A Frenchman is not so insincere as he has been called. It is true he makes vehement professions which mean nothing, but he makes them in a language the expressions of which are all overcharged, and in a country where they are justly appreciated. As money, the representative of labour, has in every country its relative value, so words, the current coin of conversation, vary in import amongst various nations, and have a rate of exchange with foreigners. Thus, if an Englishman takes a Frenchman's professions at the value the same would hear in England, it is his own fault, for the rate of exchange is against them. Besides, they are _obliged_ to use large words, there is no small change in France. In conversation, as well as in commerce, there is nothing circulating but heavy five-franc pieces. A boot is said to fit "_divinement_," and a tailor tells you that there is "_de quoi se mettre à genoux devant_" the coat he has just made for you. I have heard a boot-jack called _superb_, a pair of stockings _magnifique_, and a wig _angelique_. A man offered me "_poudre à la rose_," to make my boots slip on; and an old woman who had strayed a kitten, called it "expatriating her cat." An Englishman says, "I am glad to see you;" a Frenchman "_Je suis ravi de vous voir_." It comes to the same thing in the end. Everything in France is _au dessus du vraisemblable_, and the language not more than the rest. An Englishman's passions are like his own coal fire, difficult to kindle; but long before they go out, have more heat than flame, more intensity than brilliancy. A Frenchman is like a fire of wood that crackles and flames and blazes, that is lighted in a minute, and in a minute extinguished. The French, though they are daily improving, are still certainly a dirty people,[11] not in their persons but in their houses and habits. In this, as in everything else, they are the most inconsistent nation in the world. In their habitations there is the strangest mixture of splendour and want of cleanliness, and in their manners an equal mingling of elegance and coarseness. One must often walk up a staircase where every kind of dirt is to be found in order to arrive at a palace, and a thousand things that shock all notions of delicacy are here openly done and talked of by the most polite. -------------------- [Footnote 11: These passages were written thirteen or fourteen years ago, since which time France has made the most extraordinary progress that any country in Europe can boast. England has also advanced, but the change is certainly not so striking between what she is now and what she was then, as that which has taken place in France in the same period; but it may be taken as a proof of the justice of these remarks, that France has become much more English than England has become French.] --------------------