The Project Gutenberg eBook ofFranceThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: FranceAuthor: Gordon HomeRelease date: March 25, 2011 [eBook #35678]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Juliet Sutherland and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: FranceAuthor: Gordon HomeRelease date: March 25, 2011 [eBook #35678]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Juliet Sutherland and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: France
Author: Gordon Home
Author: Gordon Home
Release date: March 25, 2011 [eBook #35678]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Juliet Sutherland and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE ***
Transcriber's Note:Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Amiens
THE WESTERN FAÇADE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL.
Sketch Map of France on page 212.
The more one knows of France and the French at first hand, and the more one reads the ideas and opinions of other people concerning this great people, so does one feel less and less able to write down any definite statements about the country or its inhabitants. Whatever conviction one possesses on any aspect of their characteristics is sure to be shaken by the latest writer, be he a native or a foreigner. Every fresh sojourn in the country upsets all one's previous ideas in the most baffling fashion. One used to think the Parisiancochera bad driver, and then discovers a writer who eulogises his skill. When he knocks over pedestrians, says this writer, he does so because his whole life is given up to a perpetualstate of warfare with the public, from whom he gains his livelihood. This point of view being new to one, it takes a little time before it can be safely rejected or accepted, and before this process is completed a man of most decided views, and possessed of a wide knowledge of France and the French, comes along with the statement that no Frenchman can drive. He supports it with a dozen good reasons, and leaves one with a bias towards earlier convictions.
It used to be axiomatic, platitudinous, that Frenchwomen dressed better than Englishwomen. People whose knowledge of France is, say, ten, perhaps fewer, years out of date would accept this without a thought, and yet one is inclined to think that the Frenchwoman's pre-eminence has gone. No doubt all that is trulychic, all that is essentially dainty in feminine attire, emanates from the brain of the Parisian, but the women of the French capital no longer have any monopoly in the wearing of clothes that give charm to the wearer.
Then as to French cooking. The day has not long passed when to breathe a syllable against the cooking of the French would be to proclaim oneself a savage, but what does one hear to-day?Openly in London drawing-rooms people are heard expressing their preference for the food supplied in English homes and hotels. They dare to state that many of the courses provided in French hotels and restaurants are highly flavoured, but uneatable; that the meat provided is nearly always unaccountably tough and full of strange sinews and muscles that give one's teeth much inconvenience; that the clear soup is commonly little more than greasy hot water containing floating scraps of bread and vegetables; that the sweet course is incomparably inferior to that of the English table.
The difficulties confronting those who attempt to describe the Gallic people are only realised when one grasps the fact that almost anything one writes is true or untrue of a fragment of the nation. Who could suppose that the inhabitants of soil facing the North Sea would have similar virtues and faults to those who dwell on the shores of the Mediterranean? They seem of a different race, and yet a curious unity pervades the Norman, the Breton, and the Burgundian, the Provençal, the dwellers on the great wheat plain, and the Iberians of Basses Pyrenees. One is tempted to deal with each portion of the countryseparately, but to do so would make it necessary to produce a library of books, and in trying to pick out qualities common to the whole nation one is checked at every turn by the contradictions that present themselves continually. With the mind resting for a time on one part of France, it would be easy to describe the people as very clean, but mental visions of other parts arrest the pen, and a qualified statement is alone possible. Then the mind hungers for an opportunity of preparing a series of maps, showing by various colours where the people live who possess this or that salient quality. If such maps were presented to the reader, and supposing that districts in which the inhabitants were inclined towards thriftiness were shown red, the whole country would be of the same glowing colour, and therefore this map need not be drawn, but the same does not apply to wages and prosperity, nor to religious fervour, nor to the social manners of the people, and on these and a very large number of subjects the variations are so great that what the writer has ventured to condense in the chapters which follow may be open to much limitation, and even to contradiction. He has always felt a very deep appreciationof the country and the people, and the joy of arriving in France is one of the pleasantest things in his experience. The curious smells that are wafted to the deck of the steamer as it is tied up by the quayside bring to him in one breath the essence, as it were, of the life of France, which has for him so great an attractive force. In that first breath of France, the faint suggestion of coffee brings to mind the pleasant associations of meals in picturesque inns or in the cafés of Paris in sight of the amazing movement of the city; the suspicion of vegetables recalls the colour and human interest of countless market-places and chequered patches of cultivation on wide hedgeless landscapes; and that indefinable suggestion of incense and a dozen other impalpable things brings with it the whole pageant of French life, its colour and gaiety, its movement, its pathos, and its grand moments, all of which act as a magnet and irresistibly attract him to the southern shores of the Channel.
