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THE 
 
 FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 BARRETT WENDELL 
 
 Profassor ot English at Harrard College, Sometime Clark Lecturer at Trinitir 
 
 College, Cambridge, and First Lecturer on the Hyde Foundation 
 
 at the Sorbonne and other French Univenitiea 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1918 
 
>^C3 3 
 
 COPTEIGHT, 1907, BT 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 Published September, 1907 
 
 Beprinted October and December, 1901 
 
 March* 1908: January. 1909 
 
 November, 1912; October, 1913 
 
 April, June, November, 1910 
 
 January, 1918 
 
 ^'S^f.f.^H ] 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 The fact that this book has had the good 
 fortune to reach a new edition enables me to 
 correct certain errors concerning the university 
 system, into which, at least apparently, I had 
 fallen. This I may best do by paraphrasing 
 letters from French friends who have had the 
 kindness to point them out. 
 
 On page 10, I hastily grouped together the 
 College de France, the Ecole Normale and the 
 Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. My inten- 
 tion was merely to imply that these establish- 
 ments were, each in its own way, apart from the 
 general university system which I was trying to 
 expound. The grouping of them together was 
 at best infelicitous; and certainly the subse- 
 quent comments on them were, in various ways, 
 mistaken. 
 
 The Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, writes 
 one friend, is completely independent of the 
 State. There is no need that its professors have 
 any university degree whatever. The authorities 
 of the school choose any one whom they deem 
 fit, and hold this freedom of choice among the 
 chief elements of their strength. For it permits 
 them to count among their instructors men of 
 
 ^ /-w^O vi f7 M* 
 
vi NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 action — officials, writers, economists, politicians, 
 bankers, and the like — who have proved their 
 personal distinction and importance by other 
 means than the winning of diplomas. 
 
 This school, another friend writes, ought in 
 no wise to be grouped with the two others; for 
 it is completely private, and in its private capac- 
 ity it grants degrees, which have moral, though 
 unofficial, weight. 
 
 With the College de France and the Ecole Nor- 
 male this is not the case, he goes on. The Ecole 
 Normale Superieure — near the Pantheon — is 
 part of the university system. It is an estab- 
 lishment where young men are admitted, after 
 examinations, to prepare for secondary teaching. 
 While at the school they pass their examinations 
 for the degree oUicenciey — though not at the school 
 itself, but before the university faculties. Then, 
 on leaving the school, they present themselves in 
 competition — something more than an examina- 
 tion — for the agregation.^ There are many kinds of 
 agregation — in letters, in history, in modern lan- 
 guages, in physical science, in natural science, in 
 mathematics, etc. — and the winning of the title of 
 agrege is difficult. For example, when only ten 
 places are open for competition, thirty candidates or 
 more — ahesidy licendes — ^may present themselves. 
 The successful ones are eligible to give secondary 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 vu 
 
 instruction, but not the highest. To become a 
 member of a faculty — ^to give the highest instruc- 
 tion, which another correspondent adds is some- 
 times enviously described as tertiary — the degree 
 of doctor is requisite; and this degree is not com- 
 petitive, but purely a matter of learning. 
 
 On the other hand, a member of the Institut 
 is eligible for any appointment whatever. This 
 title dispenses with all others. A member of the 
 Institute even though neither doctor, agrege, nor 
 licencie\ might perfectly well be a full professor 
 at the Sorbonne. Incidentally, my correspond- 
 ent adds, the title of Professor^ by itself, is insig- 
 nificant — as indeed is the case in America. 
 Every master of a lycee or a collegCy for example, 
 holds it as a matter of course. 
 
 As to the College de Francey he goes on, it has 
 nothing in common either with the Ecole Libre 
 des Sciences Politiques, or with the £cole Normale 
 Superieure — itself an establishment which must 
 be clearly distinguished from the separate normal 
 schools, for men and for women,where school teach- 
 ers are trained in every provincial university. Scien- 
 tifically — in point of exact scholarship, whether 
 in letters or in science — the College de France, he 
 tells me, is the highest institution of instruction in 
 France. Its purpose is to advance learning, as 
 well as to prepare for the highest examinations. 
 
viii NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 The professors are absolutely free, within the 
 limits of their chairs, to treat any part of their 
 subjects, no matter how limited or minute, pro- 
 vided that they go to the bottom of it. A professor 
 of the languages and literature of Southern Eu- 
 rope, for example, may confine himself at one 
 time to Dante, at another to Proven9al grammar, 
 and so on. The chief characteristic of the Collhge 
 de France^ in fact, is this absolute individual in- 
 dependence of its professors. Furthermore, it 
 grants no degrees, and demands none as requi- 
 site for its professorships. A man who holds only 
 the degree of bachelor, which would not regu- 
 larly entitle him to give even secondary instruc- 
 tion, may, if otherwise competent, be appointed 
 professor there. 
 
 Again, it appears that I was mistaken in sup- 
 posing that official inspectors at present concern 
 themselves with the higher instruction. They 
 used to; but their duties are now confined to 
 primary and to secondary schools. In any event, 
 my correspondent adds, they would have had no 
 right to inspect the College de France^ where 
 more than half the professors are members of 
 the Institut 
 
 A propos of the Institute he goes on, one 
 might well have pointed out that the Academie 
 Frangaise is at present less eminent in the matter 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION ix 
 
 of erudition than its less widely celebrated fel- 
 lows. Its chief official function is to prepare a 
 dictionary — a task for which it has no exceptional 
 philological equipment. Meanwhile the other 
 academies — of Inscriptions et Belles LettreSy of 
 ScienceSy and so on — are extremely active, and 
 have great influence on the progress of learning. 
 
 Another correspondent has had the kindness 
 to show me mistaken in supposing (p. 12) that a 
 certificate of primary instruction is needful for 
 admission to a lyc^e or a college. At present, it 
 seems, these institutions themselves give primary 
 instruction as well as secondary. 
 
 It is hardly conceivable that these errors are 
 all which have escaped my notice, or my obser- 
 vation. On the whole, however, my correspond- 
 ents have told me that the outlines of my treat- 
 ment, even of the universities, seem to them true. 
 When it comes to the later chapters, which con- 
 cern questions of opinion rather than of fact, 
 they have generally been agreed that, while my 
 point of view must evidently be that of a foreign 
 friend, and therefore my opinions must be de- 
 batable, my comments are intelligible, suggestive, 
 and earnestly sympathetic. B, W. 
 
 Boston, 16 February, 1908. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. The Universities 1 
 
 II. The Structure of Society . . 47 
 
 III. The Family 101 
 
 IV. The French Temperament . . 145 
 
 V. The Relation of Literature to 
 
 Life 191 
 
 VI. The Question of Religion . . 239 
 
 VII. The Revolution and Its Effects 292 
 
 VIII. The Republic and Democracy . 338 
 
THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 I 
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 IN the autumn of 1904 I found myself unex- 
 pectedly charged with the pleasant duty of 
 what may be described as an academic mis- 
 sion to France. The authorities of Harvard 
 University were so kind as to make me the first 
 of the representatives whom they have been in- 
 vited to send, year by year, to the Sorbonne 
 and to other French universities for the purpose 
 of lecturing about America. At the moment 
 I knew so little of the university system in 
 which I was to have a temporary status that I 
 was unaware of my ignorance. 
 
