English Pharisees and French Crocodiles Part 10

The king of French sn.o.bs calls himself M. du Bois, M. du Val, M. du Mont--or better still, M. de la Roche-Pichenette. His father, an honest man, and useful member of society, ama.s.sed penny by penny a snug fortune; his name was Dumont, Duval, Dubois, of the _bois_ of which useful men are made. The son squanders the money of his lamented papa, and calls himself Du Bois, of the _bois_ of which parasites and idlers are made. If one of his estates happens to be called "la Roche-Pichenette," he dubs himself M. de la Roche-Pichenette, which looks grander still. He would be puzzled to show you the letters patent which authorize him in a.s.suming this grotesque name; but he will tell you that, if he cannot do so, it is because those Republican scoundrels of '93 destroyed them. He is a clerical and stanch Royalist, as a matter of course; _n.o.blesse oblige_. In this respect he outdoes the genuine n.o.bleman, who needs make no noise to attract attention to a name which everyone knows, and which, in spite of what may be said on the subject, often recalls the memory of some glorious event in the past. Noise he must make, unfortunately for his cause. So a German jumps on the table to make believe that he is merry.

He talks of his ancestors, and rails at the Revolution which made a man of him. Ancestors he has, of course, as you and I have; they were, doubtless, worthy fellows, good patriots, who may have been present at Fontenoy, at Rocroy, or even at the siege of Jerusalem, for the very simple reason that the principle of spontaneous generation has never been applied to man. But if his ancestors lent a helping hand at the taking of Jerusalem, and also, perhaps, by the irony of fate, at the taking of the Bastille, he, for his part, has taken nothing particular except a sham t.i.tle.

This kind of sn.o.b is not met with in England. The names of the lords, baronets, and knights are published every year; fraud is impossible. The few contraband barons that are to be found in England are barons of the Holy Empire.

CHAPTER XV.

A SUCCESS AS AN ANGLOPHOBIST. (THE LATE MARQUIS DE BOISSY.)

The Anglophobist of the purest water that France ever produced, was the late Marquis de Boissy, senator of the second Empire. This witty, eloquent, spirited old Gaul, was the soul of the august a.s.sembly, the only member of it who was not either stuffed or embalmed, and his memory alone will save it from oblivion. His philippics will long ring in the ears of the French.

Whether he was in the tribune treating the subject of home or foreign politics, or whether he was making a speech at the agricultural committee meeting of his borough, he had but one peroration, his cherished device, his hobby:

_Delenda est Britannia._

He used to accuse England of smothering the human race with her breath, and would compare her to the octopus, that hideous and sticky ma.s.s whose tentacles have the property of creating a vacuum around them.

"The world will never have any peace," said he, "until that brute has ceased sucking the blood of other nations, and been sunk at the bottom of the sea. Old as I am, I would go for a drummer, so that I might lend a helping hand in subduing the nation that has violated the most sacred laws of humanity."

All the scourges that visit the earth were put down by him to the credit of that traitress of a neighbor; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, inundations, cholera, the plague; even down to his own colds in the head, all were attributed by him to the baneful influence of the breeze that had pa.s.sed over England.

He did not hesitate to declare that the air of the Champs-Elysees in Paris was polluted by the presence of the English colony in its midst.

Every time he pa.s.sed through it, he fumigated himself as soon as he reached home.

Poor Marquis de Boissy, what would you have said, if you had lived long enough to receive invitations to _five o'clocquer_?

The old Anglophobist was sincere in his epic outbursts, and at the same time very amusing, for he was as full of wit as he was of Anglophobia.

He is dead, leaving no successor; France is at present without a declared Anglophobist.

CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN WORSHIP.

A worshiper of grace and beauty, the Frenchman has given to woman a place which she occupies in no other nation.

Since the days when Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.

The Frenchman is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, physiological, or psychological point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted.

It is a case of woman worship. Parodying Terence's lines, he says:

"I am a man, and all that concerns woman interests me."

Nothing is more absurd in the eyes of the English than this ever-present idea of woman in the mind of the Frenchman, and as our dear neighbors do not know us any better than if an ocean, instead of a silver streak, separated us and them, they indulge in a thousand and one commentaries upon the puerility of our character.

However, it is to our education, and to that alone, that this weak but charming side of our national character must be attributed.

