Much more is concentrated into the earlier years of life in France than across the Channel. This is particularly so in regard to the _jeune fille_, who ceases to come under that title as soon as she has reached the age of twenty-five. The business of getting married must be achieved by that time, or else there is nothing for it but acquiescence in the popular judgment that the young girl has become an old girl--is on the shelf--and to preserve her self-respect must retire either to a convent or a conventual boarding-house. This custom is, like many others, as undesirably mediaeval, gradually breaking down owing to the strongly intellectual training now given to the _jeune fille_ at state _lycees_. No religious instruction is given in these schools, and the girls are therefore developing a new independence. A change, too, is taking place in the extremely secluded life that girls of the middle and upper classes have hitherto led. They are not invariably taken to school and fetched by a maid, and it is quite possible that this emancipation from continual supervision may lead to a considerable modification in the present method of arranging marriages. The existing system of the choice of a husband for their daughter being made by the devoted parents has a striking similarity to the customs of the Far East. The young men the _jeune fille_ is allowed to see are only those who are eminently eligible, that is, whose financial position is sound and whose family connections are not likely to cause anxiety when brought into the family circle by the union of the two young people. [Illustration: THE CENTRE OF PARIS.]