 One of my first calls in Paris began to en- 
 lighten me. A professor of the Sorbonne, who 
 had sent me Mendly word of when I might find 
 him at home, phrased his welcome in terms which 
 meant more than I quite understood at first; 
 for he addressed me as "cher collogue," thus 
 assuring me that, for the while, I was his aca- 
 demic equal. Something of what this involved, 
 concerning the dignity and the responsibility of 
 
2 THlii FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 my position, he soon proceeded to explain in a 
 pleasantly precise way. 
 
 The opening scene of our interview was brief 
 and cordially formal. It ended with an invita- 
 tion to pass from the salon where I had been 
 received into the professor's study. This proved 
 to be a snug library full of books and papers, 
 and remarkable chiefly for a blackboard on which 
 was sketched a somewhat complicated diagram, 
 resembling the plans of Hell, Purgatory and 
 Paradise to be found in most editions of the 
 "Divine Comedy." This likeness, indeed, was 
 so marked that, forgetting what my friend's 
 special branch of learning might be, I was dis- 
 posed to take for granted that he was occupied 
 with some minute study of Dante. In fact, it 
 presently appeared, this impressive diagram had 
 been ingeniously devised for my personal benefit 
 Rightly assuming that I could not find my way 
 in France without a clear knowledge of where I 
 belonged there, he had prepared it to illustrate a 
 concise little discourse on the present structure 
 and constitution of the French universities. His 
 subject, I may add, proved really analogous to 
 Dante's scheme of futurity. For in French uni- 
 versities — and for that matter one is tempted 
 to say throughout French society — everyone 
 seems to have a place as definite as that of any 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 8 
 
 denizen of any circle in all the hundred cantos. 
 My own — obviously unusual — began to define 
 itself while my friend, chalk in hand, proceeded 
 with his exposition ; and with the process came 
 to me my first clear conception of the extraor- 
 dinarily systematic nature of the surroundings 
 amid which I was to find my way during the 
 months to come, and of the precise point of 
 view from which I was to observe other aspects 
 of French life. 
 
 The whole educational system of modern 
 France, as my friend's diagram instantly and 
 constantly reminded me, is completely central- 
 ized. It is as much a unit as is the public-school 
 system of any American city. From beginning 
 to end, it is controlled by one single organization, 
 which has for its official centre the Ministry of 
 Public Instruction, in Paris. At its head is the 
 Minister of Public Instruction. 
 
 As everyone knows, however, the Minister of 
 Public Instruction is a member of the cabinet. 
 Under the parliamentary system of government, 
 this involves two consequences : he is compelled 
 to attend not only his cabinet meetings, but also 
 the regular sessions of the legislative body of 
 which he is a member; and at any moment a 
 change in the government may displace him. 
 The Minister, accordingly, though nominally and 
 
4 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 officially the head of the whole educational sys- 
 tem, and ex officio Rector of the University of 
 Paris, has other business, of more immediate im- 
 portance, as the representative, in both legislative 
 and executive councils, of the interests committed 
 to his charge. So far as the duties of his office 
 concern the actual conduct of French education, 
 they are consequently performed by permanent 
 officers, nominally his lieutenants, who have their 
 offices in the building of the Ministry. Of these 
 officers, three — independent of each other — are 
 virtually supreme, each in his own field. These 
 are the Directors of the three distinct phases 
 of education throughout the country — primary, 
 secondary, and superior. The true head of the 
 University of Paris, the while, is not the Minis- 
 ter, who bears the official title of Rector, but the 
 Vice-Rector, whose tenure of office is not dis- 
 turbed by changes in the government. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the University of Paris 
 remains what it has been for centuries — by far 
 the most important centre of French scholarship, 
 and one of the two or three most important 
 centres of scholarship in the world. Constitu- 
 tionally, however, this predominance is no longer 
 recognized. In theory the University of Paris is 
 only one of some fifteen or sixteen universities 
 which together control the entire educational 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 5 
 
 system of France, much as bishoprics control 
 "an ecclesiastical system. There are educational 
 maps of France on which the boundaries of the 
 universities are as definite as those of the States 
 in our American Union ; and like our States, the 
 French universities are independent of one an- 
 other, each sovereign within its hmits, and are 
 united only in their subjection to a common 
 central authority. In principle, what is true of 
 one is true of aU ; the hegemony of Paris is at 
 this moment only a tradition. It is a tradition, 
 however, of such immemorial and indefinite 
 strength and endurance that the Vice-Rector of 
 the University of Paris, though nominally of 
 slightly lower rank than the rectors of provincial 
 universities, is actually the most powerful official 
 in the whole educational system. His immedi- 
 ate contact with the Directors of all three grades 
 of education makes him, in practice, the most 
 influential personage of the whole organization. 
 
 Of the whole organization, we must remem- 
 ber. For the most salient difference between the 
 French system of education and the systems 
 prevalent in England and in America springs 
 from the fact that the rector of a French uni- 
 versity is the presiding officer not only of the 
 higher educational bodies under his charge, but 
 of the secondary and the primary instruction as 
 
6 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 well. Within the geographical limits of his uni- 
 versity, he performs virtually all the duties of the 
 1 Minister of Public Instruction ; and he is accord- 
 ingly in direct communication with all three of 
 the Directors of Education — primary, secondary, 
 and superior. Through them he is the official 
 means of communication between his university 
 and the Minister, who is nominally lord of all. 
 
 Each university, in fact, controls education 
 in all its stages. There is everywhere a system 
 of primary schools, where elementary education 
 is compulsory for children. There is everywhere 
 a system of secondary schools — generally called 
 lycees or colleges — where instruction in letters 
 or in science is carried to a point about equiva- 
 lent to that required for admission to a well- 
 estabUshed American college of the better sort. 
 And in each university of France there are four 
 faculties of superior or higher instruction : the 
 "Taculties of letters, of science, of law, and of 
 J medicine. Generally, as in Paris, these faculties 
 have their seats in the same town ; but this is not 
 necessarily the case. In at least one instance a 
 faculty of science and a faculty of letters of the 
 same university are situated in separate cities 
 some little distance apart — Marseilles and Aix. 
 Every university, however, must possess all four 
 faculties, each under the presidency of a dean. 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 7 
 
 And at a few universities there was, until very 
 lately, a fifth faculty — of Protestant theology. 
 For obvious ecclesiastical reasons the historic 
 faculties of orthodox Catholic theology cannot 
 fall within the system. To extremely conser- 
 vative minds, accordingly, particularly in the 
 provinces, the present principles of the French 
 universities cannot help seeming in some degree 
 anticlerical. 
 
 The faculties of higher education, though nom- 
 inally the chief bodies under the presidency of 
 the rectors, appear, in point of fact, to be more 
 nearly autonomous than you would suppose. 
 Except in Paris, so far as my observation went, 
 the rectors seemed more concerned with ques- 
 tions of secondary education than with those of 
 the higher — spending a good deal of their time 
 in travelling about their jurisdictions, and exam- 
 ining the condition of schools, much as con- 
 scientious bishops might keep their eyes on the 
 outlying regions of their dioceses, and leave 
 their cathedrals to the care of trustworthy chap- 
 ters. But in all cases the rector of a university 
 is the responsible head of all education; and, 
 as we have seen, he is the regular medium of 
 communication between his jurisdiction and the 
 Ministry of Public Instruction. 
 
