CHAPTER IX

WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS

I sometimes wonder how some women dare go out when it is windy. Their hats are fixed to their hair by means of long pins; their hair is fixed to their heads by means of short ones, and sometimes it happens that their heads are fixed to their shoulders by the most delicate of contrivances. Yes, it is wonderful!

Fiction is full of Kings and Princes marrying shepherdesses and beggar-maids; but in reality it is only the Grand-Ducal House of Tuscany, which for nearly three hundred years has exhibited royal Princesses running away with dancing masters and French masters engaged at their husbands' courts.

A man in love is always interesting. What a pity it is that husbands cannot always be in love!

Men who always praise women do not know them well; men who always speak ill of them do not know them at all.

What particularly flatters the vanity of women is to know that some men love them and dare not tell them so. However, they do not always insist on those men remaining silent for ever.

The saddest spectacle that the world can offer is that of a sweet, sensible, intelligent woman married to a conceited, tyrannical fool.

The mirror is the only friend who is allowed to know the secrets of a woman's imperfections.

When a woman is deeply in love, the capacity of her heart for charity is without limit. If all women were in love there would be no poverty on the face of the earth.

The fidelity of a man to the woman he loves is not a duty, but almost an act of selfishness. It is for his own sake still more than for hers that he should be faithful to her.

Two excellent kinds of wine mixed together may make a very bad drink. An excellent man and a very good woman married together may make an abominable match.

Jealousy, discreet and delicate, is a proof of modesty which should be appreciated by the very woman who should resent violent jealousy.

When you constantly hear the talent or the wit of a woman praised, you may take it for granted that she is not beautiful. If she were, you would hear her beauty praised first of all.

It is slow poison that kills love most surely. Love will survive even infidelity rather than boredom or satiety.

Men study women, and form opinions, generally wrong ones. Women look at men, guess their character, and seldom make mistakes.

All the efforts that an old woman makes to hide her age only help to advertise it louder.

Of a man and a woman, it is the one who is loved, but who does not love, that is the unhappier of the two.

Women often see without looking; men often look without seeing.

I know handsome men who are bald, and there are not a few, but many, who derive distinction from this baldness. There are men--severe, stern types of men--who are not disfigured, but improved, by spectacles. Just imagine, if you can, the possibility of a bald woman with spectacles inspiring a tender pa.s.sion! So much for the infallibility of the proverb, 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' so often quoted by women when they are told that men can afford to do this or that, but not they. Lady women-righters, please answer.

In the tender relations between men and women, novelty is a wonderful attraction, and habit a powerful bond; but between the two there is a bottomless precipice into which love often falls, never to be heard of afterward. Happy those who know how to bridge over the chasm!

A woman never forgets, however old she may be, that she was once very beautiful. Why should she? The pity is that she very often forgets that she is so no longer. My pet aversion in society is the woman of sixty who succeeds in making herself look fifty, thinks she is forty, acts as if she were thirty, and dresses as if she were twenty.

I am not prepared to say that celibacy is preferable to marriage; it has, however, this decided advantage over it: a bachelor can always cease to be one the moment he has discovered that he has made a mistake.

Women are extremists in everything. Poets, painters and sculptors know this so well that they have always taken women as models for War, Pestilence, Death, Famine and Justice, Virtue, Glory, Victory, Pity, Charity. On the other hand, virtues and vices, blessings and calamities of a lesser degree are represented by men. Such are Work, Perseverance, Laziness, Avarice, etc.

It is not given to any man or woman to fall in love more than once with the same person. And although men and women may love several times in succession, they can only once love to the fulness of their hearts.