As to the woman of the world. Once married,
the best proof she thinks she can give of
her brilliant education, is to affect, under every
circumstance, as much indifference for
intellectual topics as is felt by the peasant girl who
spins with a distaff while she keeps her sheep.
For what, in fact, are poetry, truth, morality,
good or evil, peace or war? Tiresome stupidities.
As if a woman of fashion had time to
spend on books or pedantic conversation! In
winter, she is obliged to call and be called on,
to receive and be received at evening parties.
What with balls, concerts, and Bouffes theatres,
it is as much as she can do to run through a
realist novel. At the first note of the nightingale,
she is off to Plombières or Biaritz, to
display a succession of wonderful costumes at the
summer carnival of watering-places.

When a woman eradicates thought from her
mind, she digs a gulf, which she immediately
tries to fill with rags and frippery. She then
exhibits upon her person those dreams, or rather
those nightmares, of fashion, which are as the
morbid eruptions of an unhealthy imagination on
the surface of the skin. The spirit of an epoch
certainly influences the form of its costume; and
the costume, in turn, exerts its reaction on
thought. Some unknown philosopher will one
day write a chapter on this branch of history.
Fashion is by no means the matter of chance
which people are apt to believe it to be. There
exists a mysterious correspondence between the
opinions of a people and their costume.
"Unfortunately, we no longer possess for the reception
of our enormous feminine circumferences, the
unlimited apartments and the extravagant furniture
of the reign of Madame de Pompadour. Our
little rooms, with their economised space, are
obliged to find stowage for an assemblage of hen-
coops garnished with lace and ribbons. And
that is only the grotesque side of the question.
When a woman's only care is to be resplendent,
and announce her approach by a noise like
a rattlesnake, it is because she is anxious to
please. Now, from coquetry to gallantry the
distances are measured by opportunity. Want
of occupation, with an empty mind, naturally
engenders weariness; weariness, in turn, looks
out for amusement. If a woman is by herself,
with no mental resources of her own to draw
upon, when she has looked at her face for an
hour in the glass, she can bear the infliction no
longer. She is obliged to escape from herself,
no matter on what conditions.

If, however, the yellow fever of luxury were
confined to what are called the upper classes of
society, we, humble workers, should regard with
indifference the defiling of the long debauch of
dress. But alas! they pitch the key-note; and
little by little the contagion of finery infects
everybody with the epidemic. There is not a
single official's wife, with a salary of a hundred
and fifty or two hundred a year, who does not
do the " elegante" at least once a week, parodying
on her own person Pascal's definition:
"Crinoline is a circle whose centre is everywhere
and its circumference nowhere."

But when people who live from hand to mouth
try to rival with great fortunes, it happens that
while the latter only spend their incomes, the
former make a hole in their capital. It does not
suffice to be fond of show; you must have the
means of paying for show.

Look at this household, which is in easy
circumstances! The husband and the wife, together,
make out an income of six or eight hundred
pounds a year; namely, an estate in Picardy,
Aunt Martha's bequest, a quarter share in a
house, and some money in the Funds. But
monsieur is fond of curiosities, madame is fond
of dress, and both are fond of keeping up
appearances. Do you know what "keeping up
appearances" in Paris means? It means a set
of apartments in a fashionable quarter, and a
man-servant who can polish floors, who can drive
you in a hired carriage to take four hours' dust
in the Bois de Boulogne, and can then take the
covers off the chairs for a dinner-party, and for
an evening-party after the dinner. Without the
dinner, the evening party could not come off.
With a cup of tea, merely escorted by modest
cake, you might preach everlastingly in the
desert. It is the dinner which forms the
nucleus, and acts as the centre of attraction.

And do not suppose that it now-o'-days
suffices for a middle-class hostess to serve to her
middle-class guests, as formerly, the soup, the
made dish, the roast, the salad, the sweet dish,
the fruit, and the cheese. She must serve her
floor-polisher, disguised as a maître d'hôtel; a
bouquet of Cape heaths, interlarded with
gardenias; half a dozen glasses of all dimensions,
ranged according to their height, like the reeds
in a Pan's-pipe, for all the wines (more or less
apocryphal) of Christendom; the bill of fare
scrupulously stuck in the napkin, that the guest
may reserve his strength for his favourite dishes;
finally, all the aristocratic dishes of the day.

But the best dish, the dish of honour, to
serve, is a decorated guest, an eminent
functionary, if not a senator, at least an inspector-
general, a writer, a novelist, a painter, a sculptor,
a photographer, never mind who, never mind
what, a rope-dancer, so that his name is
notorious. When the dinner is over, the
evening-party begins; it begins even before
the end of the dinner. The hosts hire
musicians by the hour—singers, actors, actresses,
who sing and spout alternately operatic fragments
and tragic tirades. All this is wearisome,
costly, and must be paid for. At first they
buy on credit; but credit is only an additional
luxury. The bills fall due with the punctuality
of June following May and April. Then the
estate in Picardy is mortgaged; what Aunt
Martha left is pawned. At last, falls the
avalanche of debts swollen by accumulated
interest. It is the doleful hour of execution,
seizures, and stamped leaves of ill-omened
paper.

In this way does sybaritism ravage at once
the past and the future; the past, by devouring
capital already created; the future, by
intercepting savings, that is to say, the reproduction