 This state of things might evidently put in 
 
8 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 his hands a degree of power virtually autocratic. 
 For the rest a rector — whatever his personal 
 integrity, which may be confidently presumed — 
 is after all a fallible human being. In conse- 
 quence, so far as his reports deal with the actual 
 state of the instruction in his charge, and partic- 
 ularly with the character and the skill of indi- 
 vidual instructors, high and low, they are kept in 
 check by a system of regular inspection, centred 
 in the Ministry at Paris. A considerable corps 
 of official Inspectors are always engaged in visit- 
 ing the universities throughout France. They 
 have the right of access everywhere ; and, though 
 such of them as I happened to meet were de- 
 lightful people, their visitations are naturally 
 objects of a certain terror. For each visit re- 
 sults in an official report, duly filed at the Min- 
 istry ; and on these reports, taken in conjunction 
 with those of the rectors, hang the professional 
 prospects of every teacher from Flanders to 
 Spain and from the Atlantic to the Alps. Inci- 
 dentally, it seems probable that the rectors them- 
 selves are objects of a supervision as close as any 
 applied to their subordinates, of whatever rank. 
 
 How far this system of record is carried may 
 be inferred from my own experience. In the 
 course of my duties I had occasion to call sev- 
 eral times on the Director of Higher Education. 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 9 
 
 In each instance, when I was ushered into his 
 presence, I found him seated at his desk with 
 an open portfolio before him. This portfolio, it 
 presently appeared, contained my dossier — that 
 is, all the letters I had written to him, copies of 
 all which had been sent me officially, and pre- 
 sumably various other memoranda concerning 
 my credentials, my performances, and my char- 
 acter. During my visit to a provincial univer- 
 sity a little later, I had the privilege of finding 
 myself, for a day or two, in the same town and at 
 the same hotel with an accomplished Inspector 
 of Instruction in Modern Languages, who had an 
 agreeably expert knowledge of the local vintages.j 
 The pleasure I derived from his society was in no 
 degree impaired by the probability that his honest 
 estimate of what my academic mission amounted 
 to might find its way to my dossier at Paris. 
 But if I had been a Frenchman whose whole 
 future depended on such statements of opinion 
 my sentiments might have been less cheerful. 
 For, as I understand the matter, everybody who 
 has ever taught anything in France, in whatever 
 grade, has his dossier duly on file at the Ministry. 
 And whenever any question arises, especially con- 
 cerning promotion, these exhaustive records are 
 pitilessly scrutinized. 
 
 Of course, there are institutions of learning in 
 
( 
 
 10 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 France which do not fall within the limits of this 
 rigid system. There are private schools, analo- 
 gous to private schools in America. Until lately 
 there have been very highly developed schools 
 under the direct control of the teaching orders 
 of the clergy. And there are many established 
 institutions of the highest education — such as 
 / the College de France, the Ecole Normale, or the 
 lEcole Libre des Sciences Politiques — which form 
 no regular part of the university organization. 
 The position of these somewhat irregular sem- 
 inaries of instruction, however, — whether they 
 be semi-official, or in no way connected with the 
 government, — is not so independent as it might 
 seem. For, as I understand the matter, they are 
 open in two distinct ways to official supervision 
 rand control. In the first place, they may always 
 be visited by the regular inspectors of the gov- 
 ernment schools ; in the second place, and far 
 more importantly, no one may legally teach in 
 (^ them who has not taken the university degree 
 ^ which would be required for teaching of similar 
 4ix " grade in the regular system. And only the es- 
 . j\'^ tablished universities, which are under the direct 
 authority of the Ministry, have authority to con- 
 fer valid degrees or educational certificates of any 
 kind whatever. To obtain credit for work done 
 at a private school, accordingly, or at any insti- 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 11 
 
 tution not completely official in character, all 
 students must present themselves at the regular 
 examinations of the universities. And this credit 
 is no mere matter of form ; without at least a 
 degree from the secondary schools, almost every 
 professional career in France — even that of an 
 apothecary — is absolutely closed. 
 
 A curious example of how much this signi- 
 fies occurred at a provincial university where I 
 happened to arrive while examinations were in 
 progress. Two or three candidates, evidently 
 strangers, appeared in clerical garb. On inquiry, 
 it turned out that they had studied at a church 
 school in the jurisdiction of another, and a rather 
 remote, university. The pronounced opposition 
 of the government to many forms of ecclesiastical 
 instruction had resulted in a warmth of feeling 
 which forbade them, as a matter of principle, to 
 recognize the educational system of the state in 
 their immediate neighborhood. At the same 
 time, they needed degrees from the state, in 
 order to pursue their careers. So they had re- 
 sorted to the expedient of taking a day's jour- 
 ney and presenting themselves in a strange city 
 for examinations which, under ordinary circum- 
 stances, they would have taken at home. 
 
 The degree which these young ecclesiastics 
 already possessed was one which produces a cer- 
 
12 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 tain confusion in the minds of people accustomed 
 to the university systems of England and of 
 America. It was that of bachelier, which sounds 
 very like ours of bachelor of arts. In point of 
 fact, however, the French degree of bachelier is 
 given not at the completion of a course of 
 higher education, but at that of secondary. As I 
 understand the matter, primary instruction in 
 France is absolutely compulsory ; like primary 
 instruction anywhere else, it teaches everybody 
 to read, to write, and to manage the elementary 
 processes of arithmetic ; it offers, at the same 
 time, various other kinds of elementary instruc- 
 tion, of which the results are not so evident ; and 
 it is complete at twelve or fourteen years of age. 
 A certificate that primary education is thus com- 
 pleted entitles anyone who desires further instruc- 
 tion to enter any lycde or college in France. In 
 these institutions, where boys and girls are kept 
 apart, the instruction varies, according as the 
 pupil prefers a literary or a scientific course of 
 study. In either case, the instruction, which is 
 remarkably thorough, lasts until the pupil is six- 
 teen or eighteen years old. By that time he 
 should be prepared for a considerable set of ex- 
 aminations, both written and oral, which are 
 equivalent, in a general way, to those demanded 
 for entrance to an American college of the better 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 13 
 
 sort; though, on the whole, I should suppose 
 them to be rather more severe. In any event, 
 they have the severity of an old-fashioned Amer- 
 ican entrance examination as distinguished from 
 the flaccid recent method of allowing candidates 
 for admission to college the privilege of taking a 
 few examinations at a time; for the whole set 
 must be passed at once. Duly passed, these 
 examinations entitle the student to the degree of 
 bachelier — in letters or in science, as the case 
 may be. 
 
 This degree of bachelier is not, as degrees are 
 with us, a matter only of record. It actually 
 entitles the possessor to various rights which no 
 one can have without it. It opens various civil 
 careers, as well as various careers in the service 
 of the government. And educationally it entitles 
 people to present themselves anywhere in France 
 for instruction under any of the faculties of higher 
 education — letters, science, law, or medicine. 
 At this point comes a very salient difference of 
 the French university system from the English 
 and our own. A faculty of letters is looked upon 
 not as a guardian of general culture, but as a 
 body in all respects as professional as a faculty of 
 law. Only students who contemplate literary 
 careers — such as the writing or the teaching of 
 literature, history, or philosophy — are apt to 
 
14 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 register themselves in the department of letters. 
 , Students who purpose devoting themselves to law 
 lor to medicine proceed with those subjects im- 
 mediately. A course of study under any of the 
 faculties of higher education normally takes some 
 four years. At the end of this time a student 
 should be ready for another set of examinations 
 — broadly equivalent in letters to the standard 
 required in England or in America for the degree 
 of bachelor of arts. Like the examinations for 
 the degree of backelier, these must all be taken 
 at once ; and the resulting degree, in letters or in 
 science, at all events, — the degree which our 
 vagrant young ecclesiastics desired, — is that of 
 Uce7icie, Licencie or Ucenciee, I should rather 
 say; for under all faculties of the higher edu- 
 cation in France, men and women are received 
 together on completely equal terms. 
 
