On this point the vanity of women, of their lovers, and even that of their husbands, is so sensitive that we had better here settle upon some general rules, which are the result of long observation.

Our one million of privileged women represent a multitude who are eligible for the glorious title of honest women, but by no means all are elected to it.  The principles on which these elections are based may be found in the following axioms: 

APHORISMS.

I.
An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.

II. 
An honest woman is under forty years old.

III. 
A married woman whose favors are to be paid for is not an honest
woman.

IV. 
A married woman who keeps a private carriage is an honest woman.

V.
A woman who does her own cooking is not an honest woman.

VI. 

When a man has made enough to yield an income of twenty thousand francs, his wife is an honest woman, whatever the business in which his fortune was made.

VII. 

A woman who says “letter of change” for letter of exchange, who says of a man, “He is an elegant gentleman,” can never be an honest woman, whatever fortune she possesses.

VIII. 
An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.

IX. 
A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.

X.

The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits at the cashier’s desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very large business and she does not live over his shop.

XI. 

The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her uncle.

XII. 
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.

XIII. 
The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.

By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.

In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris.  These two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to be reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of our statistical calculations.

Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of fifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on pensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and mortgages.