sinking back on their sofas, may say as often as
they please, " Woman is not an ailing creature."
An ailment which is nothing when you can nurse
yourself up for two or three days at a time, is
frequently overwhelming for the female who is
unable to take repose.

In reality, woman is unable to perform
long-continued labour, either in a standing or a sitting
posture. If she remain constantly seated, her
chest is irritated, her stomach oppressed, her
head injected with blood. If she be kept
continually standing, as in ironing, or in composing
type in a printing-house, other derangements of
the system take place. She is able to do a great
deal of work, but it must be by varying her
attitude, as she does in her household, going and
coming. She ought to have a household; she
ought to be a married woman.

The well-educated young person, as she is
called, who is able to teach and to act as
governess in a family, the professor of certain arts
—is she likely to manage better? M. Michelet
would be glad if he could answer, " Yes." There
is nothing but difficulty for the single woman;
her every step goes either to a blind alley or
to a precipice. The worst destiny that can
befal a woman is to live alone. The "single
woman" may be recognised at the first glance.
Take her in her own neighbourhood, wherever
she is subject to observation, and you will
notice in her the easy, free, elegantly
unconstrained bearing which is peculiar to the
women of France. But in a quarter where she
thinks that no attention is paid to her, and where
she unmasks herself, what sadness, what visible
depression!

"What annoyances beset a single woman! She
can hardly go out in the evening, for fear of being
mistaken for a disreputable person. There are a
thousand places where men only are seen, and if
her business takes her to one of them, people are
astonished, and laugh like fools. For instance,
if she happens to be detained late at one
extremity of Paris, however hungry she may be,
she dares not enter a restaurant. It would be an
event, and would be looked upon as a wonderful
sight. Every eye would be constantly fixed on
her, she would overhear hazardous and unpolite
conjectures. She is, therefore, obliged to walk
back a league, and, after her late arrival, to light
her fire and prepare her little meal. She avoids
making any noise, for an inquisitive neighbour (a
harebrained student, perhaps, or a young official)
would clap his eye to the keyhole, or would
indiscreetly offer some service as an excuse for
entering. The vexatious circumstances of
community, or rather of servitude, inseparable from
the big, ugly barracks which the French call
houses, make her timid in innumerable things,
and cause her to hesitate at every step.
Everything is constraint for her, and liberty for the
man. How, for instance, she shuts herself up,
if, on Sunday, her young and noisy neighbours
club together to have what is called a bachelor's
dinner!

Let us examine this house. She lives on the
fourth story, and she makes so little noise, that
the occupant of the third story for some time
believed he had no one over him. He is scarcely
less unhappy than she is. He is a gentleman
whom weak health and a moderate competence
forbid to take up any employment. Without
being old, he has already acquired the prudent
habits of a man who is always occupied with the
conservation of his precious self. A piano, which
woke him a little earlier than he had a mind to,
revealed the solitary person. And then, he once
caught a glimpse of an amiable female
countenance on the stairs, a little pale, and of a
graceful figure, and his curiosity was excited. Nothing
more easy. Porters are not deaf and dumb, and
her life is so transparent! Except when she is
giving lessons, she is always at home, and always
studying. She is preparing for examination,
preferring to be a governess, and to find a shelter in
a family. In short, she is so well spoken of, that
the gentleman becomes quite thoughtful. " Ah!
if I were not a poor man!" he says. " It is very
agreeable to have the society of a pretty woman,
who understands everything, who saves you from
dragging out your evenings at the theatre or at
the café. But when one has only ten thousand
francs (four hundred pounds) a year, as I have,
it is impossible to marry."

He then makes a calculation, reckoning everything
double, as men do in such a case,
combining the probable expenses of the married
man with those of the bachelor who should go
on with his café, his theatres, and the rest of it.
In this way, one of the most talented journalists
in Paris came to the conclusion that for two
persons to live, without a servant, in a cottage in
the suburbs, thirty thousand francs a year were
required.

This lamentable existence of honourable
solitude and desperate ennui, is the life that is led
by the wandering shadows who are called in
England members of clubs. It is also beginning
to be the fashion in France. Very well fed, very
well warmed in these splendid establishments,
with all the journals and extensive libraries,
living together like well-bred, polished corpses,
they progress with the spleen, and prepare for
suicide. Everything is so well organised, that
speech is a useless faculty; they have no need
even to make signs. On certain days in the year
their tailor visits them, and takes their measure,
without their having to utter a word.

Occasionally you may meet, in an omnibus, a
young girl modestly dressed, with her eyes
constantly fixed on a book. Most frequently, the
book is a grammar, or one of the manuals which
prepare candidates for examination. Small
books, thick and compact, in which every science
is concentrated into a dry, indigestible state,
very nearly to the consistency of a bit of
flint-stone. She loads her stomach with all
that, the young victim. Visibly, she exerts
herself to the utmost, to swallow the greatest quantity
possible. She devotes to it her days and her