 In the educational system this degree of 
 licencie has supreme importance. Though a 
 teacher may qualify for employment in primary 
 schools by passing examinations designed for that 
 special purpose, something like civil service ex- 
 aminations in England or in America, no one 
 who has not taken the degree of licencie is allowed 
 to teach in secondary schools. But this degree, 
 which opens a career of secondary teaching, is 
 not enough for a teacher whose ambition soars 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 15 
 
 higher. To take part in the higher education — 
 in what we Americans are accustomed to call uni- 
 versity teaching — he needs further credentials. 
 
 The next normal degree, like the highest reg- 
 ular degree almost everywhere, is that of doctor 
 — of letters, of science, and so' on. According 
 to the French system, however, this degree de- 
 mands exceptionally prolonged work. A success- 
 ful candidate must present two original theses, 
 one of which is usually in some other language 
 than French. Both of these must be accepted 
 as solid contributions to the department of learn- 
 ing in which he professes to excel ; and at least 
 the principal one must be a book of importance, I 
 not only in substance, but in scale and in style. 
 The late Professor Beljame's well-known treatise 
 on the " Public and INIen of Letters in England 
 during the Eighteenth Century," for instance, 
 was one of the theses which earned him the de- 
 gree of doctor of letters many years ago. And 
 among the theses accepted at the Sorbonne 
 within the last few years are the best studies in 
 existence of Poe and of Hawthorne. The chance 
 that I was American brought me the pleasure of 
 personal acquaintance with the authors of these 
 works — M. Lauvriere, who received the degree 
 of doctor four or five years ago, and M. Dhaleine, 
 who received it in 1905. The fact that neither 
 
16 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 of these gentlemen was precisely young implied 
 what is generally true of those who attain the 
 highest French degree in letters. The work de- 
 manded for it can hardly be accomplished before 
 a candidate is well past thirty years of age. The 
 degree is actually granted, to all appearances, on 
 the strength of theses, which are subjected to the 
 closest scrutiny. Nominally, however, it is con- 
 ferred only on candidates who have publicly de- 
 fended their theses with success ; and even though 
 this process of defence be only a matter of form, 
 it looks portentously serious. 
 
 On an appointed day the candidate for the 
 doctorate in Paris presents himself in a large hall 
 at the Sorbonne, something like a court-room, 
 which will accommodate three or four hundred 
 people. This is absolutely open tp the public, 
 who appear to value their privilege ; for on the 
 several occasions when I happened to attend 
 such a ceremony, there were always a good many 
 spectators. The candidate takes his seat at a 
 desk facing a raised bench, which is occupied by 
 the professors who have certified to the quality 
 of the thesis he is to defend. Each of them is 
 provided with a printed copy of the thesis ; and 
 during two or three hours they attack it in turn. 
 jThe attack generally begins with words of cordial 
 praise, which are followed, in due time, by every 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 17 
 
 adverse comment, general and detailed, which has 
 presented itself to learned and ingenious critical 
 minds. To these comments the candidate must 
 instantly reply — intelligently, fluently, and in 
 unimpeachable French. Generally he answers 
 stoutly, though with extreme formal politeness ; 
 now and then — particularly when detected in 
 some slight error of fact — he accepts the correc- 
 tion, with thanks, and mentions that he shall 
 proceed to make it in the next edition of his 
 work. Finally, at least in every case which 
 came to my knowledge, his defence of the thesis 
 is pronounced adequate, after a formal consulta- 
 tion of his examiners. And his labors are there- 
 upon crowned with the degree of doctor, which 
 entitles him to be employed, if he can secure 
 the employment, as viaitre de conferences — that 
 is, as instructor — in any institution of higher 
 education, and which makes him eligible for ap- 
 pointment as professor in a faculty of the highest 
 rank. 
 
 Meanwhile, as we have seen, he has inevitably 
 got well toward middle life. Obviously it is 
 desirable that competent people should occupy 
 themselves in giving the higher instruction at 
 an earlier age. To meet this difficulty a happy 
 device exists. Any licencie is entitled to present 
 himself at Paris for a special competitive exam- 
 
18 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ination in his chosen subject. The fact that this 
 examination is held only at Paris emphasizes its 
 importance. Though the degrees of Paris are 
 generally held in so much higher esteem than 
 others that most candidates for the doctorate go 
 thither, the degree of doctor may regularly be 
 conferred by any of the universities. This com- 
 petitive examination, on the other hand, occurs 
 nowhere else ; and although it is open to candi- 
 dates from any part of the country, it is so 
 arduous that preparation for it in Paris is more 
 than desirable. At least until very lately such 
 preparation has been the special task of that 
 admirable institution of the higher learning, the 
 Ecole Normale. Without some such expert 
 training, even able men are rarely able to meet 
 the test. A few years ago, for example, a candi- 
 date who had successfully passed the preliminary 
 phases off this examination was summoned to 
 appear, at a given hour, before a professor of 
 the Sorbonne. This functionary handed him a 
 paper, drawn at random from an urn. On this 
 was written the title of some subject in the de- 
 partment with which the candidate was con- 
 cerned. Precisely twenty-four hours later he 
 was required to present to the same professor, 
 at the same place, a complete written lecture on 
 this subject, with due bibliographic notes. Some 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 19 
 
 such final test as this decides the question of 
 success in a competitive examination where can- 
 didates present themselves in considerable num- 
 bers, and where only ten or fifteen per cent of 
 them are accepted. These fortunate persons re- 
 ceive the degree of agrege. This is so highly- 
 esteemed that, in practice, few who have not won 
 it can hope for responsible employment even in 
 secondary education. None without it, unless 
 they become doctors, can instruct under the 
 hiffher faculties. And it is so much harder to 
 attain than any other French degree that it is 
 really the most important. You will hardly find 
 a professor anywhere who has not become an 
 agrege before he has proceeded, with due delib- 
 eration, to the regular degree of doctor, without 
 which he cannot aspire to a full professorship in 
 a faculty of letters, science, law, or medicine. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the university system in 
 which, for the year following my kind friend's 
 explanation of it, I was to hold an exceptional 
 position. So far as degrees went — though I 
 had the prudence not to mention the circum- 
 stance — I was only a Harvard bachelor of arts ; 
 I had never troubled myself with the task, prac- 
 tically superfluous at home, of studying for any- 
 thing nominally higher. Yet, as a professor 
 delegated from Harvard to lecture in France, 
 
20 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 I was temporarily the equal of professors in 
 the University of Paris, addressed by them as 
 collegue, and by inferior university officials as 
 maitre. In order to regulate my behavior, it was 
 necessary that I should understand my status, 
 almost as if my position had been in a diplomatic 
 system or a military. This was why my cordial 
 colleague with the blackboard devoted the first 
 hour of our intercourse to the lecture which I 
 have tried to remember and to summarize. No 
 friendly service could have been more opportune. 
 Throughout my stay in France it threw constant 
 light on my official relations and duties. 
 
