"A misogynist? What is that, Signorino?" asked Marietta.

"A woman-hater," he explained; "one who abhors and forswears

the sex; one who has dashed his rose-coloured spectacles from

his eyes, and sees woman as she really is, with no illusive

glamour; one who has found her out. Yes, I think I shall

become a misogynist. It is the only way of rendering yourself

invulnerable, 't is the only safe course. During my walk this

afternoon, I recollected, from the scattered pigeon-holes of

memory, and arranged in consequent order, at least a score of

good old apothegmatic shafts against the sex. Was it not, for

example, in the grey beginning of days, was it not woman whose

mortal taste brought sin into the world and all our woe? Was

not that Pandora a woman, who liberated, from the box wherein

they were confined, the swarm of winged evils that still

afflict us? I will not remind you of St. John Chrysostom's

golden parable about a temple and the thing it is constructed

over. But I will come straight to the point, and ask whether

this is truth the poet sings, when he informs us roundly that

'every woman is a scold at heart'?"

Marietta was gazing patiently at the sky. She did not answer.

"The tongue," Peter resumed, "is woman's weapon, even as the

fist is man's. And it is a far deadlier weapon. Words break

no bones--they break hearts, instead. Yet were men one-tenth

part so ready with their fists, as women are with their barbed

and envenomed tongues, what savage brutes you would think us

--would n't you?--and what a rushing trade the police-courts

would drive, to be sure. That is one of the good old cliches

that came back to me during my walk. All women are alike

--there's no choice amongst animated fashion-plates: that is

another. A woman is the creature of her temper; her husband,

her children, and her servants are its victims: that is a

third. Woman is a bundle of pins; man is her pin-cushion.

When woman loves, 't is not the man she loves, but the man's

flattery; woman's love is reflex self-love. The man who

marries puts himself in irons. Marriage is a bird-cage in a

garden. The birds without hanker to get in; but the birds

within know that there is no condition so enviable as that of

the birds without. Well, speak up. What do you think? Do you

advise me to become a misogynist?"

"I do not understand, Signorino," said Marietta.

"Of course, you don't," said Peter. "Who ever could understand

such stuff and nonsense? That's the worst of it. If only one

could understand, if only one could believe it, one might find

peace, one might resign oneself. But alas and alas! I have

never had any real faith in human wickedness; and now, try as I

will, I cannot imbue my mind with any real faith in the

undesirability of woman. That is why you see me dissolved in

tears, and unable to eat my dinner. Oh, to think, to think,"

he cried with passion, suddenly breaking into English, "to

think that less than a fortnight ago, less than one little

brief fortnight ago, she was seated in your kitchen, seated

there familiarly, in her wet clothes, pouring tea, for all the

world as if she was the mistress of the house!"




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