But there is a gaiety that cannot be too much blamed or too steadily repressed, a gaiety undistinguished by subtlety or high courage, and one to which other peoples are quite as inclined as the French, the gross laugh which follows horse-play like an echo, and inhabits taverns and _cafés chantants_. That species of gaiety is the vicious gaiety of peasants out for a holiday, of commercial travellers at dinner. It is undeniable that the Gaul has a weakness for _gaudriole_. I know a promising young physician who was obliged to leave Paris, where he had won a name as a hospital surgeon, obliged to quit work and to go to a distant country for his health; in a moment of expansion he confided to me that what he regretted most were the jolly evenings at the Palais-Royal. There are thousands of distinguished young men subjected to this species of education, of discipline in “chaff,” and it is inevitable that it should result in a loss, for them, of something that is fine. The Palais-Royal, the vaudeville, _cafés-concerts_ are places which corrupt the taste as the palate is corrupted by drinking wood eau-de-vie. It is difficult to be a really remarkable man and at the same time to possess a serious taste for the gross pleasantry of second-class theatres. The two are irreconcilable. And it is a melancholy thing to think that the pick of the young men of France should be exposed to precisely that influence, should pass a number of years in such an environment and lose their taste as surely as their ear for music. Whatever is anti-æsthetic in laughter is degrading; witticisms must be spiritual, must really expand the heart with healthy mirth; laughter should positively embellish the face. _Nihil inepto risu ineptius est_; the reason is that in such cases laughter is simply an explosion of silliness. The wise man, says the Bible, laughs with an inner laugh. Laughter should illuminate and not disfigure the visage, because it reveals the soul, and the soul should be beautiful, should resemble an outburst of frankness, of sincerity. The charm of laughter lies, in a great measure, in the sincerity of the joy which renders us, for the time being, transparent to those about us. Human thought and the human heart, with the entire world that they contain, may be embodied in a tear. [Sidenote: Parisian wit an epitome of all that is evil in French gaiety.]