A French widow remains the head of the family: her authority is unquestioned. On the death of her husband, the English widow becomes a dowager: she abdicates the little power she ever possessed in favour of her eldest son. She has rarely been initiated into the affairs of her husband, therefore it seems quite natural to her that her son, a man, should take the reins of government into his own hands. The head master of a French _lycée_ will tell you that the sons of widows are generally the most docile and hard-working pupils; the head master of an English public school will tell you that widows' sons are generally lazy and wilful. An English banker will also tell you that there are two classes of clients with whom he does not care to have dealings: widows and clergymen. "They know nothing about business," said the manager of one of the large London banks to me one day. "I fancy you calumniate the clergymen," said I. I know a French widow who, a year before sending her son to school, set herself to work to learn Latin and Greek, that she might help him in his studies. Having thus gained a year's start of her son, she went with him till he reached the highest class. Every French reader will recognise this French Cornelia, when I say that, on the occasion of her son's carrying off the first prize at the _Grand Concours de la Sorbonne_, she would not let him receive a wreath of laurels at the hands of the Prince Imperial who was presiding over the distribution of prizes. I know an English widow who, upon my remarking to her that mothers in England seemed to have scarcely any authority over their sons, replied that it was quite natural it should be so; each sex had its _rôle_ in this world; men were made to command, and women to obey. _Look here, upon this picture, and on this._ * * * * * It is needless to say that when we affectionately caress our mothers, we appear highly ridiculous in the eyes of Englishmen. But so long as we love our mothers, tenderly as we do; so long as we make them our guides, confidants and consolers, we shall have no need to be jealous of the English. The mother's influence, so great in France, so insignificant in England, explains the difference in the men of the two countries. In the Frenchman, you find, mixed with his manly qualities, qualities and defects which are essentially feminine: quickness of perception, amiability, the love of the graceful rather than of the beautiful, a taste for _causerie_,[6] or even a little gossip occasionally; in the Englishman, the qualities and defects are not tempered by the art or the desire of pleasing; they have free play; whence inundations, avalanches of virtue or vice. [6] This pastime cannot be English, since the English language has no word for it. The Englishman is the worshipper of practical common sense, and if I had to give him a title, I should call him His Solidity Master John Bull.