no land of all the world will you find men who can comport themselves worse. In their attitude to women they seem to possess no standard of courtesy whatever. When a Frenchman of this class is polite to a woman, you may be in no doubt of his views in her regard, and you may be perfectly sure of her social and pecuniary value; for he is the least chivalrous, the least kind, the least disinterested of mortals, speaking generally, though here, as elsewhere, you will find noble exceptions. I hardly know an American or English woman who has travelled or stayed any time in France who has not had occasion to note how much less courteous to women Frenchmen are than their own men. Two young English ladies, finding themselves in some dilemma with regard to trains or luggage, had occasion to call on one of the chiefs of the Gare du Nord. This gentleman, elegant, disdainful, and fatuously rude, received them in a luxurious office, fitted up with such splendour as to suggest some of the complications of the Parisian drama, and bore himself towards them with such intolerable insolence, that, on going out, one of the travellers, to be even with him, said: “Everything may be found in Paris, I see, except a gentleman!” This, of course, is angry exaggeration, for nobody can be more delightful than a Frenchman, when he chooses to give himself the trouble to please and to serve; but it is as good an example as I can give of the attitude of the French functionary to the public. Put a uniform of any sort on a Frenchman, invest him in any kind of office, and he is apt to become insupportable. Rudeness he practises as part of his official dignity. It never occurs to him that he is there to assist the public. He conceives himself to be there to insult and domineer over the public.