In fairly clear weather the strip of salt water cleaving England from France seems so narrow, that to a Brazilian familiar with the Amazon it might be taken for nothing more than a great river. To a geologist the English Channel is a recent feature in the formation of Europe of to-day, while the modern aeronaut regards it as a blue mark on the landscape as he wings his way from London to Paris. Turbine steamers plough from shore to shore in less than an hour, so that on a windless day the crossing is a mere incident in the journey between the capitals; yet the race which dwells on the chalk uplands terminating precipitously at Cape Gris Nez is so entirely different from the people who have for the last thousand years made their homeson the Kentish Downs, that the twenty miles of sea seem scarcely adequate to explain the complete severance. The intercourse between the inhabitants of Gaul and Britain must have been both considerable and constant for some time before the domination of Rome had swept up to the Channel, for it is known from Caesar's records that the Armoricans, who extended from Cape Finisterre to the Straits of Dover, were able to send 220 large oak built vessels against his galleys. From the same source one is aware of the large trade carried on across the narrow sea, and there were Celtic tribes in the south of England colonised from the Belgae of the Continent. Further than this, the megalithic remains of Wiltshire and Brittany suggest a very real and remarkable link between the peoples of Britain and Gaul. Caesar and Strabo are both very definite in their statements that the people of Kent were similar to the Gaulish tribes, not only in the way they built their houses, but also in their appearance and their manners. The coming of Roman civilisation tended to restrict racial intermingling, and from the beginning of the Christian era the Channel became more and more a real frontier. When Norsemen hadsettled both in England and in the north of France, this frontier again weakened and vanished with the Norman Conquest of England, but racially there was practically no sympathy across the water beyond what might have been felt for the Welsh and the Britons in Cornwall. Thus, from the Romanising of Britain onwards, the similarity between the peoples who faced one another across the Channel waned. It is quite probable that in neither country was there any appreciable infusion of Italian-Roman blood among the Celtic populations, for the conquering legions were composed of troops raised from all parts of the Empire, but in Britain the Romanised population was swept westwards by new invaders from northern Europe, while the Romanised Gauls were never ousted from the territory they had held east of the Rhone and the Rhine. The Latin tongue had probably made very little headway in Britain, while in Gaul the Romans had thrust their language upon the Gallic tribes. It was not, however, the classical Latin of Livy and Virgil, but most probably the colloquial Latin of the common soldier and camp-follower. This debased Latin formed the solid foundation of the literary language of France of to-day.
Combourg
COMBOURG. A TYPICAL CHÂTEAU OF THE MEDIAEVAL TYPE.
The English Channel is therefore a very effective dividing line between two peoples completely different in every characteristic. But who were these people whom the Romans called Galli?
Their coming was possibly not earlier than 600 or 700B.C., and by 300B.C.they occupied that part of Europe now covered by France, Belgium, Holland, Rhenish Germany to the Rhine, with Switzerland and northern Italy. No doubt they had moved westward from southern Russia in that Aryan stream of which they had formed a part. In the south they intermingled with the ancient Iberian population; they appear to have remained fairly pure in the centre, while in the north they became more or less mixed with Teutonic elements pressing forward across the Rhine. Besides occupying what is now known as France, these Celts settled or squatted all over northern Italy, and drove a very considerable wedge into central Spain, where they formed the fierce warrior people called Celtiberians, who served in masses in the Carthaginian and Greek armies, and held out against the Romans until about 100B.C.Further than this a wing of these Gaulish Celts made theirway along the Danube, wasted Greece in about 270B.C., and formed an important settlement in Asia Minor which was called Galatia up to aboutA.D.500.
The Celts in Italy were the first to come under the heel of Rome between 300 and 190B.C.Gaul itself followed, and a Roman province, named Narbonensis after its chief city Narbo Martius (now Narbonne), was formed along the Mediterranean coast. All the rest of Gaul was added between 58 and 50B.C.by Gaius Julius Caesar, and from that time until the disruption of the Roman Empire was one of its greatest and richest provinces.
