are quite
ignorant, at a time when our meditations have revealed to you certain
coming of a day when you will have your hands full with the people
whom you married with your wife. Satan alone could have thought of
placing a girl's boarding school in the middle of a large town! Madame
Campan had at least the wisdom to set up her famous institution at
Ecouen. This sensible precaution proved that she was no ordinary
woman. There, her young ladies did not gaze upon the picture gallery
of the streets, the huge and grotesque figures and the obscene words
drawn by some evil-spirited pencil. They had not perpetually before
their eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at every
barrier in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out upon
them in secret the poison of books which taught evil and set passion
on fire. This wise school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouen
preserve a young lady for you spotless and pure, if, even there, that
were possible.
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