46 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
ambition of pleasing and of reigning by attraction ; it is the great 
art of conquering and of keeping one’s conquests. Now to ren- 
der oneself mistress of another’s wills, she must commence by be- 
coming mistress of herself. The ungrateful, who curse the co- 
quette, know not what the preservation of her power costs her. 
For at last, in love, the greatest happiness is, not so much to 
please as to love ; the happiest are those who love the most. 
Why then do you complain when the finest part is left you? Do 
you not understand all that tliere is admirable and sublime in the 
spirit of coquetry ? 
If the Spanish soul, the Italian soul, and the German soul have 
not conquered the world, it is because the Italian woman and the 
German woman have too much forgotten the art of pleasing, to 
occupy themselves only with that of loving. If the French spirit 
is in the way of finishing the work of Christ, it is because the 
woman of France has always knowm how to guard herself from a 
dangerous intoxication, and to sustain over her slave her superi- 
ority and her rights. Had the French woman yielded like the 
others, the French soul would not now pour into all peoples the 
hatred of injustice and the love of liberty. 
The French people has remained upright because it has not cast 
its idol to the ground like the rest, and has not needed to bend in 
order to adore. 
I am now in despair at the pain I must give to the admirers 
of the antique, but I cannot, however, for the sake of flattering 
their eriors, lie to my conscience and to the truth. Now here is 
the truth : from the Greek beauty of former times to the F rench 
beauty of the present day, there is just the same difference as 
from the temple of Madeleine, to Notre Dame of Rheims or Notre 
Dame of Paris. I speak of the Greek beauty that is resumed in 
the inferior types of the Yenus of Milo, the Yenus of the Tortoise 
and of the Callipyge, all creatures full of health, and capable of 
realizing the ideal of the wet nurse, but having nothing to unfold, 
alas ! of the pure ideal of Divinity. The only feminine type in 
which Greek art has succeeded in incarnating the ideal is that of 
Diana the huntress, and the unfortunate has no sex. I declare 
myself entirely of the opinion of a young Artesian lady, well 