If, from the tenderest age, we were used to liberty and the companionship of children of the other s.e.x, we should grow up thinking very little about liberty and women, and we should succeed in acquiring that _sangfroid_ which is the foundation-stone of the prosperity and the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon race.

When we were schoolboys, and a rumor spread through the cla.s.s rooms that the sister of So-and-So was in the parlor, do you remember, my dear compatriots, what a commotion it created throughout the whole establishment? Do you remember how we climbed on tables and chairs, and how happy we were if we could but catch sight of the corner of a petticoat at the other end of the courtyard? No wonder, for, to us, a girl was quite an extraordinary being, something almost supernatural.

The scream of the young ladies of Miss Tomkins' Seminary, on hearing that "a man is behind the door!" is nothing, compared to the magic cry, "_Une fille!_" in a French school.

Is not the object of man's worship always something unknown, extraordinary, ideal? Is it not always clothed in mystery? Have we ever bestowed unlimited admiration upon those whose society we frequent every day? Habit kills admiration,[2] as it kills all sentiments that live upon illusions. If, from our childhood, woman were the companion of our daily games and walks, should we not look upon her with different eyes?

To us Frenchmen, woman is a being whom we consider greatly superior to ourselves, because we have made an ideal of her.

To the Englishman, woman is a creature whom he looks down upon as a frail and frivolous being, greatly inferior to himself. With what an air of sovereign condescension the English schoolboy tells his young girl friends all about the game of football or cricket, in which he has taken part! His manner seems to say: "Is it not awfully kind of me to take the trouble to enter into these details with poor, puny creatures like you, who cannot appreciate them?"

In France, whatever a woman does is right; even her errors almost turn to her advantage. If she breaks her marriage vows, it is not she who is covered with shame, it is her husband who is covered with ridicule; and people immediately look for defects in him, and excuses for her.

A society thus governed by women may lack firmness, but its salient points are sure to be good taste, delicacy, tact, wit, and amiability.

It is impossible not to mention here the ascendancy which women took over French literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and during the early part of the present one, through the influence of the _salons litteraires_. Does it not seem, in fact, as if the history of French literature might be summed up by naming the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the _salons_ of Mme. des Loges, Mlle. de Scudery, Mme. de Sable, Ninon de Lenclos, Mme. Scarron, the d.u.c.h.esse du Maine, the Marquise de Lambert, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. d'Epinay, Mme. de Caylus, Mme. de Vintimille, Mme. Recamier, Mme. de Stael, and Mme. Girardin? Do we not know the courts of Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Napoleon I. by the letters and memoirs of this splendid legion of women belonging to "_la societe polie_" who have taught us the art of _causer_, that art of which we French have the monopoly?

This woman worship, from which chivalry sprang, is the source of another trait characteristic of the French nation, a trait which we have a right to be proud of. I speak of our respect for the weak. I engage that the lowest quarter of any French town would be roused into revolution at the sound of a man having ill-treated a woman or child. It is a sentiment innate in the Celt, and which would be found in the Englishman, if the Germanic element had not gained the ascendancy in England.[3]

Is there any prettier sight than that of our public gardens filled with well-dressed, bright-faced young mothers, whose husbands come, when business is over, to listen to the band at their side, and to take them to their homes, from which care is banished as far as possible, and where they are made sharers in each joy of their husbands?

Can we imagine a pleasure party of any kind without the presence of women? And when I say _we_, I mean all cla.s.ses of society. When our workman sets out, on Sunday mornings, for the Jardin de la Muette or the Bois de Meudon, with provisions for the day, he takes his wife and children with him; and even his old mother, if he have one, must go too, or the party is not complete.

I confess that those world-famed English dinners which are not brightened by the presence of ladies have but little charm for me.

"Those English people enjoy themselves as we bore ourselves to death,"

once said Mme. Vigee-Lebrun.

When I say that women are rarely seen at the great public dinners, which are the distinguishing feature of English society, I exaggerate. They are sometimes admitted ... to the galleries, from thence to contemplate the lords of creation consuming their prodigious repast.

Gallantry could surely go no further.

Looking from the gallant knights of the trencher to the pretty faces in the gallery, I have more than once exclaimed to myself: "n.o.body can say that an Englishman's eyes are bigger than his stomach."

CHAPTER XVII.