At the present day, a young person knows nothing about
seduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and
mingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionable
world, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desires
which everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, which
prove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarely
ever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.
If she were free, an education free from prejudices would arm her
against the love of the first comer. She would, like any one else, be
very much better able to meet dangers of which she knew, than perils
whose extent had been concealed from her. And, moreover, is it
necessary for a girl to be any the less under the watchful eye of her
mother, because she is mistress of her own actions? Are we to count as
nothing the modesty and the fears which nature has made so powerful in
the soul of a young girl, for the very purpose of preserving her from
the misfortune of submitting to a man who does not love her? Again,
what girl is there so thoughtless as not to discern, that the most
immoral man wishes his wife to be a woman of principle, as masters
desire their servants to be perfect; and that, therefore, her virtue
is the richest and the most advantageous of all possessions?
After all, what is the question before us? For what do you think we
are stipulating? We are making a claim for five or six hundred
thousand maidens, protected by their instinctive timidity, and by the
high price at which they rate themselves; they understand how to
defend themselves, just as well as they know how to sell themselves.
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