As I understand it, the men who say that the world gives experience ought to be astonished if they are believed.  The world is merely a number of whirlpools, each one independent of the others; they circle in groups like flocks of birds.  There is no resemblance between the different quarters of the same city, and the denizen of the Chaussee d’Antin has as much to learn at Marais as at Lisbon.  It is true that these various whirlpools are traversed, and have been since the beginning of the world, by seven personages who are always the same:  the first is called hope; the second, conscience; the third, opinion; the fourth, desire; the fifth, sorrow; the sixth, pride; and the seventh, man.

“But,” the reader objects, “where are the women in all this?”

Oh! creatures who bear the name of women and who have passed like dreams through a life that was itself a dream, what shall I say of you?  Where there is no shadow of hope can there be memory?  Where shall I seek for it?  What is there more dumb in human memory?  What is there more completely forgotten than you?

If I must speak of women I will mention two; here is one of them: 

I ask what would be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty, about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals; eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed to pass by order of the police, but near which a dozen young women prowled who were licensed and recognized by these same police; what could you expect of her, when after wearying her hands and eyes all day long on a dress or a hat, she leans out of that window as night falls?  That dress she has sewed, that hat she has trimmed with her poor and honest hands in order to earn a supper for the household, she sees passing along the street on the head or on the body of a notorious woman.  Thirty times a day a hired carriage stops before the door, and there steps out a dissolute character, numbered as is the hack in which she rides, who stands before a glass and primps, taking off and putting on the results of many days’ work on the part of the poor girl who watches her.  She sees that woman draw from her pocket gold in plenty, she who has but one louis a week; she looks at her feet and her head, she examines her dress and eyes her as she steps into her carriage; and then, what can you expect?  When night has fallen, after a day when work has been scarce, when her mother is sick, she opens her door, stretches out her hand and stops a passerby.

Such is the story of a girl I once knew.  She could play the piano, knew something of accounts, a little designing, even a little history and grammar, and thus a little of everything.  How many times have I regarded with poignant compassion that sad work of nature, mutilated by society!  How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and vacillating gleams of a spark flickering in abortive life!  How many times have I tried to revive the fire that smouldered under those ashes!  Alas! her long hair was the color of ashes, and we called her Cendrillon.