The French forms used in writing to ladies are still more severe. “How would you begin a letter to Madame L----?” I asked a French gentleman who is a model of accuracy in etiquette:-- “Well, in the first place, I should never presume to write to Madame L---- at all.” “But if circumstances made it imperative that you should write to her?” “In that case I should address her as _Madame_, simply, and at the close of the letter beg her to accept _mes hommages respectueux_.” Perhaps the reader imagines that the lady was a distant acquaintance; no, she was the wife of a most intimate friend, and the two families met very frequently. In this case the point of interest is that the lady would have been addressed as a stranger from a want of flexibility in the French forms. There is a Frenchman who receives me with the utmost kindness and cordiality whenever I visit his neighbourhood. We correspond occasionally, and his letters begin “_Monsieur_” just as if he had never seen me, ending with the expression of his “_sentiments respectueux_.” A _very_ intimate friend in France will begin a letter with _Mon cher Ami_. I have only known three Frenchmen who used that form of address to myself. Two or three others would begin _Cher Monsieur et Ami_, mingling the formal with the affectionate. Englishmen hardly ever write _My dear Friend_; that is now an American form. [Sidenote: French Ceremony.] The French tendency to be ceremonious is not confined to letter-writing. It comes upon French people in personal intercourse in a curiously occasional way. I remember a physician, now dead, who had excellent French manners of the old school. He talked with great ease and without the least affectation, but on all those little occasions when a Frenchman feels bound to be ceremonious he was so in the supreme degree. After talking quite easily and intimately with some lady whom he had known for many years, he would rise to take leave with graceful old-fashioned attitudes and phrases, as if she were far his superior in rank and he had spoken to her for the first time. [Sidenote: Old-fashioned French Manners.] [Sidenote: Reduction of old Forms.] It has happened to me to know rather intimately six or eight old French gentlemen who retained the manners which had come down from the eighteenth century. They evidently took a pleasure, perhaps also some pride, in being able to go through forms of politeness gracefully, and without error. An Englishman would find it difficult to do that in equal perfection, his northern nature would not take quite so fine a polish. Even amongst French people, as manners become more democratic, these old forms are continually reduced. They are no longer considered indispensable, and the younger men, who have not continually practised them, are not sufficiently skilful actors to play ceremonious parts with ease.[66] [Sidenote: Convenience of Formal Phrases.]