But materfamilias is a lady of fashion, accustomed to shine in society, and seeing no harm in it; further, she is too good a mother not to desire success for her offspring, not to applaud a venturesome flight. She, too, has dreams of a Prince Charming; she has her enthusiasms, which take clear and definite shape in her mind as positive hopes. As for the father, he becomes cantankerous, and considers only the expense of the game; he is quite of the dowagers’ opinion, and thinks well enough of men to believe that they pay most attention to serious qualities. And so, in order to compose once for all this perpetual domestic wrangle, a great wag, Coquillart,[94] proposes to clothe the girls in parti-coloured dresses, one colour for the father, another for the mother. When a girl makes a successful start, certain mothers are seized with a sort of fanaticism; we are wrong in calling it fanaticism: it is really a new outburst of good-heartedness and the passion for self-sacrifice of which women are possessed, for, if they reflected, they would clearly realise that personally they have nothing to gain by a brilliant match for their daughters. Some of them push self-sacrifice to the point of servility; they efface themselves, walk in the rear, with the meek and deprecating bearing of a waiting-maid. That is a form of goodness which the women of former days would not have understood—Anne of France choked at the mere mention of it. She had commanded armies, bearded diplomatists, made men her puppets, checkmated her judges, manipulated her States-general, set her whole country in a ferment without a sign of feeling: but here she lost command of herself: “It is tomfoolery ... it is overweening presumption in the daughter, and in the mother sheer madness.” Kisses, caresses, secret trysts, presents, love-letters, showers of rondeaus and ballads, stolen glances, songs more than gay—all this made French flirtation an exquisite pastime, essentially intoxicating in its charm. The good, modest young damsel, who would cast down her eyes in the street, was not a whit shocked at a pretty broad jest in the company of men: Aucunes sont, qui, en humbles manières, Avec les folz jouent leurs jarretières.[95] —_Bouchet._