The characters of _Nôtre Jeunesse_ are essentially French. Take Chartier, for instance, the _bonhomme philosophe par excellence_. Chartier, at forty years of age, amused by his own past; tranquil as to the future; well satisfied, in the present, to make the best of his life upon a moderate income—the quarter of a once handsome fortune, considerately left him by a former mistress, the then famous “Pervenche,” who, after she had cost him a million and a half, herself broke off their _liaison_, in the amiable and reasonable fashion related by the Forsaken One himself thus: _Chartier._ One evening she said to me: “_Mon chéri_, I have been looking into things. You have spent upon me three-fourths of your fortune. It is as much as any woman should expect from any gallant man. I am contented; and grateful to you. I have come across a man who is in love with me; and I am going to be married to him.”... She married an employé at the Louvre. It is an excellent _ménage_. Take Laure de Roine, Chartier’s sister, the good genius of the play—bonhomie, not only personified, but idealised, invested with all the liveliness and fascination that belong to delightful French womanhood. Laure, some years older than her brother, left a widow, also with a quarter of her handsome wedding portion, remaining through the opportune decease, in the very hour when he seemed bent upon ruining her, after himself, of a husband given to gambling on the Stock Exchange. Take Madame Hélène Briant, the very charming, vivacious wife of M. Lucien Briant, a lady approaching the perilous age—_i.e._ nearly thirty—reasonably attached to, but not passionately in love with, an amiable but despondent husband, who has become despondent under the authoritative rule of M. Briant _père_, a superior man, and master of the “correct,” frock-coated attitude towards life. Briant _père_ is the tyrant of the Briant household. Hear the charming Hélène in active revolt against this insupportable father-in-law, and her husband’s despondency, as a result of his filial docility, exposing her own case, half playfully, half seriously, to Laure de Roine, everyone’s good genius: _Hélène._ When I try to react against this general depression; when, in spite of them both, I make it my task to find something cheerful, and worth taking pleasure in, I find myself treated by both Father and Son as a frivolous worldling. Add on to that that I have no children, and live in this deadly provincial atmosphere, full of spiteful gossip, scandal, and vanity. And then try, if you can, to imagine my condition of mind—not forgetting that I am an “honest” woman—and that I am beginning to realise it. _Laure._ And when a woman begins to realise that she is “honest”—— _Hélène._ Yes; the case is grave.