 In France these duties were as regular as any 
 teaching in class-room or laboratory. At all 
 French universities — at least in the department 
 of letters — two distinct kinds of instruction are 
 invariably offisred. One, precisely similar to that 
 customary in our own country, consists of what 
 are called cours fermes — that is, of exercises in 
 class-rooms open only to registered students. 
 The other consists of what are called cours 
 pvhlics. These courses of lay sermons, open, 
 like divine service, to anyone who cares to hear 
 them, are immemorially established in the aca- 
 demic custom of France, — being, as I conceive, 
 a surviving trace of the instruction usual in the 
 universities of the Middle Ages. And they 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 21 
 
 retain a kind of popularity much like that en- 
 joyed among ourselves by the pulpit utterances 
 of reputable preachers. That is, if a lecturer 
 gives a public course acceptably, he is assured of 
 considerable and intelligent audiences. Among 
 these are a certain number of students, interested 
 either in the subject discussed or in the person- 
 ality of the lecturer. The greater part of the 
 attendance, however, consists of people in no 
 way connected with the university, including a 
 good many women who come as a matter of 
 curiosity, or occasionally of fashion. Yet this 
 agreeable feature of such audiences in France is 
 less salient than the number of mature men of 
 serious intelligence who faithfully follow a course 
 of public lectures. Such a course was the duty 
 with which I was charged, both in Paris and 
 later in the provinces. 
 
 This duty, meanwhile, involved others, of per- 
 sonal character, far more exacting than would 
 have been the case at home. In the first place, 
 I was bound to make official calls on my aca- 
 demic superiors — the rectors and the deans — 
 at the earliest possible moment. In the second 
 place, whenever I had the good fortune to be 
 presented to an academic equal — a professor, 
 a collegue — I was bound to leave my card at his 
 door within twenty-four hours, on pain of being 
 
22 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 held barbarously deficient in good manners. 
 With people in a position of academic inferiority, 
 on the other hand, these pleasant duties were 
 less stringent. 
 
 Thus my actual knowledge of France began. 
 Trying to play my part punctiliously, I was 
 aided throughout by the punctilious kindness 
 with which my superiors and my colleagues — 
 and, indeed, everybody else — played theirs. The 
 ^ truth is that social intercourse anywhere is some- 
 i thing like comedy ; and that the French conduct 
 I the comedy of life more skilfully than we do. 
 They know their cues, and lure you unawares 
 into mastery of your own. In comparison, 
 we Americans are like amateurs, stumbling 
 through the good-natured confusion of im- 
 promptu charades. 
 
 Here and there the methods of the French 
 universities seemed to me a little old-fashioned. 
 One of the chief officials of the Sorbonne, for 
 example, who received me with the greatest 
 kindness, expressed a desire that during my stay 
 in Paris I should enjoy every possible privilege ; 
 consequently, he went on to say, he had given 
 directions that I should have access, whenever 
 I chose, to the catalogue of the library. With- 
 out this advantage, it appeared, I should have 
 been obliged, in case I desired a book, to ask an 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 23 
 
 attendant whether the Hbrary possessed it ; or, 
 in case I wished for authorities on any given sub- 
 ject, to request him at his convenience to make 
 me a Uttle bibUography. In various other places, 
 I subsequently found out, — at the College de 
 France, at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Poli- 
 tiques, and doubtless elsewhere, — libraries of 
 rather special range are at the disposal of scholars 
 duly introduced. Generally speaking, however, 
 books seem less accessible in France than you 
 would expect ; and consequently anyone who 
 needs many finds that he must buy more than 
 is the case at home. 
 
 When it came to the conduct of lectures, 
 however, the arrangements were refreshingly 
 pleasanter than anything which I had known 
 before. A comfortable little room is at the dis- 
 posal of the lecturer, where he is expected to 
 arrive, in frock coat and black cravat, a few 
 minutes before the hour named for his public 
 appearance. At precisely the hour in question, 
 an impressive being in dress clothes, with a silver 
 chain about his neck, presents himself, holding 
 a tray on which are a glass, a spoon, a decanter 
 of water, and a saucer containing a few lumps of 
 sugar. With these in hand, he precedes the lec- 
 turer to the platform of the hall where the 
 audience is already assembled. He places the 
 
24 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 sugar and water on the desk, — and, as I did not 
 personally have recourse to this refreshment, it 
 is possible that the ingredients remained un- 
 changed from November till March, — and he 
 withdraws for an hour. At precisely the end 
 of the hour, the appariteur, as this functionary 
 is called, reappears at the little door behind the 
 platform. You thereupon bring your lecture to 
 a close. Whether he have authority, in other 
 event, to remove you forcibly I never ventured 
 to inquire. At New Year s time I gave him 
 five francs, by the counsel of one of my col- 
 leagues, who represented that he would be 
 displeased with less and disconcerted with 
 more. 
 
 In the little waiting-room, both before and 
 after lectures, I was free to receive anyone whom 
 I chose. The appariteur served as watch-dog, 
 duly warning away people without credentials, 
 and politely intimating to me the character of any 
 who had them. Thus I came to meet a certain 
 number of students interested in what I was dis- 
 cussing. Here, at once, I found myself in an 
 unfamiliar atmosphere. Whoever has had much 
 to do with American students must agree, I 
 think, that their abundant energy is apt to 
 exert itself in other fields than those where they 
 are brought into professional contact with their 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 25 
 
 teachers. French students seem of different 
 stripe. They are alertly intelligent, serious to 
 a degree which shames you into consciousness 
 of comparative frivolity, intellectually energetic 
 beyond reproach ; but somehow, when you have 
 been habituated to academic intercourse at home, 
 they seem a shade inhuman. One can soon see 
 why. It is not that they lack humanity ; in 
 private life, they are said to maintain the con- 
 vivial tradition of ancestral France. But human- 
 ity and work are separate things ; and to them 
 university work is a really critical matter. They 
 are not playing through three or four years which 
 shall ripen them into something sweeter than 
 they might grow to be without this happy inter- 
 val between the drudgery of school and the strife 
 of responsible existence ; they are assiduously 
 preparing themselves for a career of intense com- 
 petition. Their spirit seems quite to lack the 
 amateurish grace so engagingly characteristic 
 of American undergraduates ; in contrast, they 
 seem intensely, startlingly professional. 
 
 In the best sense of this abused term, no 
 doubt. It is not that French students impress 
 you as disposed to trickery or subterfuge. It is 
 only that, in their whole relation to university 
 work, they take for granted that they are occu- 
 pied not in the acquisition of that vague thing 
 
26 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 which we call " culture," but in a very palpable 
 phase of the struggle for existence. Their busi- 
 ness, as students, is to inform themselves as 
 widely and as accurately as possible ; and above 
 all, to gather their information in some compre- 
 hensive and comprehensible system. That is 
 why they are at the university ; and they are 
 generally enrolled under the faculty of letters, 
 because they aspire, in due time, to become 
 members of such a faculty, if possible ultimately 
 in Paris. So far as my observation went, there 
 is nothing at any French university which takes 
 the place of undergraduate life in England or in 
 America. The only incident in my experience 
 which promised an exception to this rule turned 
 out to prove it. At a provincial university 
 some students invited me to what I supposed to 
 be some such entertainment as is given by the 
 dramatic clubs of American colleges. In one 
 sense it was ; the variety performance in ques- 
 tion was blamelessly commonplace. The actors, 
 however, were not students, but professionals — 
 male and female — hired for the occasion. And 
 what the students had to do with it, beyond 
 forming part of the audience, I could not make 
 out. They did not even seem to know one 
 another personally. The relation of any French 
 student to his teachers or to his fellows, in short, 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 27 
 
 may be cordially friendly, or it may quite lack 
 human quality. The situation is like what 
 would exist at home between fellow-practitioners 
 of a profession. 
 
