Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

Why object to such manners? Cynicism is at least as good as hypocrisy.
Nowadays England, whose Loyola is named Wesley, casts down her eyes a
little at the remembrance of that past age. She is vexed at the memory,
yet proud of it.
These fine ladies, moreover, knew Latin. From the 16th century this had
been accounted a feminine accomplishment. Lady Jane Grey had carried
fashion to the point of knowing Hebrew. The Duchess Josiana Latinized.
Then (another fine thing) she was secretly a Catholic; after the manner
of her uncle, Charles II., rather than her father, James II. James II.
had lost his crown for his Catholicism, and Josiana did not care to risk
her peerage. Thus it was that while a Catholic amongst her intimate
friends and the refined of both sexes, she was outwardly a Protestant
for the benefit of the riffraff.
This is the pleasant view to take of religion. You enjoy all the good
things belonging to the official Episcopalian church, and later on you
die, like Grotius, in the odour of Catholicity, having the glory of a
mass being said for you by le Père Petau.
Although plump and healthy, Josiana was, we repeat, a perfect prude.
At times her sleepy and voluptuous way of dragging out the end of her
phrases was like the creeping of a tiger's paws in the jungle.
The advantage of prudes is that they disorganize the human race. They
deprive it of the honour of their adherence. Beyond all, keep the human
species at a distance. This is a point of the greatest importance.
When one has not got Olympus, one must take the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
Juno resolves herself into Araminta. A pretension to divinity not
admitted creates affectation. In default of thunderclaps there is
impertinence. The temple shrivels into the boudoir. Not having the power
to be a goddess, she is an idol.
There is besides, in prudery, a certain pedantry which is pleasing to
women. The coquette and the pedant are neighbours. Their kinship is
visible in the fop. The subtile is derived from the sensual. Gluttony
affects delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then woman
feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which
takes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of circumvallation
with a ditch. Every prude puts on an air of repugnance. It is a
protection. She will consent, but she disdains--for the present.
Josiana had an uneasy conscience. She felt such a leaning towards
immodesty that she was a prude. The recoils of pride in the direction
opposed to our vices lead us to those of a contrary nature. It was the
excessive effort to be chaste which made her a prude. To be too much on
the defensive points to a secret desire for attack; the shy woman is not
strait-laced. She shut herself up in the arrogance of the exceptional
circumstances of her rank, meditating, perhaps, all the while, some
sudden lapse from it.
It was the dawn of the eighteenth century. England was a sketch of what
France was during the regency. Walpole and Dubois are not unlike.