(Paris, this 20th September, 1677.) Monsieur me trouvant oblige de randre vuue bonne party de l'argan que mais enfant out pris de peuis quil sont en campane Monsieur cela m'oblije a vous suplier très humblement Monsieur de me faire la grasse de Commander Monsieur quant il vous plaira que l'on me pay le capitenery de Movsaux monsieur vous asseurant que vous m'oblijeres fort sansiblement Monsieur, comme ausy de me croire avec toute sorte de respec Monsieur vastre très humble et très obeissant serviteur.
Enough is as good as a feast! Though we stand in no superstitious awe of orthography, we can but laud Mademoiselle de Scudéry for having crossed lances in its favour. And well might she wish that to the first elements of an education might be added a certain amount of building material suitable for a foundation so solid that something more serious than dancing steps and chiffons might at a later date be introduced into the brains of young girls.
Seriously, [she said] is there anything stranger than the way they act when they prepare to enter upon the ordinary education of woman? One does not wish women to be coquettish or gallant, and yet they are permitted to learn carefully everything that has anything to do with gallantry; though they are not permitted to know anything that might fortify their virtue or occupy their minds. All the great scoldings given them in their first youth because they are not proper[19]--that is to say dressed in good taste, and because they do not apply themselves to their dancing lessons and their singing lessons--do they not prove what I say? And the strangest of all is that this should be so when a woman cannot, with any propriety, dance more than five or six years of all the years of her life! And this same person who has been taught to do nothing but to dance is obliged to give proof of judgment to the day of her death; and though she is expected to speak properly, even to her last sigh, nothing is done--of all that might be done--to make her speak more agreeably, nor to act with more care for her conduct; and when the manner in which these ladies pass their lives is considered, it might be said that they seem to have been forbidden to have reason and good sense, and that they were put in the world only that they might sleep, be fat, be handsome, do nothing, and say nothing but silly things.... I know one who sleeps more than twelve hours every day, who takes three or four hours to dress herself, or, to speak more to the point: not to dress herself--for more than half of the time given to dressing is passed either in doing nothing or in doing over what has been done. Then she employs fully two or three hours in consuming her divers repasts; and all the rest of the time is spent receiving people to whom she does not know what to say, or in paying visits to people who do not know what to say to her.