She is in all things literally the better half of her people. Observe her in all classes, and you will have no further need of explanation of the striking prosperity, strength, and self-sufficiency of France itself. Cheerful, competent, thrifty creature, how could the land that owns her go to the dogs, whatever the decadents and politicians may do? She is the force of the country, its stable influence and salvation. The home rests upon her, and she makes of it a delicious nest for her children, who may exaggerate the outward form of their love for her, but who can never exaggerate the inward devotion they owe her. She has taught them, it is true, to think too much about money, to be too ready to dispute the wills of recalcitrant relatives who wish to leave their fortunes to others than themselves; she has left them too little liberty, and trained them in ignorance of such a virtue as disinterestedness; she is too apt to encourage her son in the theory of the wild oats-sowing, without even the saving grace of limiting that period to pre-nuptial days, being trained herself in the fixed conviction of her land, that man is a tameless beast who cannot exist without fugitive loves throughout his chequered career. Indeed, I have heard a very pious old French lady assert that a married man may have a hundred mistresses and be a perfectly honest man whom nobody should criticise. When I made respectful mention of the wife’s injuries, she shrugged, called me an unsophisticated fool, and said that every sensible girl, on her wedding-morn, understood what she was facing, and, if she were well-bred, she was wise enough to keep her eyes shut. No wife, she maintained, could expect to learn anything to her advantage by prying into her husband’s habits and distractions outside the portals of home, and so her wisdom lay in studied ignorance. The thing to prevent in a husband or son was extravagance. So long as the purse-strings remained unloosened, and the health was uninjured, a judicious woman should ask for nothing more from the men around her. For this reason, the novelists show us the French mother as charmed to discover that her son has started romantic relations with the wife of a wealthy friend. She is convinced that he must have a mistress, and her only hope is that he shall choose one who will not ruin him in purse or in health. Of his heart and happiness in these matters she seems to care not a pin, possibly because of the talent for cynicism possessed by the French, which declines to recognise heart outside the family. If every poison has its antidote, so has every quality its drawback. This beautiful maternal devotion we so admire is practised to the detriment of all outsiders. The French mother would make a holocaust of all humanity on the altar of her offspring’s advancement and interest. She will gladly toil for him or for her, save francs and pence for either, deprive herself of what she most loves, accomplish for her