“The sex,” said Peter.  “By the unanimous consent of rhetoricians, there is but one sex the sex, the fair sex, the unfair sex, the gentle sex, the barbaric sex.  We men do not form a sex, we do not even form a sect.  We are your mere hangers-on, camp-followers, satellites—­your things, your playthings—­we are the mere shuttlecocks which you toss hither and thither with your battledores, as the wanton mood impels you.  We are born of woman, we are swaddled and nursed by woman, we are governessed by woman; subsequently, we are beguiled by woman, fooled by woman, led on, put off, tantalised by woman, fretted and bullied by her; finally, last scene of all, we are wrapped in our cerements by woman.  Man’s life, birth, death, turn upon woman, as upon a hinge.  I have ever been a misanthrope, but now I am seriously thinking of becoming a misogynist as well.  Would you advise me to-do so?”

“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?”