inflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical question which is always with us?
"She is thirty-five years old, but you would not think she was more than twenty!" said an enthusiastic youth with sparkling eyes, who, freshly liberated from college, would, like Cherubin, embrace all.
"Zounds! Mine has dressing-gowns of batiste and diamond rings for the evening!" said a lawyer's clerk.
"But she has a box at the Francais!" said an army officer.
"At any rate," cried another one, an elderly man who spoke as if he were standing on the defence, "she does not cost me a sou! In our case – wouldn't you like to have the same chance, my respected friend?"
And he patted his companion lightly on the shoulder.
"Oh! she loves me!" said another. "It seems too good to be true; but she has the most stupid of husbands! Ah! – Buffon has admirably described the animals, but the biped called husband – "
What a pleasant thing for a married man to hear!
"Oh! what an angel you are, my dear!" is the answer to a request discreetly whispered into the ear.
"Can you tell me her name or point her out to me?"
"Oh! no; she is an honest woman."
When a student is loved by a waitress, he mentions her name with pride and takes his friends to lunch at her house. If a young man loves a woman whose husband is engaged in some trade dealing with articles of necessity, he will answer, blushingly, "She is the wife of a haberdasher, of a stationer, of a hatter, of a linen-draper, of a clerk, etc."
But this confession of love for an inferior which buds and blows in the midst of packages, loaves of sugar, or flannel waistcoats is always accompanied with an exaggerated praise of the lady's fortune. The husband alone is engaged in the business; he is rich; he has fine furniture. The loved one comes to her lover's house; she wears a cashmere shawl; she owns a country house, etc.
In short, a young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove that his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This distinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become as indefinite as the line which separates bon ton from vulgarity. What then is meant by an honest woman?
On this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of their husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon some general rules, which are the result of long observation.
Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are eligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all are elected to it. The principles on which these elections are based may be found in the following axioms:
I. An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.
II. An honest woman is under forty years old.
III. A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest woman.
IV. A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.
V. A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.
VI. When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand francs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which his fortune was made.
VII. A woman who says "letter of change" for letter of exchange, who says of a man, "He is an elegant gentleman," can never be an honest woman, whatever fortune she possesses.
VIII. An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.
IX. A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.
X. The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits at the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very large business and she does not live over his shop.
XI. The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her uncle.
XII. An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
XIII. The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.
By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.
In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to be reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of our statistical calculations.
Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of fifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on pensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and mortgages.
Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three thousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs each, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget, by the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt, church funds and soldier's pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances for washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).
Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the capital at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the commercial establishments possible in France.
Here we have a million husbands represented.
But at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty, of a hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only, from consols or some other investment?
How many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no more than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two hundred, or two hundred and eighty?
At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?
How many merchants who have nothing but a fictitious capital shall we admit? These men are rich in credit and have not a single actual sou, and resemble the sieves through which Pactolus flows. And how many brokers whose real capital does not amount to more than a thousand, two thousand, four thousand, five thousand francs? Business! – my respects to you!
Let us suppose more people to be fortunate than actually are so. Let us divide this million into parts; five hundred thousand domestic establishments will have an income ranging from a hundred to three thousand francs, and five thousand women will fulfill the conditions which entitle them to be called honest women.
After these observations, which close our meditation on statistics,
