have is to make the man of genius ridiculous, and the ordinary man dumb
and inert. One comes away from such houses saying, 'Those were fine
speeches,' and nothing more."

I really think that I was in the right here; but I cannot forget that my
chief cause of anger against these women arose from the fact that they
paid no attention to people, however able they might think themselves,
unless they happened to be famous--the _people_ being myself, as you may
easily imagine. On the other hand, now that I look back on those days
without prejudice and without any sense of wounded vanity, I am certain
that these women had a way of fawning on public favourites which was
much more like childish conceit than sincere admiration or candid
sympathy. They became editors, as it were, of the conversation,
listening with all their might and making peremptory signals to the
audience to listen to every triviality issuing from an illustrious
mouth; while they would suppress a yawn and drum with their fans at
all remarks, however excellent, as soon as they were unsigned by a
fashionable name. I am ignorant of the airs of the intellectual women
of the nineteenth century; nay, I do not know if the race still exists.
Thirty years have passed since I mixed in society; but, as to the past,
you may believe what I tell you. There were five or six of these
women who were absolutely odious to me. One of them had some wit, and
scattered her epigrams right and left. These were at once hawked about
in all drawing-rooms, and I had to listen to them twenty times in a
single day. Another had read Montesquieu, and gave lessons in law to the
oldest magistrates. A third used to play the harp execrably, but it was
agreed that her arms were the most beautiful in France, and we had to
endure the harsh scraping of her nails over the strings so that she
might have an opportunity of removing her gloves like a coy little girl.
What can I say of the others, except that they vied with one another in