The first thing that strikes you as you enter a French beeswaxed flat in winter is the chill of it. Few but the very rich know the delights of generous fires, of well-carpeted houses, of warm, comfortable, and luxurious interiors. Silver appointments and splendid napery, which you will find nowadays in the commonest Irish homes, are here unknown, and people of the class who in England dress for dinner here wear the clothes they have lunched in, and are none the worse off for it. They have, along with their thrift, much less pretension, and are simpler and more intelligent in their home-life than we of the British Isles. In one way they live better, because their food is better cooked and is more varied, and for dinner you are sure to have brighter conversation. In certain rich and snobbish circles, above all in the shooting season, you risk being bored to death, for here nothing is talked of but titles, game, and fortunes. The wonder to me is how women, who themselves do not shoot, can sit placidly through a long afternoon and evening and listen to men who talk incessantly of their own bags or their neighbours’ bags—of how the prince shot this snipe, the count shot that partridge, and how many pheasants the marquis bagged. I suppose it is to keep the men in good-humour that these amiable Frenchwomen—against whom I can bring no other charge than vacuity and snobbishness, two parasites of wealth—feign the intensest interest. They are paid in the coin they desire, and if they are bored nobody is a penny the wiser, and they probably do not mind it. I have said the lack of material comfort and plenty in middle-class French homes is striking. I, of course, refer to people who are not rich, where the husband is a state functionary on a modest salary in Paris, to small professors, to the wives of military officials, the widows of colonels and broken-down aristocrats. I have had a glimpse of all these classes of homes, and in winter found them unseasonably chill and frugal. Thirty years ago, I am assured, it was far worse, for then carpets were unknown, and fires less used than to-day. Such economies are practised here as in England would accompany only harsh poverty, but they must not be taken as the symbol of such. Your grocer and his wife, who eat behind the shop in a sanded and comfortless space walled off, and on Sunday afternoon go out, neatly arrayed in well-fitting but dowdy and serviceable garments, have tidy fortunes stowed away, while their flashy, splash-loving brethren of the British Isles, with their dog-carts, bicycles, and up-to-date attire turned out by fashionable tailors, dressmakers, and milliners, are pulling the devil by the tail and stupidly patronising their betters, who are contented with less display.