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CHAPTER II

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WOMAN'S INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL

A woman at the beginning—The first love-story—Different versions—'Cherchez la femme'—The influence of woman on national characteristics.

If we look back into the dawn of the world, we see that, from her first appearance, woman has always been a great power. Indeed, she had the leading part in the first great drama of which the literature of the world gives any account. A snake and a poor weak man had the minor parts, the snake playing the villain and the poor man the fool. I have never read that story without feeling ashamed of the first representative of my sex. If I had been Adam, I would have stuck to Eve through thick and thin. To save, even only to shield, a woman (especially one I loved, or one who would have been as kind to me as Eve had been to Adam), I would tell lies by the yard and by the hour, and I admire that English judge who, being told so by a male co-respondent in a divorce case, replied, 'And so would I.'

How I prefer that story of our first parents as related in the sacred books of the Buddhists! There, as in the version that we know, man is tempted by woman, and, as in our version, and as he has done ever since, and will do for ever and ever, he succumbs. But when he is found out and sentence is to be passed on him, what a difference! He does not turn around and say, 'Please, it was not I who tempted her; it was she who tempted me.' No, he acknowledges his guilt, affirms that he alone disobeyed, and that he alone should be punished. Then Eve intervenes, and she, too, confesses her guilt. There is a regular attempt each at shielding the other. Then both fall on their knees and beg to be punished together, and their request is granted, and they go forth hand in hand into exile. This is the first record of love and devotion, not, as in our version, a first record of man's cowardice and selfishness.

From that memorable day to this, Her Royal Highness Woman has been the greatest power for good and evil that the world has known, for ever since Adam and Eve there have been men and women—especially women.

A beautiful woman was the cause of the Trojan War; the cause of David's single sin, a woman; the cause of Solomon's decadence, a woman, or rather, many women. A woman was the instigator of the greatest crime ever recorded in history, the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew. A woman, who has dearly paid for it since, was the cause of the Franco-German war. On the other hand, France was saved in the fifteenth century by a sweet peasant girl at a time when King and people had given up all hope of ever again seeing France a free and independent nation—but that was a long time ago.

There is no country where the influence of women over men is so great as France, and the famous phrase 'Cherchez la femme'—'Seek the woman'—emanated from the lips of the greatest jurisconsult France ever produced, President Dupin, in the reign of King Louis Philippe. And it is a fact that among French prisoners who belong to the better classes, there are ninety-nine out of every hundred who have committed murder, forgery, embezzlement, theft, for the sake of a woman. The English people (and the Americans, too, I believe) say that drunkenness is responsible for the great majority of crimes committed in Great Britain and America. The expensive ways of French women are responsible for the majority of crimes and offences committed by men in modern France, as these expensive ways of women are responsible for their own downfall nine times out of ten.

On the other hand, a man owes all his best qualities to the influence of the first woman he has known, his mother. A man will be what his mother has made him. A man does not learn how to be a gentleman at school, at college, or at the university. There he may improve his manner, but his mind is formed at home much earlier than that.

It is woman, and woman alone, that makes society polite. Men together can talk or chat, but it is only when women join them that they can causer, an equivalent for which the English language does not possess. And why? Simply because Englishmen do not as a rule care for the restraint that results from the presence of women.

Thanks to the tact, the brilliancy, and the high intellectual attainments of American women, one can causer in America, and the vocabulary of the language used in the United States ought to be richer by one word, a good equivalent for this French verb which both 'to talk' and 'to chat' most imperfectly translate; for causer means 'to chat with wit, humour, brilliancy, and great refinement.'

Her Royal Highness Woman

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