When I think of mediaeval princesses running their households during the Crusades, or prioresses running the life of great abbeys, or St Theresa as a little girl going out to fight evil, as George Sand’s Jacques says, I think a kind of softness has overcome modern life. De Balzac says that the new occupations of men in cities, their work in businesses, have turned women into pretty and peripheral toys, all silk, perfume and full of the fantaisies and intrigues of the boudoir. I would like to see silk floss and experience the atmosphere of a boudoir—but I do not want to be a relative and
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