 In some of the institutions not directly under 
 my observation, I was given to understand, — 
 particularly at the Ecole Normale, — a stronger 
 feeling of comradeship exists. Even there, how- 
 ever, this comradeship is based on a common 
 professional purpose and on eager and honorable 
 competition, i From beginning to end the higher 
 phase of education in France has a different 
 function from that to which American tradition 
 accustoms us. Technically, the French training 
 is better ; in some respects, despairingly so. For 
 it is not only intensely earnest ; it so admirably 
 combines precision with generalization — accu- 
 rate attention to detail with constant effort to 
 keep general principles in mind — that it seems 
 much more vital than any other training which 
 has come to my knowledge. But, on the other 
 hand, an American boy, no matter how careless 
 of his studies, who has passed three or four years 
 at college, will find himself as a human being the 
 better for life in consequence — the more sym- 
 pathetic, the richer in human quality. Which 
 is really why our American reverence for our 
 colleges is so wholesome. This human quality 
 
28 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 seemed quite lacking in the university life of 
 France. 
 
 To some extent, this impression remains true 
 when you turn from students to professors. In 
 general, the professors of the French universities 
 are not only sound and accomplished scholars ; 
 they are men virho have acquired considerable 
 knowledge of the world, men of social tact, men 
 of animated charm in private life. But in their 
 professional character they are as serious as if 
 there were no such thing as pleasure on earth. 
 Though they are less burdened than we with 
 routine teaching, they may never relax their effort 
 to extend and solidify their learning. None of my 
 previous experience had revealed to me anything 
 like such a spectacle of concentrated and unceas- 
 ing intellectual activity as seemed a matter of 
 course among my temporary colleagues at Paris. 
 Foreign prejudice is apt to suppose the French 
 light-hearted, frivolous, and at best superficial. 
 When you live among French men of learning 
 engaged in the work of their lives, you begin 
 to wonder whence this grotesque misconception 
 arose. For nobody could imagine industry more 
 unremitting than theirs, and, for all its cheerful- 
 ness, more intense. 
 
 Professional, again, is the word which comes 
 to mind. Just as the student life of France lacks 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 29 
 
 the human quality which goes far to justify the 
 shortcomings of American students, so the Ufe 
 of a professor in France lacks the social element 
 which admirably pervades the universities of 
 England, and is not unknown among ourselves. 
 At least in Paris there seems little necessary 
 personal relation among these busy fellow- 
 workers. They know each other, of course, and 
 if they chance to find each other congenial, they 
 may be bound by close ties of friendship ; but 
 such a state of things seems no more a matter 
 of course than it would be among members of 
 the bar or practising physicians. Perhaps the 
 most conspicuous evidence of what I mean is 
 the punctilious politeness with which they always 
 treat one another. My first impression was that 
 the formal courtesy which they invariably 
 showed me, as a visitor, indicated a shade of 
 difference between my position and the more 
 intimate relation which must probably exist 
 among themselves. The longer I stayed in 
 France, the more conv3iced I became that this 
 impression was mistaken. I was in a world, I 
 discovered, where learning is not an accomplish- 
 ment, but an honorable and arduous profession, 
 with all its trials, all its heart-burning competi- 
 tion, all its pitiless disdain of weakness, all its 
 stimulating rewards. 
 
80 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 The normal career of a French professor, in 
 general, is somewhat as follows : Almost from 
 the time when he enters a secondary school, he 
 contemplates the profession to which he shall 
 devote his life. Certainly by the time when he 
 becomes a bachelier, his purpose is determined. 
 At the university he devotes himself assiduously 
 to the subject which he proposes to master. 
 Once equipped with the degree of licencie, he is 
 eligible for employment as a teacher in some 
 secondary school. If in need of support, he is 
 apt to take up this work for a while ; if more 
 fortunate, he is more likely to proceed at once 
 to higher study, usually under the direction of 
 the most eminent specialists in Paris. In either 
 event, unless circumstances prove benumbing, he 
 prepares himself, with unflagging energy, for the 
 competitive examination which may win him the 
 degree of agrege. This achieved, he is eligible 
 for appointment as professor in any secondary 
 school, or as a lecturer — maltre de conferences 
 — under any faculty of the higher education. 
 Before he can become full professor in such a 
 faculty he must wait for his doctorate ; of this, 
 however, he can be pretty confident, in due time. 
 The laggards have been left behind. 
 
 Accordingly, he becomes as soon as possible 
 professor in the chief lycee of some university 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 31 
 
 centre, and offers courses of instruction under 
 the faculty to which he is attached. His first 
 appointment is usually rather remote from Paris 
 — the centre of the system and the goal of his 
 ambition. He is sent, to prove his quality, 
 somewhere in the provinces. There, for various 
 reasons, he may perhaps remain ; and wherever 
 he is he works hard and well. Anyone who has 
 glanced at the title-pages of serious French books 
 must be impressed by the quality of those which 
 frequently proceed from teachers in what seem 
 obscure and outlying regions. In every case, 
 however, he hopes for promotion, which means 
 not so much advancement in local rank — though 
 this, of course, counts for something — as ap- 
 pointment to a position nearer Paris. 
 
 This state of affairs was brought vividly to my 
 notice at several provincial universities. In one 
 instance I found a distinguished professor of 
 history receiving hearty congratulations on all 
 sides. Beyond question the most eminent local 
 antiquarian who had ever written about the 
 deeply interesting region which he had inhabited 
 for twenty years, he had just been called to a 
 chair at the College de France, in Paris — an 
 institution supplementary to the Sorbonne, where 
 the instruction is of the highest order, and the 
 body of instructors of the highest distinction. 
 
32 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 There was not an instant of hesitation or of doubt 
 that he would proceed at once from the city 
 which had so long been his home — and where, 
 for one thing, every detail of local genealogy for 
 a thousand years was on the tip of his tongue — 
 to surroundings where, personally, he would be 
 almost as strange as I. In Paris, furthermore, 
 his professional dignity would be far less in- 
 stantly obvious than in the city he was about 
 to leave ; at best, he would be lost to sight there, 
 in the crowd of other than learned human energy 
 which infests every great capital. Yet, so far as 
 I could perceive, he felt no shade of such sen- 
 timental regret as, under similar circumstances, 
 would have arisen in the mind of an American 
 professor thus called from the habitual surround- 
 ings of half a lifetime. And among his col- 
 leagues, much as they would surely miss both ^ 
 his eminent teaching and his winning personality, 
 I could detect no shade of resentment. They 
 seemed unanimous in their sentiment of gener- 
 ous good- will — much as men might seem at 
 home if a favorite colleague should receive an 
 honorary degree. 
 
 At another university of considerable impor- 
 tance, I found the Rector in the act of packing up 
 his library. He had had the good fortune to 
 be called to the office of Inspector-General — or 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 33 
 
 some such matter — in the Ministry of Pubhc 
 Instruction. It transpired that this promotion 
 came not long after his last, which had been from 
 the rectorship of another university, some hours 
 farther from Paris, by a less direct line. In this 
 former position he had distinguished himself by 
 infusing into a somewhat languid institution of 
 learning a degree of vitality which had caused 
 it to be widely recognized. When called nearer 
 to Paris, however, he had felt no compunction in 
 abandoning his nursling to a successor, who was 
 at that moment preparing to follow him to the 
 higher rectorship which he was about to vacate. 
 And when, somewhat later, I visited the univer- 
 sity from which these two Rectors had been 
 successively promoted, I found it under the rec- 
 torship of a somewhat subdued gentleman, at 
 once gratified to be at the head of a university 
 and depressed to be sent thither from the capital, 
 where his previous academic status had been 
 subordinate. 
 
