This brings me to the consideration of woman’s _rôle_ in France. The foreigner who only judges that _rôle_ from the novels he reads, mostly pornographic, and from the drama, increasingly gross and immoral, will be all at sea as regards the part woman plays in French life. He will conceive her first playing the hypocrite up to the time of marriage, and then living without restraint ever afterwards. He will wonder what time is left her for domestic duties, and judge her social duties merely as convenient stages along the downward path. If he enjoys that sort of thing, she will amuse and interest him, but he will underestimate her position in reality. For no one plays a more important _rôle_ in the ranks of humanity than the Frenchwoman. She it is who rules the home, and in what an admirable way she rules it can never be sufficiently extolled. She it is who trains, fashions, guides man in every step of his career, from his boyhood into his first love-affair, and makes of him the courteous and indulgent creature he proves in matrimony. As mother, aunt, sister, wife, and daughter, the Frenchman relies on his womankind throughout his whole career. She is, in the best and fullest sense of the word, his helpmeet; assists him in his business, enjoys his entire confidence, because he knows so well that she is the better part of the institution, bears more than half of his troubles. As a mother, she knows how to efface herself, and in acting to her sons as their best friend and confidant, keeps her sovereignty stable. It is because she is such a sensible and dignified ruler, indulgent where indulgence is needful, that the men around her rarely feel the impulse to break from her sway. She moulds the politicians, takes the poets and novelists by the hand, holds the social sceptre with ease and charm, pulls the academical wire-strings, aids youth to success and triumph, names the fashion in literature,—and here she does less wisely and less well,—makes and mars reputations, is responsible for more of the commercial prosperity of the land than her mate, and brought, of her own thrift and labour, a bigger share to the millions that went to Germany than he. An England without her women could be conceived as still standing, so effaced is their _rôle_; but France may almost be said to exist by hers. If the women would only consent to go to the colonies, the French would, I am convinced, turn out capital colonists. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII PEASANT AND ARTISAN