ther. It is a thing of traps and delusions, constructed on the
assumption that it is inelegant to be known to wash or to sleep, and yet
pervaded with suggestions of uncleanness compared with which a
well-wrung bathing sponge, well _en evidence_, is a delightful symbol of
purity. This comes of course from that supreme French quality, the
source of half the charm of the French mind as well of all its dryness,
the genius for economy. It is wasting a room to let it be a bedroom
alone; so it must be tricked out as an ingeniously contrived
sitting-room, and ends by being (in many cases) insufferable both by
night and by day. But allowing all weight to these latter reflections,
it is still very possible that the French have the better part. If you
are well fed, you can perhaps afford to be ill lodged; whereas, I doubt
whether enjoyment of the most commodious apartments is compatible with
inanition and dyspepsia.

IV.

If I had not cut short my mild retrospect by these possibly milder
generalizations, I should have touched lightly upon some of the social
phenomena of which the little beach at Etretal was the scene. I shall
have narrated that the French, at the seaside, are not "sociable" as
Americans affect to be in a similar situation, and I should subjoin that
at Etretal it was very well on the whole that they were not. The
immeasurably greater simplicity of composition of American society makes
sociability with us a comparatively untaxed virtue; but anything like
an equal exercise of it in France would be attended with alarming perils
and inconveniences. Sociability (in the American sense of the word) in
any aristocratic country would indeed be very much like an attempt to
establish visiting relations between birds and fishes. At Etretal no
making of acquaintance was observable; people went about in compact,
cohesive groups, of natural formation, governed doubtless, internally,
by humane regulation, but presenting to the world an impenetrable
defensive front. These groups usually formed a solid phalanx about two
or three young girls, compressed into the centre, the preservation of
whose innocence was their chief solicitude. Here, doubtless, the groups
were acting wisely, for with half a dozen _cocottes_, in scarlet
petticoats, scattered over the sunny, harmless looking beach, what were
mammas and duennas to do? In order that there should be a greater number
of approachable-irreproachable young girls in France there