“Dreadfully true,” the French gentleman replied--“party spirit, taking every Proteus form, calling itself by a hundred names and with a thousand devices and watchwords, which would be too ridiculous, if they were not too terrible--domestic happiness destroyed, all society disordered, disorganised--literature not able to support herself, scarcely appearing in company--all precluded, superseded by the politics of the day.” Lady Davenant joined with him in his regrets, and added, that she feared society in England would soon be brought to the same condition. “No,” said the French gentleman, “English ladies will never be so vehement as my countrywomen; they will never become, I hope, like some of our lady politicians, ‘_qui heurlent comme des demons_.’” Lady Cecilia said that, from what she had seen at Paris, she was persuaded that if the ladies did bawl too loud it was because the gentlemen did not listen to them; that above half the party-violence which appeared in Parisian belles was merely dramatic, to produce a sensation, and draw the gentlemen, from the black _pelotons_ in which they gathered, back to their proper positions round the _fauteuils_ of the fair ladies. The foreigner, speaking to what he saw passing in Lady Davenant’s mind, went on;--“Ladies can do much, however, in this as in all other dilemmas where their power is, and ought to be, omnipotent.” “Female _influence_ is and ought to be _potent,_” said the general, with an emphasis on influence, contradistinguishing it from power, and reducing the exaggeration of omnipotent by the short process of lopping off two syllables. “So long as ladies keep in their own proper character,” said Lady Davenant, “all is well; but, if once they cease to act as women, that instant they lose their privilege--their charm: they forfeit their exorcising power; they can no longer command the demon of party nor themselves, and he transforms them directly, as you say,” said she to the French gentleman, “into actual furies.”