With the weakening of Roman domination in the 4th centuryA.D.a fierce German race or confederacy, calling themselves "Franks" (i.e.Freemen), flooded into northern Gaul. They gave their name to the country they had subjected, and for some five centuries their Merovingian and Carolingian kings ruled without interruption. The Franks were numerically a small proportion of the population of France during this period, and they and other tribes which had irrupted into Gaul during the same period gradually became completely absorbed by thestubborn Celto-Roman people, and their language was to a great extent lost owing, perhaps, to the fascination the splendour of Latin would exert upon the users of an uncouth tongue. The Franks had disappeared as a race by the year 1000, but their name had become permanently attached to the land and the people in whose midst they had settled—a phenomenon repeated in the case of Bulgaria.
Towards the north and east of France there is a very considerable Germanic strain, although entirely French in language, customs, and sympathy. In the south-east the people have much Italic blood in their veins, while in the extreme south-west the Gascons and the Landais (the people of Les Landes near Bordeaux) are probably of Iberian stock, nearly related to the Basques who belong to the pre-Celtic inhabitants of France, and are therefore more or less distinct from the main mass of the population who remained Gallic with a Romanised language. Although it is true that, with one exception, all the different elements have been quite assimilated, thepatoisspoken in some districts is barely comprehensible to the ordinary Parisian. The exception is Brittany, where the people are anadmixture of the primitive inhabitants with Gauls and Celts from Britain who migrated to the peninsula during the 4th and 5th centuries, their language being pure Celtic to this day, and so similar to Welsh that a Breton onion-seller in Wales can make himself understood without much difficulty. The seamen Brittany provides for the French navy are undoubtedly the finest sailors the country possesses, and they have for some time past formed a very real portion of French sea power.
The people of Normandy have a strong infusion of Scandinavian blood and certain peculiarities of speech, but they are scarcely greater than the difference between that of the Londoner and the Yorkshireman. Whatever has been the stock from which the inhabitants of modern France has sprung, their extraordinary capacity of assimilation seems to have endowed them generally with those national characteristics popularly labelled the genius of the French. This process, discernible all through the pages of history, seems as vital to-day as ever.
To any one familiar with the French people, it is a matter for astonishment that the average Briton fails in the most profound fashion to realise themost obvious of the national characteristics of his neighbours across the Channel. The popular notion is that the French are a frivolous people, devoted to pleasure; they are supposed to be veritable Miss Mowchers for volatility; to speak with extreme rapidity; to have a taste for queer dishes which the same Briton regards with abhorrence; and are, generally speaking, a people with the lowest of morals. All these ideas are more or less erroneous, and only as the average Englishman comes to learn the truth can the French character be better understood. In the first place, the French, far from being a mass of frivolity, are one of the most serious peoples in the world. They have to such an extent woven a care for the future into the fabric of the nation, that the humblestbonne-à-tout-faire, the underfedmidinette, and simplest son of the soil, aim at and generally succeed in becoming modest holders of Staterentes. Instead of the happy-go-lucky methods of the middle and lower class Anglo-Saxon, who will turn a family of sons and daughters loose upon the world with very little thought as to their future beyond the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, the French parent regards it as his duty to see thateach daughter is provided with adotsuitable to her position, and the Civil Code requires a parent to leave a proportion of his property to each member of his family. French men and women work out their incomes with such exactness that they know to asouwhat they have to spare for pleasure, and with a very large mass of the people in town and country that margin is so microscopically small, that pleasure in the sense of a commodity that is bought is often only obtainable at long intervals. In Paris, where the inaccurate ideas of French life are generally gathered, it is the almost universal custom for a family to dine at a restaurant on Sundays, in order that thebonne-à-tout-faire, who cooks the meals and waits at table in the average flat, may have most of the day off. Thus the week-end visitor to the capital sees in every café and restaurant families dining in public, and gathers the impression that all these people are spending their money on an evening's amusement. Probably, if the flats to which these people return a little later were examined, it would be found that there was practically nothing in the tiny larders, for it is the French custom to buy daily at the markets in small quantities atthe lowest prices, and the meals taken at a restaurant on Sunday do not entail any loss through deterioration of food at home.
It is wrong, too, to suppose that the average French people speak more rapidly than the Anglo-Saxon. They are more vivacious, and they often put more emphasis and gesticulation into their conversation than their island neighbours; but there are Englishmen who have a right to speak, who will affirm with the greatest assurance that the French are the slower and more deliberate speakers of the two! No doubt it will take a long time to entirely eradicate from among ill-informed Anglo-Saxons the notion that a French menu is largely composed of strange creatures not usually regarded as edible, but the excellence of French food and cooking is getting so widely known and appreciated that this ancient misconception is being steadily dissipated.
