From “Characters.”

THE MALE and female sex seldom agree about the merits of a woman, as their interests vary too much. Women do not like those same charms in one another which render them agreeable to men; many ways and means which kindle in the latter the greatest passions raise among them aversion and antipathy.

  There exists among some women an artificial grandeur depending on a certain way of moving their eyes, tossing their heads, and on their manner of walking, which does not go further; it is like a dazzling wit which is deceptive, and is only admired because it is superficial. In a few others is to be found an ingenuous natural greatness, not beholden to gestures and motion, which springs from the heart, and is, as it were, the result of their noble birth; their merit, as unruffled as it is efficient, is accompanied by a thousand virtues, which, in spite of all their modesty, break out and display themselves to all who can discern them.

  I have heard some people say that they should like to be a girl, and a handsome girl, too, from thirteen to two and twenty, and after that age again to become a man.

  Some young ladies are not sensible of the advantages of a happy disposition, and how beneficial it would be to them to give themselves up to it; they enfeeble these rare and fragile gifts which heaven has given them by affectation and by bad imitation; their very voice and gait are affected; they fashion their looks, adorn themselves, consult their looking-glasses to see whether they have sufficiently changed their own natural appearance, and take some trouble to make themselves less agreeable.

  For a woman to paint herself red or white is, I admit, a smaller crime than to say one thing and think another; it is also something less innocent than to disguise herself or to go masquerading, if she does not pretend to pass for what she seems to be, but only thinks of concealing her personality and of remaining unknown; it is an endeavor to deceive the eyes, to wish to appear outwardly what she is not; it is a kind of “white lie.”

  We should judge of a woman without taking into account her shoes and headdress, and, almost as we measure a fish, from head to tail.

  If it be the ambition of women only to appear handsome in their own eyes and to please themselves, they are, no doubt, right in following their own tastes and fancies as to how they should beautify themselves, as well as in choosing their dress and ornaments; but if they desire to please men, if it is for them they paint and besmear themselves, I can tell them that all men, or nearly all, have agreed that white and red paint makes them look hideous and frightful; that red paint alone ages and disguises them; and that these men hate as much to see white lead on their countenances as to see false teeth in their mouths or balls of wax to plump out their cheeks; that they solemnly protest against all artifices women employ to make themselves look ugly; that they are not responsible for it to heaven, but, on the contrary, that it seems the last and infallible means to reclaim men from loving them.

  If women were by nature what they make themselves by art; if they were to lose suddenly all the freshness of their complexions, and their faces to become as fiery and leaden as they make them with the red and the paint they besmear themselves with, they would consider themselves the most wretched creatures on earth.

  A coquette is a woman who never yields to the passion she has for pleasing, nor to the good opinion she entertains for her own beauty; she regards time and years only as things that wrinkle and disfigure other women, and forgets that age is written on her face. The same dress, which formerly enhanced her beauty when she was young, now disfigures her, and shows the more the defects of old age; winning manners and affectation cling to her even in sorrow and sickness; she dies dressed in her best, and adorned with gay-colored ribbons.