Excerpt from Manon Lescaut The attempt is useless, since we have not yet produced the female artist or musician, notwithstanding all the des perate efforts of the daughters of concierges and of all the marriageable young ladies in general who study the piano, and even composition, with a perseverance worthy of greater success, or who make a mess with oils or water colors; who copy from plaster models or even from the nude; without being able to paint anything but fans, flowers, plates, or very indifferent portraits. Woman on earth has two parts to play, quite distinct roles, but both of them charming, - Love and Maternity! Our admirable masters, the Greeks (who had wiser and clearer ideas of life than we may, at the present day, believe), perfectly understood the two-fold mission of the companion of man. Those women who had to give them children were carefully selected: they were healthy and strong, were kept indoors, and entirely occupied by their sacred duty; in the holy and natural business of child-bear ing, and bringing up their boys who were to become men, -greeks, - and their girls who were to become mothers! Those who were destined for Love, - who were to make the hours of repose charming, seductive and tender, lived free in an atmosphere of homage and gallantry. These were the grand ladies, whose business consisted in making themselves beautiful and delightful, - to ravish the eyes, to captivate the souls, and to trouble the hearts of men. Nothing was demanded of them but to please; to employ all their address and artifice to learn, and to practice, the subtle and mysterious arts of seductiveness and caressing! So greatly was their beauty appreciated that a ship was sent to fetch Hippocrates because one of them was with child! Great men, artists, philosophers, generals, lived in the houses of these women, listened to their counsels, found in the intimacy with them that delicate grace which women possess, and sought in their love something almost divine, -the sensuous and poetic intoxication which emanated from their lips and from their eyes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.