It is true that the townsman all over the land is largely governed by a need for excitement, and having, as a rule, no personal initiative to enable him to minister to it, he contents himself with looking toward the capital with envy, and devours the newspapers from Paris in eager expectation of the “something” he is in daily hope of happening. But whatever does happen in Paris rarely makes itself felt in the intellectually sleepy, industrious provinces; thanks to which wide-spread spirit of commercial and bucolic denseness to the inflammatory influences of the capital, France thrives now as she throve before the war, when at a word she could produce funds to pay off an enormous indemnity, without flinching or hesitating. When you travel in the country or through small French towns, you are struck with the gaiety, intelligence, and good-will of the people and of the little shopkeepers, and with a certain unintelligent stiffness, pretension, and moroseness of the middle class, whose ambition it is to pass for the aristocracy, or at least for _des gens de bonne famille_. As these pretensions are rarely in keeping with their actual fortunes, these ambitious provincials, the victims of the political follies born of hostility to the Third Republic, think fit to garb themselves in the unbecoming vices of ill-humour, rancour, and idle pride. These they conceive to be the adjuncts of noble birth. If the fathers have refrained, the sons are certain to announce themselves, sooner or later, by titles of their own choosing. The general preference runs to count and viscount, though baron is not despised. I have known of a respectable middle-class family in the provinces, where the eldest son, a lawyer, is content to remain a republican, and the second son, an officer, a gentleman of aristocratic instincts, eager to profit by the present enthusiasm for the army in anti-governmental circles, calls himself a count. The humorous part of the situation lies in the fact that the wife of the plain Monsieur is not satisfied with her lot, since destiny, ruled by her brother-in-law’s will, has given the latter a title; and so at the recent marriage of that military worthy, the newspapers spoke of M. le Comte giving his arm to his sister-in-law, Madame la Comtesse, while the disgusted republican elder brother stayed in the country, indifferent to the self-appointed glories of his relatives.