The English very rarely have the temper that can amuse itself with a little unrestrained intercourse of an accidental kind. Novelists and philosophers have that kind of openness of interest, but they are a small minority. It is much more common amongst the French. The ordinary Frenchman amuses himself with studying human nature, and likes a conversation with a temporary acquaintance. It serves to pass the time better, he thinks, than “putting his nose into a book.” Most of what the French know they have got by conversation, and so far as readiness to talk is concerned they are sociable. But with all his apparent openness and frankness the Frenchman has his own reserve too, and fences his life round in his own way. People say that “the Englishman’s house is his castle;” if so, the Frenchman’s house may be described as his armoured turret. “_On ne donne pas la clef de sa maison_” is not an English expression, and it means more than the material key. [Sidenote: Restaurant and Home Hospitality.] [Sidenote: Seclusion of Frenchwomen.] [Sidenote: Their Aristocratic Sentiments.] [Sidenote: Social Separation of the Sexes.] A Parisian invites you to dinner, and will probably take you to an expensive restaurant; a Londoner will offer his roast-beef in his own house. The separation of the sexes is much greater in France than in England. You may know a great number of married Frenchmen and have a very slight acquaintance with their wives, perhaps not enough to recognise them in the street. Nay, you may even habitually visit Frenchmen in their own private apartments without ever seeing their wives and daughters at all. Frenchwomen (I do not mean in Paris, but in the provinces) often live in something like oriental seclusion, but beyond this there is in the feminine mind an extreme tenacity about real or imaginary rank. The husband may have intimate friends, whom he respects for their character or admires for their talents, whilst his wife rejects them because they have not the _particule_, or because their grandfathers have been in trade. We know that character, talent, culture, count for nothing whatever in the aristocratic estimate,[84] and we must remember that in France the spirit of aristocracy, where it exists, is extremely pure, and does not allow itself to be seduced from its own principles either by merit or wealth, nor even by such offices and honours as a republic can confer. It is not exactly convenient for me to give special instances, because these pages may be translated and the cases recognised, but I will say, speaking generally and without special application, that if M. de B. is the intimate friend of M. C., and if the two call each other Jules and Jacques, it does not at all follow that Madame de B. will recognise Madame C., or allow their children to associate. [Sidenote: Less of it in England.]