women never carry their learning beyond certain limits, and the
tittle-tattle of blue-stockings can dazzle no one but fools. There has
never been one great discovery due to a woman. The fair sex is deficient
in that vigorous power which the body lends to the mind, but women are
evidently superior to men in simple reasoning, in delicacy of feelings,
and in that species of merit which appertains to the heart rather than to
the mind.

Hurl some idle sophism at a woman of intelligence. She will not unravel
it, but she will not be deceived by it, and, though she may not say so,
she will let you guess that she does not accept it. A man, on the
contrary, if he cannot unravel the sophism, takes it in a literal sense,
and in that respect the learned woman is exactly the same as man. What a
burden a Madame Dacier must be to a man! May God save every honest man
from such!

When the new dress was brought, Henriette told me that she did not want
me to witness the process of her metamorphosis, and she desired me to go
out for a walk until she had resumed her original form. I obeyed
cheerfully, for the slightest wish of the woman we love is a law, and our
very obedience increases our happiness.

As I had nothing particular to do, I went to a French bookseller in whose
shop I made the acquaintance of a witty hunchback, and I must say that a
hunchback without wit is a raga avis; I have found it so in all
countries. Of course it is not wit which gives the hump, for, thank God,
all witty men are not humpbacked, but we may well say that as a general
rule the hump gives wit, for the very small number of hunchbacks who have
little or no wit only confirms the rule: The one I was alluding to just
now was called Dubois-Chateleraux. He was a skilful engraver, and