96 University of Texas Bulletin
longer I hear you speak the more I grow convinced that you are fellow-conspirators — I greet you as such, I understand you as such ; for fellow-conspirators one can make out from afar. And yet, what know you? What does your bit of theory to which you wish to give the appearance of expe- rience, your bit of experience which you make over into a theory — what does it amount to? For every now and then you believe her a moment and — are caught in a moment! No, / know woman — from her weak side, that is to say, I know her. I shrink from no means to make sure about what I have learned ; for I am a madman, and a madman one must be to understand her, and if one has not been one be- fore, one will become a madman, once one understands her., The robber has his hiding place by the noisy high-road, and the ant-lion his funnel in the loose sand, and the pirate his haunts by the roaring sea : likewise have I may fashion- shop in the very midst of the teeming streets, seductive, irresistible to woman as is the Venusberg to men. There, in a fashion-shop, one learns to know woman, in a practical way and without any theoretical ado.
Now, if fashion meant nothing than that woman in the heat of her desire threw off all her clothing — why, then it would stand for something. But this is not the case, fash- ion is not plain sensuality, not tolerated debauchery, but an illicit trade in indecency authorized as proper. And, just as in heathen Prussia the marriageable girl wore a bell whose ringing served as a signal to the men, likewise is a woman's existence in fashion a continual bell-ringing, not for debauchees but for lickerish voluptuaries. People hold Fortune to be a woman — ah, yes it is, to be sure, fickle; still, it is fickle in something, as it may also give much; and insofar it is not a woman. No ; but fashion is a woman, for fashion is fickleness in nonsense, and is consistent only in its becoming ever more crazy.
One hour in my shop is worth more than days and years without, if it really be one's desire to learn to know woman ; in my shop, for it is the only one in the capital, there is no thought of competition. Who, forsooth, would dare to enter into competition with one who has entirely devoted himself,
