the marbles of the gyneceum.  The country was reduced to the condition of a city, to a narrow territory, and the courtesans who were connected with art and religion by so many ties, were sufficient to satisfy the first passions of the young men, who were few in number, since their strength was elsewhere taken up in the violent exercises of that training which was demanded of them by the military system of those heroic times.

At the beginning of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to seek such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy, stamped upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of complete servitude.  The senate understood the importance of virtue in a republic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development of the marital and paternal power.  The dependence of the woman on her husband is found inscribed on every code.  The seclusion prescribed by the East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue.  On these principles were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to the sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors, the law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and all the characteristics of the Roman law.  Moreover, three acts of feminine violation either accomplished or attempted, produced three revolutions!  And was it not a grand event, sanctioned by the decrees of the country, that these illustrious women should make their appearances on the political arena!  Those noble Roman women, who were obliged to be either brides or mothers, passed their life in retirement engaged in educating the masters of the world.  Rome had no courtesans because the youth of the city were engaged in eternal war.  If, later on, dissoluteness appeared, it merely resulted from the despotism of emperors; and still the prejudices founded upon ancient manners were so influential that Rome never saw a woman on a stage.  These facts are not put forth idly in scanning the history of marriage in France.

After the conquest of Gaul, the Romans imposed their laws upon the conquered; but they were incapable of destroying both the profound respect which our ancestors entertained for women and the ancient superstitions which made women the immediate oracles of God.  The Roman laws ended by prevailing, to the exclusion of all others, in this country once known as the “land of written law,” or Gallia togata, and their ideas of marriage penetrated more or less into the “land of customs.”

But, during the conflict of laws with manners, the Franks invaded the Gauls and gave to the country the dear name of France.  These warriors came from the North and brought the system of gallantry which had originated in their western regions, where the mingling of the sexes did not require in those icy climates the jealous precautions of the East.  The women of that time elevated the privations of that kind of life by the exaltation of their sentiments.  The drowsy minds of the day made necessary those varied forms of delicate solicitation, that versatility of address, the fancied repulse of coquetry, which belong to the system whose principles have been unfolded in our First Part, as admirably suited to the temperate clime of France.