"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!"