University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

"AND note, also, this falsehood, of which all
are guilty; the way in which marriages are
made. What could there be more natural? The
young girl is marriageable, she should marry.

What simpler, provided the young person is not
a monster, and men can be found with a desire
to marry? Well, no, here begins a new hypoc-
risy.

"Formerly, when the maiden arrived at a
favorable age, her marriage was arranged by
her parents. That was done, that is done
still, throughout humanity, among the Chinese,
the Hindoos, the Mussulmans, and among our
common people also. Things are so managed in
at least ninety-nine per cent. of the families of
the entire human race.

"Only we riotous livers have imagined that
this way was bad, and have invented another.

And this other,—what is it? It is this. The
young girls are seated, and the gentlemen walk
up and down before them, as in a bazaar, and
make their choice. The maidens wait and think,

but do not dare to say: 'Take me, young man,
me and not her. Look at these shoulders and
the rest.' We males walk up and down, and
estimate the merchandise, and then we discourse
upon the rights of woman, upon the liberty that
she acquires, I know not how, in the theatrical
halls."

"But what is to be done?" said I to him.

"Shall the woman make the advances?"

"I do not know. But, if it is a question of
equality, let the equality be complete. Though
it has been found that to contract marriages
through the agency of match-makers is humi-
liating, it is nevertheless a thousand times prefer-
able to our system. There the rights and the
chances are equal; here the woman is a slave,
exhibited in the market. But as she cannot bend
to her condition, or make advances herself, there
begins that other and more abominable lie which
is sometimes called
going into society, some-
times
amusing one's self
, and which is really
nothing but the hunt for a husband.

"But say to a mother or to her daughter that
they are engaged only in a hunt for a husband.

God! What an offence! Yet they can do noth-

ing else, and have nothing else to do; and the
terrible feature of it all is to see sometimes very
young, poor, and innocent maidens haunted
solely by such ideas. If only, I repeat, it were
done frankly; but it is always accompanied with
lies and babble of this sort:—

"'Ah, the descent of species! How interest-
ing it is!'

"'Oh, Lily is much interested in painting.'

"'Shall you go to the Exposition? How
charming it is!'

"'And the troika, and the plays, and the sym-
phony. Ah, how adorable!'

"'My Lise is passionately fond of music.'

"'And you, why do you not share these con-
victions?'

"And through all this verbiage, all have but
one single idea: 'Take me, take my Lise. No,
me! Only try!"'