“You should not talk like that, madam,” said the old man, “animals are cattle, but human beings have a law given them.”
“Yes, but how is one to live with a man when there is no love?” the lady again hastened to express her argument, which had probably seemed very new to her.
“They used not to go into that,” said the old man in an impressive tone. “It is only now that all this has sprung up. The least thing makes them say: ‘I will leave you!’ The fashion has spread even to the peasants. ‘Here you are!’ she says. ‘Here, take your shirts and trousers and I will go with Vánka; his head is curlier than yours.’ What can you say? the first thing that should be required of a woman is fear!”
The clerk glanced at the lawyer, at the lady, and at me, apparently suppressing a smile and prepared to ridicule or to approve of the tradesman’s words according to the reception they met with.
“Fear of what?” asked the lady.
“Why this: Let her fear her husband! That fear!”
“Oh, the time for that, sir, has passed,” said the lady with a certain viciousness.
“No, madam, that time cannot pass. As she, Eve, was made from the rib of a man, so it will remain to the end of time,” said the old man, jerking his head with such sternness and such a victorious look that the clerk at once concluded that victory was on his side, and laughed loudly.
“Ah yes, that’s the way you men argue,” said the lady unyieldingly, and turned to us. “You have given yourselves freedom but want to shut women up in a tower. You no doubt permit yourselves everything.”
“No one is permitting anything, but a man does not bring offspring into the home; while a woman—a wife—is a leaky vessel,” the tradesman