I do not suppose he could.  From the time when the Salic Law set French women aside from the royal succession, on the ground that the kingdom of France was “too noble to be ruled by a woman,” the claim of nobility has been all on one side.  The State has strengthened the Church in this theory, the Church has strengthened the State; and the result of all is, that French grammarians follow both these high authorities.  When even the good Pere Hyacinthe teaches, through the New York “Independent,” that the husband is to direct the conscience of his wife, precisely as the father directs that of his child, what higher philosophy can you expect of any Frenchman than to maintain the claims of “le sexe noble”?

We see the consequence, even among the most heterodox Frenchmen.  Rejecting all other precedents and authorities, the poor Communists still held to this.  Consider, for instance, this translation of a marriage contract under the Commune, which lately came to light in a trial reported in the “Gazette des Tribunaux:”—­

    FRENCH REPUBLIC.

    The citizen Anet, son of Jean Louis Anet, and the citoyenne Maria
    Saint; she engaged to follow the said citizen everywhere and to
    love him always.—­ANET.  MARIA SAINT.

    Witnessed by the under-mentioned citizen and citoyenne.—­FOURIER. 
    LAROCHE.

    PARIS, April 22, 1871.

What a comfortable arrangement is this!  Poor citoyenne Maria Saint, even when all human laws have suspended their action, still holds by her grammar, still must annex herself to le sexe noble.  She still must follow citizen Anet as the feminine pronoun follows the masculine, or as a verb agrees with its nominative case in number and in person.  But with what a lordly freedom from all obligation does citizen Anet, representative of this nobility of sex, accept the allegiance!  The citizeness may “follow him,” certainly,—­so long as she is not in the way,—­and she must “love him always;” but he is not bound.  Why should he be?  It would be quite ungrammatical.

Yet, after all is said and done, there is a brutal honesty in this frank subordination of the woman according to the grammar.  It has the same merit with the old Russian marriage consecration:  “Here, wolf, take thy lamb,” which at least put the thing clearly, and made no nonsense about it.  I do not know that anywhere in France the wedding ritual is now so severely simple as this, but I know that in some French villages the bride is still married in a mourning-gown.  I should think she would be.

THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR GRANDMOTHERS