“And after all those others came Franchise, Who was not brown, nor grey, But she was white as snow. And she had not the nose of an Orleanois. Aussi had she the nose long and straight. Eyes green, and laughing—vaulted eyebrows; She had her hair blonde and long, And she was simple as a dove. The body she had sweet, and brightly bred; And she dared not do, nor say To any one, anything she ought not. And if she knew of any man Who was in sorrow for love of her, So soon she had great pity for him, For she had the heart so pitiful, And so sweet and so lovely, That no one suffered pain about her, But she would help him all she could. And she wore a surquanye Which was of no coarse cloth; There’s none so rich as far as Arras. And it was so gathered up, and so joined together, That there was not a single point of it Which was not set in its exact place, rightly. Much well was dressed Franchise, For no robe is so pretty As the surquanye for a demoiselle. A girl is more gentle and more darling In surquanye than in coat, And the white surquanye Signifies that sweet and frank Is she who puts it on her.” May I ask you now to take to heart those two lines of this French description of Frenchness: “And she dared not do, nor say To any one, anything she ought not.” That is not your modern notion of Frenchness, or franchise, or libertas, or liberty—for all these are synonyms for the same virtue. And yet the strange thing is that the lowest types of the modern French grisette are the precise corruption of this beautiful Franchise: and still retain, at their worst, some of the grand old qualities; the absolute sources of corruption being the neglect of their childhood by the upper classes, the abandonment to their own resources, and the development therefore of “Liberty and Independence,” in your beautiful English, not French, sense. “Livrée à elle-meme depuis l’âge de treize ans, habituée à ne compter que sur elle seule, elle avait de la vie un expérience dont j’étais confondue. De ce Paris où elle était née, elle savait tout, elle connaissait tout. Je n’avais pas idée d’une si complete absence de sens moral, d’une si inconsciente dépravation, d’une impudeur si effrontément naïve. La règle de sa conduite, c’était sa fantaisie, son instinct, le caprice du moment. Elle aimait les longues stations dans les cafés, les mélodrames entremêlés de chopes et d’oranges pendant les entr’actes, les parties de canot à Asnières, et surtout, et avant tout, le bal.