Perhaps it is because no sooner does the visitor land at Calais or Boulogne, or step out of the railway terminus in Paris, than he sees a kiosk where comic papers full of improper drawings are boldly exhibited, that he comes to the conclusion that the French are an entirely immoral people. But painful as it is to witnessthis flaunting of vulgar suggestion before the casual passer-by, it is not quite a fair gauge by which to take the standard of morals in France. There was no wave of Puritanism in France as in England, and the standard of public decency is therefore lower, but French home life is probably nearly as moral as in England, and it is a well-known fact that girls belonging to the middle classes live irreproachable lives in the almost unnatural seclusion maintained by their parents. The attitude of the young man towards the other sex before he marries is certainly lamentably inferior to that of the Anglo-Saxon who may fall from the ideal to which he has been trained, but nevertheless regards his failure as a disaster, while the French youth looks upon such matters as a recognised feature of his adolescence.
Justification for the idea prevalent in Anglo-Saxon countries that the French are exceptionally lax in their morals, can be found in the fact that in all ranks of French society there is no secrecy maintained when irregular relations have been established, and also in the fact that the illegitimate births are considerably more than twice as numerous as those of Great Britain and Ireland. It should be remembered, however, that Germany stands only a trifle better thanFrance in this matter, while six other European countries are infinitely worse.
Cafe
IN THE CAFÉ ARMENONVILLE IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE, PARIS.
What are to the man in the street the characteristics of the French race are, therefore, so wide of the truth, that until simple and accurate books on this great and talented people are used in all British schools it will take a considerable time to put matters straight. In the meantime an opportunity occurs here to do something in this direction.
More than any other nation on the whole face of the earth the French are a people of great ideas. They frequently leave their neighbours to carry out the conceptions with which they enrich the world, but they think on a great scale, and produce men and women whose agility of mind is often hugely in advance of the age in which they live. It was a Frenchman who first thought it feasible to sever Africa from Asia, and made the first attempt to cut the cord that unites North and South America; it was the French who led the way in applying the internal combustion engine to locomotion, and they have dazzled the world with the brilliant performances of their flying men. A Frenchman was the pioneer in tunnel boring, andhis son Isambard Brunel devised a railway on such a magnificent scale that it still remains an ideal which engineers regard with admiration. Another Frenchman, Charles Bourseul, invented the telephone, and yet another led the way in the science of bacteriology. As conscious empire-builders on a world-wide scale the French were also putting their ideas into practice when England was still thinking commercially in such matters. England as a whole always does think in pounds, shillings, and pence, and in empire-building possessions have mainly been added to the British Empire with the idea of increasing its trade. In naval developments France recently led the way with the submarine and submersible, setting an example to the rest of the world which has been followed so thoroughly that the lead in this arm of sea-power is no longer with the pioneer country. Innumerable instances could be given of the initiative in big ideas being taken by Frenchmen, and of other nations taking them up and developing, perfecting, and sometimes consummating for the first time projects devised in France.
Mr. C. F. G. Masterman has laid stress on the patience of the British working man, but thatwillingness to endure hard circumstance is not so pronounced in England as in France. There endurance continues too long, so that when harsh treatment becomes absolutely intolerable there is not a fraction of patience left, with the inevitable result that explosions of varying degrees of violence take place. British workers bestir themselves and demand redress of grievances before they are at the end of their patience, and can therefore wait while the country becomes familiar with their new needs. England has thus known no "Reign of Terror," nor does the Government of the day suddenly collapse before some public outburst of passionate feeling. The people who can endure the inconvenience of a Government monopoly in matches, which makes that commodity vile in quality while costing a penny a box, must indeed be patient.
The average Frenchman desires to live a quiet and peaceful life without hurry or bustle. He is content with long hours of work if he can carry on that occupation at an easy pace, for he is steadily industrious, and his easy-going nature lets him disregard misgovernment too long for safety, for when at last he is roused out of the ambling pace of his normal life, undergroundelements of cruelty and bloodthirstiness may come to the surface with sudden and terrible swiftness. If fair and honest government and tolerable conditions of labour could be perpetually guaranteed to France, there is scarcely a people in the world who would live more peaceable and uneventful lives, for the British relish for adventure and the enthusiasm for hustle to be found in the United States finds no echo in the average French mind. Alongside this disinclination to go helter-skelter through life is the fact that in certain ways the French people are all artists, and that they have the critical faculty developed to a most remarkable degree; their capacity for discrimination and criticism might indeed be singled out as the most salient characteristic of the whole people. Even the humblest citizen is seldom prepared to express unqualified admiration for any piece of handicraft or painting, but will look with thoughtful care on the object of consideration, and probably supply an intelligent reason for only giving it partial approval.
