extremely shocked at the tone and bearing of these women, whom everybody extolled; to me they seemed ridiculous in their studied posings, and their grand society manners looked very much like insufferable effrontery.  Yes, I, so intrepid at heart, and but lately so coarse in my manners, felt ill at ease and abashed in their presence; and it needed all Edmee’s reproaches and remonstrances to prevent me from displaying a profound contempt for this meretriciousness of glances, of toilets, and allurements which was known in society as allowable coquetry, as the charming desire to please, as amiability, and as grace.  The abbe was of my opinion.  When the guests had gone we members of the family used to gather round the fireside for a short while before separating.  It is at such a time that one feels an impulse to bring together one’s scattered impressions and communicate them to some sympathetic being.  The abbe, then, would break the same lances as myself with my uncle and cousin.  The chevalier, who was an ardent admirer of the fair sex, of which he had had but little experience, used to take upon himself, like a true French knight, to defend all the beauties that we were attacking so unmercifully.  He would laughingly accuse the abbe of arguing about women as the fox in the fable argued about the grapes.  For myself, I used to improve under the abbe’s criticisms; this was an emphatic way of letting Edmee know how much I preferred her to all others.  She, however, appeared to be more scandalized than flattered, and seriously reproved me for the tendency to malevolence which had its origin, she said, in my inordinate pride.

It is true that after generously undertaking the defence of the persons in question, she would come over to our opinion as soon as, Rousseau in hand, we told her that the women in Paris society had cavalier manners and a way of looking a man in the face which must needs be intolerable in the eyes of a sage.  When once Rousseau had delivered judgment, Edmee would object no further; she was ready to admit with him that the greatest charm of a woman is the intelligent and modest attention she gives to serious discussions, and I always used to remind her of the comparison of a superior woman to a beautiful child with its great eyes full of feeling and sweetness and delicacy, with its shy questionings and its objections full of sense.  I hoped that she would recognise herself in this portrait upon the text, and, enlarging the portrait: 

“A really superior woman,” I said, looking at her earnestly, “is one who knows enough to prevent her from asking a ridiculous or unseasonable question, or from ever measuring swords with men of merit.  Such a woman knows when to be silent, especially with the fools whom she could laugh at, or the ignorant whom she could humiliate.  She is indulgent towards absurdities because she does not yearn to display her knowledge, and she is observant of whatsoever is good, because she desires to improve