was nothing more at any time than the courtesy shown by an astute
sovereign of a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of purchasers. To-day
Americans are not popular in Parisian society. It is almost impossible
that they should be. Our ideas, our social customs, our notions of
right and wrong, are diametrically opposed to all the social theories
of France. Our girls, with their free frank ways and their liberty of
speech and action, are so many disreputable horrors in Parisian eyes.
Madame la Comtesse de St. Germain would as soon think of taking her
daughters to see Schneider as of permitting them to associate with
young ladies who are allowed to receive morning calls from gentlemen
without the presence of their parents--who call the male friends of
their childhood by their first names--and who are suffered to witness
_Faust_ at the opera and _La Haine_ at La Gaite. Americans, especially
wealthy ones, usually draw around them a vast circle of French
acquaintances, it is true, but these are mostly sponges and
adventurers, well born and well bred, it may be, but decidedly, to use
a vulgar but expressive American idiom, "on the make." Of the pure
and inner sanctuary of French society scarce a glimpse is afforded to
these alien eyes. It would not amuse them very much if it were,
for, by all accounts, this hallowed inner circle is as dull as it is
exclusive. The charm of French society is to be found in those salons
which are frequented by the kings of Parisian Bohemia--journalists,
poets, dramatists, artists--wherein the Republic is queen and Victor
Hugo a god.

Two great and ineradicable defects underlie the brightness and
fascination of the external part of French character--namely,
selfishness and insincerity. Perfect in manner, in dress, in grace,
in suavity, in sweetness it may be, the French are utterly and wholly
unreliable. They resemble the phantom woman in the story told by Leigh
Hunt, that was only a suit of clothes, with no face beneath the hood
and no body inside of the robes; or rather those malignant spirits
that look like fair women when seen in front, but when seen from
behind show only as hollow shells.

And the tradespeople, the bourgeoisie--your dressmaker, your milliner,
your tailor, your butcher and baker and candlestick-maker--skilled and
suave and generally charming--O heaven and earth! how they do lie!
Not occasionally, not when hard-pressed, not when truth will not do as
well, but persistently, calm