To understand, however, the full extent of female influence in affairs of state, we should turn to France, where for centuries the sex has played an all-important part, for good and ill, in the ruling of the land. Any page of French history will tell this tale, from the far-off day when Brabant and Hainault, and England, too, listened to the persuasions of Joan of Valois, raised the siege of Tournay, and suffered the exhausted nation to breathe again, down to the less impetuous age when that astute princess, Charlotte Elizabeth, remarked--out of the fullness of her hatred for Mme. de Maintenon--that France had been governed by too many women, young and old, and that it was almost time the men began to take a hand. Perhaps we can best appreciate the force of feminine dominion when we read the half-amused, half-exasperated comments of Gouverneur Morris, whose diary, written on the eve of the French Revolution, reveals an intimate knowledge of that strange society, already crumbling to decay. At a dinner in the château of M. le Norrage, the political situation is discussed with so much vehemence by the men that the women’s gentler voices are lost in the uproar, which sorely vexes these fair politicians, accustomed to being listened to with deference. “They will have more of this,” says Morris shrewdly, “if the States General should really fix a constitution. Such an event would be particularly distressing to the women of this country, for they would be thereby deprived of their share in the government; and hitherto they have exercised an authority almost unlimited, with no small pleasure to themselves, though not perhaps with the greatest advantage to the community.” He realizes this more fully when he goes to consult with M. de Corney on a question of finance, and finds that Mme. de Corney is well acquainted with the matter. “It is the woman’s country,” he writes with whimsical dismay; and he is fain to repeat the sentiment hotly and angrily when Mme. de Staël, who was not wont to be troubled by petty scruples, dupes him into showing her some papers, and gossips about them to her father and Bishop d’Autun. “She is a devilish creature,” says the outraged American, feeling he has been outwitted in the game; but it is difficult, in the face of such little anecdotes, to distinguish between the new woman and the old.