 The grounds on which promotions are made are 
 undoubtedly complicated. Sound scholarship, 
 brilliant publication, efficient teaching, count 
 for much. Personal qualities count for some- 
 thing ; and so, at times, do political and religious 
 considerations. During the Empire, I have been 
 told, a professor of doubtful orthodoxy was apt 
 
34 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 to have little favor ; and during the period when 
 the government of the Republic has been engaged 
 in disestablishing the Church obvious devotion 
 to the Catholic faith has not been thought wholly- 
 favorable to academic advancement. In any 
 event, the question turns, to great degree, on 
 those inexorable dossiers in the Ministry at Paris. 
 Once or twice a year, the Director of Higher 
 Education summons all the rectors of France to 
 a meeting at the Ministry ; there, I believe, the 
 inspectors meet them, more or less officially. 
 There, no doubt, the dossiers are inspected and 
 completed. And on what happens there, I 
 suppose, depends what happens to hundreds of 
 anxious scholars throughout France. 
 
 Until one fully understands this centralization 
 it is not quite easy to explain two remarkable 
 features of French provincial universities: the 
 surprisingly high quality of the instruction, and 
 the benumbing lack of local tradition or senti- 
 ment. Under a system so strongly competitive 
 as that which prevails in France, a man who 
 attains the dignity of membership in any faculty 
 of the higher education must not only possess 
 a vigorous mind highly trained, but also must 
 exert his powers unremittingly. Though acci- 
 dents may postpone or prevent his promotion, 
 indefinitely or permanently, nothing short of 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 35 
 
 despair can destroy his hopes of it. So you 
 can go nowhere in France without finding men 
 whose talents and accomplishments, never suf- 
 fered to rust, would be admirable anywhere. I 
 am tempted to say that there is not a single 
 centre of the higher education in France where 
 a foreign student might not pass a year of stim- 
 ulating work with great advantage. And so 
 long as any professor is officially attached to the 
 staff of any university, however remote, he con- 
 scientiously does all he can to advance the inter- 
 ests of that institution, as distinguished from its 
 fellows and its rivals. I have more than once 
 used the word professional to express the temper 
 of French learning. A better word might have 
 been conscientious. 
 
 All the conscience in the world, however, can- 
 not make the intellect identical with the heart. 
 And just as one feels among the students of Paris 
 a startling lack of that sense of fellowship which 
 makes the graduates of any American college 
 comrades for life, and almost justifies the rowdy 
 cheers of our athletic meetings, so throughout 
 the provincial universities one feels that there 
 is no trace of what often seems most lastingly 
 valuable in the higher education of America — 
 spontaneous college feeling. Any American will 
 tell you, first of all, the college he comes from. 
 
36 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 A Frenchman seems hardly to remember where 
 he studied — as distinguished from what he 
 studied, and under whom. For in French uni- 
 versities the only business of students or of 
 teachers is study. And learning is the same 
 everywhere ; it is not a question of local atmos- 
 phere. And every Frenchman who devotes his 
 life to university work has the same goal in view 
 — Paris, if he can attain it ; if not, some station 
 on the road thither. 
 
 When I began to realize these conditions, the 
 circumstances of my visits to provincial universi- 
 ties grew clearer. In Paris 1 had been received 
 as a temporary colleague by cordial French pro- 
 fessors who had reached the summit of their pro- 
 fessional ambition. To the provinces I came 
 not only as a foreign visitor whom chance had 
 converted into a temporary colleague; I came 
 also as a man who had enjoyed for a little while 
 the honor for which my colleagues most eagerly 
 longed — an official appointment at the Sorbonne. 
 It was partly this, I think, which made my wel- 
 come in the provinces somewhat more formal — 
 I had almost said more ceremonious — than it 
 had been in Paris. Partly, however, this phase 
 of my provincial experience was probably due 
 to other causes. 
 
 One of these was doubtless the traditional 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 37 
 
 rigidity of provincial manners, pleasantly touched 
 on throughout French literature. Another may 
 be found in the relation of provincial universities 
 to their immediate surroundings. The univer- 
 sity of Paris, though positively of the highest 
 importance and dignity, is obscured by the met- 
 ropolitan life which surrounds it. You might 
 live in Paris for half a lifetime without realiz- 
 ing that there are such things as professors or 
 students in the world. Throughout the prov- 
 inces, on the other hand, every university is a 
 conspicuous fact in the city where it happens to 
 be seated. As more obvious, it is inevitably 
 more self-conscious ; and as more self-conscious, 
 it is naturally somewhat more formal — less apt 
 to assume itself a part of the world which lives 
 and moves around it. 
 
 At the time when I was in France, further- 
 more, the condition of politics gave all the uni- 
 versities a complexion evident even in Paris 
 and almost startlingly obvious in the provinces. 
 They were government institutions; and the 
 government was prosecuting a policy which pre- 
 sented itself to many Catholic minds as nothing 
 less than a persecution of the Church. A some- 
 what embarrassing predicament followed. How- 
 ever the regular staff of a provincial university 
 might appear in the eyes of neighbors to whom its 
 
88 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 members were personally familiar, a foreign pro- 
 fessor who came to discourse in a foreign language 
 on a subject not regularly included in university 
 programmes was inevitably presumed to be radi- 
 cal in sympathy, and was therefore an object of 
 suspicion to conservative or reactionary people. 
 
 This was particularly evident at Lille — the 
 first of the provincial universities on my pro- 
 gramme. The richer people of that great manu- 
 facturing city are such ardent Catholics that they 
 support a considerable Catholic university by 
 their gifts. The city, furthermore, is close to 
 the frontier of Belgium, where some of the Cath- 
 olic orders, forbidden to carry on their schools 
 in France, have taken refuge. Accordingly, the 
 clerical prejudices of Lille appeared to involve 
 pretty strong dislike for any teaching officially 
 sanctioned by an anticlerical government. This 
 did not mean, however, either that many mem- 
 bers of the regular faculties were not good Cath- 
 olics or even that the Catholic religion was not 
 officially taught in the secondary schools. Al- 
 most the first object which met my eyes during 
 a visit to the Lyc^e of Lille — a very large and 
 efficient institution — was the excellent priest 
 who was in charge of the religious training there. 
 He was a regular member of the teaching staff ; 
 he lived in the buildings, and acted, I believe, 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 89 
 
 not only as an orthodox teacher of religion, but 
 also as spiritual adviser to the several hundred 
 Catholic boys in attendance at the school. In 
 the cases of Protestant or Jewish boys, religious 
 instruction was likewise provided by the authori- 
 ties. Even under this extremely anticlerical 
 government, it proved, there was a degree of 
 dogmatic teaching at the expense of the state 
 which would not be tolerated by the public 
 opinion of any city in America. 
 
 The phase of religious education legally sup- 
 pressed a year or two ago, in short, was not the 
 teaching of tenets and principles. It was the 
 control of secondary education by teaching orders 
 of ecclesiastics, who established successful and 
 fashionable schools in rivalry with the lycees of 
 the regular university system, and there fitted 
 pupils to pass the regular examinations for the 
 degree of bachelier. The influence of these 
 schools, conducted by monks and nuns, was 
 held to be unfavorable to republican principles, 
 as well as to due freedom of thought on the 
 part of pupils in matters not directly concerned 
 with religion. As one Catholic of my acquaint- 
 ance put the case to me, he had acquiesced with 
 regret in the suppression of the teaching orders, 
 for the reason that he could see no other means 
 of saving France from the condition of Spain. 
 
