Frenchwomen are not perfect, we know, since they are human. They have their meannesses, their spites, their pettinesses, and jealousies, like others; they are largely tainted with the vice of avarice, and it cannot be said that they are, in general, capable of climbing the heights of disinterestedness. They love money, and they save it. But, whatever their faults, I dare to say that no race of women can show a smaller percentage of shrews and reckless mischief-makers. Their discretion is extraordinary, and no less extraordinary is the equable, dignified nature of their domestic rule. They have their tantrums like other women, but they are surprisingly free from the vice of scolding. The word “termagant” was never invented for the pleasing and tactful Frenchwoman. She will blight your life by other means should she have that fancy. Economy is her great and unlovable virtue. If she clips the wings of romance so ruthlessly, it is always in the interests of economy. I do not give her ideal as the highest or the noblest; it is even lower, perhaps, than that of many other classes of women, since it is exclusively occupied with the state of her own and her progeny’s purse. But the process by which she attains this ideal is charming in itself. She cheerfully makes every personal sacrifice needful, and counts herself blest when she places the hand of a son or daughter in that of a suitable match, with fortune proportionate and prospects of equal promise. She lives for her husband and children; and if, as the fashionable novelists assure us, she often deviates from the path of virtue,—makes, as the boulevardiers say, a rent in the marriage contract,—not even those romancers dare affirm that she neglects, for such caprices, the interests of either.