On the other hand there is a great tendency to over fondness for generalising without sufficient data; there is a delight in reasoning and logic which often leads to false conclusions owing to awant of real knowledge. This love of reasoning and the capacity for criticism seem to have given the nation a regard for consequences and a care to avoid the more or less inevitable economic day of adverse reckoning which comes to those who are careless and indefinite in their arrangements. It is the general thriftiness found all through the peasant and bourgeois class of France that has, to such a great extent, saved the various grades in the social scale from emulating the ways of those above them. The disgrace of insolvency is so terrifying to a French household that a thousand economies are practised to keep such a contingency afar off, and in following this rule of life much social intercourse, and nearly all effort to seem more opulent than the family purse will permit, go overboard. Thus it has become a characteristic of a most definite order that a Frenchman's home is his castle in a fashion far more real to the stranger than is the case in Anglo-Saxon countries.
Briefly it may be stated that the French are a serious, cautious, patient, and exceedingly industrious and home-loving race, enjoying their hardly earned hours of pleasure in a more demonstrative fashion than do the nations whoseclimates are less sunny. They are critical and fond of generalisation, are capable of large and splendid moments of inspiration, and have on the whole feminine rather than masculine characteristics.
For an English resident in France to become an intimate in the home of a French family is a rare enough occurrence, and for a visitor to attempt to discover anything as to French family life first hand is generally a quest doomed to failure. In the vast mass of the middle classes the habit of mind is to remain as far as possible on the estate of one's ancestors or in the place in which one is known. There is no wish to live in foreign lands; those who are obliged to do so are pitied, and foreigners who come to take up permanent residence in France are in most instances regarded as people who, for some regrettable reason, are obliged to live outside their native land. This idea prevents the foreigner from receiving a cordial welcome, and he generally labels the people of his adoptedland as inhospitable. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Belgians and Italians belonging to a common stock are assimilated with extreme rapidity into the great body of the nation.
The hospitality of the average French household of the middle classes is, owing to the need for great thrift, narrowed down to the necessarily limited circle of the family. No sooner is the aforetime stranger joined to a family by the tie of marriage than the doors of the homes of all the relations are thrown wide open to receive him. It is this custom which makes it so essential for the prospective parents-in-law to ascertain the antecedents, the status, and financial prospects of a proposed husband for their daughter. Should some disaster, monetary or otherwise, fall upon this new addition of the family, the blow is inflicted upon all the members and all the branches of that circle. Similar enquiries are put on foot by the parents of a son who is intending to ally himself to another family.
Theatre
IN THE PLACE DU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS, PARIS.
Wherever the family tie is given undue importance there is inevitably less willingness to entertain the stranger and to take the risks this wider sociality involves. So English people, withParis (which they do not really know) as the basis of their observations, are too ready to state with confidence that there is no real home life in France. It may be that there is less in the capital than in the rest of the country, but Paris is the least French portion of France. The English, or more accurately the British, quarter of Paris remains outside the closely guarded circles of Parisian family life, and large sections of the city live in water-tight compartments even as they do in London. What does the average middle-class family know of the French residents in London? Probably the number of those of the upper classes who are closely in touch with French residents of their own social rank is very small, and the humble French population of Soho and Pimlico live their hard-working lives almost as detached from the rest of the city as though they were on the other side of the Channel.
One of the most marked differences between the Anglo-Saxon and the French home is the fact that in the latter the place of the housemaid is to a very great extent taken by men. The sterner sex dust and sweep and polish as a matter of course. There is little restriction on the amount of noise made by the servants, maleand female, while they are about their work. It is quite usual to hear them laughing, talking, singing, and even shouting to one another, where in an English household there would scarcely be a sound above the quietest conversation drowned by the noise of the broom.
