A study of the economies practised in aristocratic and prosperous bourgeois circles in France leads us to strange facts. Taine quotes an incident in his _Carnets de Voyage_ that happened in the neighbourhood of Poitiers. A Parisian was hunting by invitation on a friend’s lands, and, without knowing it, crossed the border-land of those of a certain viscountess. He was not shooting, but carried his gun under his arm; he had lost his way. Up came a keeper and stopped him. The Parisian explained the circumstances, and insisted that he was not shooting. His host and he decided to visit the viscountess personally, and put the case before her in order to avoid unjust proceedings. They were received in a superb chamber hung with tapestries. The viscountess listened to them, and put her hand out: “Twenty francs each to pay,” was all she said. I think I can tell a better tale still, that of the interested hospitality of a well-known Flemish countess, whose shooting lands are among the best in France. The guests of this lady who liked a liberal supply of sugar in their morning coffee were obliged to provide themselves with it before coming, for every lump consumed in the castle was counted by the thrifty châtelaine; and the servants were bound, on penalty of dismissal, to give up to her all the tips they received. These were dropped into a cash-box, and at the proper time were returned to them under the form of wages. The good lady also makes a fine thing of her invitations to shoot upon her land, and may be said to merit a high place in the ranks of economists. And yet there is much to be said in favour of French thrift, not only for the good it brings to the country, which is immense, but still more for the inappreciable advantages it affords the family, above all, the girls. Go to Ireland and observe with lamentation and indignation the havoc made of home-life, of family dignity, of the lives of unfortunate girls, by the miserable wastefulness of parents. On all sides you will hear sad tales of girls, obliged to work hard for shocking rates of payment, who were brought up in foolish luxury, whose parents “entertained” in that thriftless, splash, Irish fashion, drank champagne, drove horses, when the French of the same class would be leading the existence of humdrum small burgesses, depriving themselves of all that was not absolutely necessary for their position, and teaching their children the art of counting, of saving, and of laudable privation. The Irish way is the jollier, I admit, but it is a cowardly, selfish way, for it is the children who always have to pay the piper, and, more often than not, the unhappy trades-folk who supply these gay and festive spendthrifts.