I think there is something to be said for the erring Frenchman in his frailty. Lisette, while her reign lasts, is somebody for him whom he must study and consider, to whom he is bound to be kind, until he makes up his mind to leave her, or until she leaves him. But this is not a point I need dwell on. In the matter of virtue, the Britishers make themselves out to be such honest, invulnerable fellows, unlike the chattering, bragging sinners on the other side of the Channel, that it is only the state of the public streets of Great Britain at nightfall that fronts us with the universal charge against them of Pharisaism. And so I come back to my contention, that since infidelity to the marriage vow does exist, the light-headed sons of France choose the more open way of sinning. Their view of the case, as expressed in their fiction, is frankly odious, and, on his own showing, there is something essentially unclean in the Frenchman’s mind, though I have always found his conversation fastidiously correct and inoffensive, and it is sad to think of such a fine and splendid race of women playing the unsavoury _rôle_ they are made to play by the dramatists and novelists of their land. The women, of course, must be greatly to blame for the misesteem expressed in their regard by their fashionable and popular writers. Too fearful of displeasing, and too sensitive to Gallic ridicule, they do not understand that it rests with them to claim and obtain the respect due to them. They applaud and admire the writers who most persistently degrade them under the flattering guise of a passionate interest and concern. They, who so wisely dominate at home, have seemingly little or no objection to play the animal on paper. Of course there is a cultured and distinguished class who detest the modern fiction and plays of their country, who protest against them at home and in the Press, who will tell you they read only foreign novels, to avoid being dragged through the mire of their own.