The ordinary house of the middle classes does not enjoy that periodical refurbishing and redecorating accepted as necessary north of the Channel. With a wife as keen as himself on living well within their joint income the French head of the family is not urged to put aside a certain annual sum for new curtains, carpets, chair and sofa covers, and such expensive items. The initial outlay on the home is generally considered to be almost sufficient for a lifetime if care is used in maintaining what has been purchased. It is not necessary to have entered many French homes to become familiar with the typical bedroom which is reflected faithfully enough in the average hotel. One essential feature of a bedroom as the Anglo-Saxon knows it is alone allowed to form a feature of the furnishing of the apartment. It is the bed, draped as a rule with elaborate curtains and coverings and surmounted by some form of canopy. A massivefeather-bed-like eiderdown, covering about one-half of the necessary area of the bed, reposes at the foot and leaves those unfamiliar with these nightmare pillows wondering if the people who use them are a practical race. The dressing-table and washstand are generally hard to find. If there is acabinet de toilette, these essentials of a bedroom will be stowed away in what is often a roomy cupboard, and where the feature does not exist, both pieces of furniture will be so modest in dimensions and sufficiently well disguised to be almost unrecognisable at a casual glance. Conspicuously placed, however, will be an ample sofa and a writing-table not necessarily provided with adequate writing materials. Every effort is made to give the sleeping apartment as much the atmosphere of a reception-room as sofas and chairs and an absence of toilet appliances will allow, for when, right away in the fifteenth century, it became the custom for the sovereign to hold audiences in the bed-chamber the rest of French society imitated the royal example, until it became an established usage inbourgeoiscircles as much as in those of the class which enjoyed the direct influence of court fashions. Democratic and RepublicanFrance has swept away the whole edifice of the monarchy, but unconsciously perpetuates in a most remarkable fashion the weakness of a sovereign to carry on the business of the day from his bed!
The average husband regards thecabinet de toiletteas the peculiar possession of his wife, and would hesitate to enter that annexe to his bedroom unbidden. Possibly to those who have been brought up with this idea the English custom of providing a small dressing-room for the husband and allowingmadameparamount rights over the whole bedroom may seem unaccountably odd.
Formality is generally the prevailing note of the reception-rooms. Comfortable chairs have only lately begun to make their appearance at all, and as a rule the middle-class household maintains a traditional severity in the arrangements of its drawing-room. Straight uninviting chairs and an absence of any indications of books, magazines or papers, or anything in the way of a needlework bag or a writing-table that is in regular use, deprive the room of any home-like individuality. The extreme economy exercised in the use of fuel makes the unnecessary lighting ofa fire a wanton extravagance. Commodities in Paris cost double or even more than double what they do in the British Isles, and in the country generally one-third more; the salaries of the civil and military officials, who form such a big section of the middle-class population, are considerably less than those enjoyed in England, and the incomes of the professional classes are as a rule smaller than those of the Englishman. Add to this the abnormally high rents of Paris and it will be understood that in the capital there is always need for the most rigid economy.Madamemust keep a watchful eye on the household store of coal, not only to see that it is not wasted in her own fires, but to make sure that pilfering is not carried on by her servants. Where in England a fire is kept quietly smouldering, it will be raked out in France and relighted when required a few hours later. In this way a good deal of hardihood in the endurance of cold is developed, and contrivances in the way of stoves that burn fuel with extreme economy are much in use. This restraint in coal consumption reduces the quantity of carbon particles discharged into the atmosphere of French cities, and accounts to a great extent for the clearer air the inhabitantsenjoy, at the same time keeping the annual bill for coal and wood down to very modest proportions.
Economy must also be rigidly maintained in the purchase of food, and this is generally accomplished by discreet buying in the markets. A servant or a member of the household makes daily purchases in this manner, and the middleman's profits on the chief part of the food required are successfully avoided. In Paris the maid-of-all-work, who is generally the only servant employed in a modest flat, makes these daily purchases, out of which she obtains from those with whom she deals a commission of asouin everyfrancexpended. This is a universally recognised custom, but in addition there is a prevalent but altogether reprehensible practice, known asfaire danser l'anse du panier. It is pure dishonesty, for thebonneputs down in the books a small overcharge on each item, and this with the market-man'ssou du francamounts to a considerable sum in the course of a year, often nearly equal to her wage. It is an interesting fact that Breton servants are generally quite guiltless of the overcharge system, for the people of Brittany are of much the same stock as the Welsh, concerningwhom there is a proverb for which the writer fails to find justification.