40 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Into the actual range and nature of the relig- 
 ious instruction at the state schools, I did not 
 inquire. The quality of the secular instruction 
 there seemed to me extraordinarily high. It 
 happened, for example, that I was taken into a 
 class-room where a lesson in English was being 
 given to some French boys of sixteen, mostly 
 the sons of operatives. The exercise was con- 
 ducted in excellent English, which the pupils 
 seemed to speak almost as readily as the teacher; 
 and the point under discussion when I visited 
 the class was one which would have puzzled 
 Harvard freshmen. It was the distinction in 
 meaning between the words priest — a Catholic 
 ecclesiastic ; clergyman — an Anglican ; and min- 
 ister — a dissenter. At another provincial lycee 
 I was welcomed by the performance of an 
 English play, in blank verse, the style of which 
 — a modern imitation of Elizabethan diction — 
 is extremely involved. The pronunciation of the 
 young actors left something to be desired. On 
 the other hand, the longer I listened to them the 
 more deeply I was surprised at the intelligence 
 with which they had mastered the meaning of 
 passage after passage which might well have per- 
 plexed boys to whom the English language was 
 native. In American schools, or rather in the 
 results of the instruction there afforded, I have 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 41 
 
 never come across the teaching of any foreign 
 language which compared in efficiency with the 
 teaching of Enghsh in secondary schools through- 
 out France. And, to all appearances, this was 
 only one example of the thoroughness and the 
 vitality of French teaching in all its branches. 
 
 Of primary-school work I saw nothing what- 
 ever, except such results of it as should be evi- 
 dent to any traveller. The most obvious of these 
 is the general accuracy with which people of the 
 working class speak and write their own lan- 
 guage. Another is the remarkably robust and 
 wholesome look of school-children. Statistics 
 are said to give disquieting figures concerning 
 the birth-rate in France. The casual observa- 
 tion of a traveller, on the other hand, would lead 
 to the conclusion that there is no country where 
 children are better cared for. The puny squalor 
 of childhood, familiar to any eye in England or 
 America, in Germany or Italy, or almost any- 
 where else, is hardly to be found among the 
 French. And a comical evidence of how much 
 this is due to the management of primary educa- 
 tion may be found in the extraordinary personal 
 neatness of French school- children during the 
 months when school is in session, as distinguished 
 from their normally juvenile carelessness of aspect 
 in vacation. 
 
42 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Yet even in school-days, both primary and 
 secondary, this thoroughness, this obvious effi- 
 ciency of work, seems, on the whole, to have been 
 purchased at the price of imperfect conviviality. 
 Conviviality, after all, in the literal sense of the 
 word, is among the most enduring elements of 
 the traditional and comparatively inefficient sys- 
 tems of education to which we of America, like 
 our English cousins, have been accustomed. We 
 remember our school-mates more vividly than 
 our teachers or than what they taught or failed 
 to teach us. To put the matter most generally, 
 the emotional and the sentimental life of our 
 youthful years surges in memory and in effisct 
 above the intellectual and the technical. Trivial, 
 frivolous, though such a confession may sound, 
 it is not really so at the core. The whole pro- 
 cess of our education is indirect. We are ex- 
 posed to certain influences, of which the ultimate 
 results make us what we grow to be ; and what 
 we grow to be enables us to do what we can. 
 In comparison, the whole system of French edu- 
 cation, with its strenuous directness of method 
 and of achievement, can hardly help impressing 
 an American as somewhat deficient in human 
 sympathy. 
 
 The intense, centralized, competitive system by 
 which all instructors are selected, and to which 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 43 
 
 all the students are submitting themselves, main- 
 tains meanwhile professional standards higher 
 than ours. I recall a remarkable instance of this. 
 Chancing to enter the Ubrary of a professor of 
 Sanskrit, I noticed open on his table a book of 
 which the characters looked so different from 
 what I remembered of Sanskrit texts that 1 
 asked whether French scholars used a different 
 Sanskrit alphabet from that prevalent in America. 
 He smiled at my deplorable ignorance and ex- 
 plained that the text in question was not San- 
 skrit, but Chinese. In answer I regretted that 
 I had not been aware that he was engaged in 
 the teaching of Chinese as well. He was not, he 
 said very simply ; but in the course of his San- 
 skrit work he had to touch on Buddhist doctrine. 
 And you can no more discuss Buddhism, he 
 went on to say, without studying the standard 
 Chinese commentaries thereon than you can dis- 
 cuss Christian theology without reference to the 
 Byzantine fathers. So far as I could perceive, 
 both of these propositions impressed him as axi- 
 omatic. So far as my observation of our own 
 scholarly attainments has gone, both of them 
 would have seemed, among ourselves, rather 
 Utopian. 
 
 The general character of this scholar's temper, 
 the while, was deeply impressive to any American, 
 
44 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 You might have expected such a student to have 
 been lost in his books, or at best to have Hmited 
 bis energies to matters of indisputable accuracy 
 — to the collection and verification of fact. In- 
 stead, the better one knew him the more one was 
 impressed with the dynamic quahty of his mental 
 habit. For a fact as a fact he cared as little as 
 if pedantry had never obscured the world. His 
 impulse — it would misrepresent the character- 
 istic to call it his effort — was to use every fact 
 in his possession as part of some system. With 
 all his learning, his intellect was as active as if 
 it bore no burden. What to others might have 
 been a burden, indeed, seemed in his case rather 
 a stimulus. 
 
 In this respect he was not peculiar among his 
 colleagues throughout France. The more I saw 
 of them, the more I was confirmed in my be- 
 lief that American learning would be greatly 
 strengthened if more of our graduate students 
 came under French influence. The influence of 
 German scholarship on American during the past 
 ninety years has been admirable, but perhaps 
 excessive. It has taught us a respect for fact 
 and method which our earlier learning lacked. 
 It has tended at the same time to encourage the 
 notion that the object and end of all learning is 
 the methodical collection of fact. No one would 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES 45 
 
 for an instant pretend this error to be prevalent 
 among the higher minds of Germany. Few can 
 deny that it is apt to possess the minds of 
 Americans who, having studied in Germany, 
 come home no longer American, nor yet soundly 
 German. The elder influence of English scholar- 
 ship in America, the while, has tended rather to 
 the sustenance of tradition than to the recog- 
 nition of newer learning ; and thus perhaps to 
 rather attenuated pedantry. The unmixed in- 
 fluence of France might perhaps tend toward 
 premature philosophizing. To this danger, how- 
 ever, the scholarly minds of America seem at 
 present very little exposed. Could our gradu- 
 ate students who purpose devoting their lives to 
 teaching come into more frequent contact with 
 the combined industry and intelligence of mod- 
 ern French scholarship, the American univer- 
 sities of the future might be at once more solid 
 in attainment and more stimulating in atmos- 
 phere than now seems quite likely. 
 
 On the other hand, as we have seen more than 
 once, even though such students might derive 
 the greatest benefit from the dynamic mental 
 habit so strong throughout France, they would 
 find there no such love for the regions where 
 learning lingers as makes gracious, in a way all 
 their own, the great universities of England and 
 
46 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the elder colleges of America which have grown 
 from our colonial traditions. The French are 
 not deficient in sentiment. No one can know 
 them even from their literature, or from the 
 most superficial travel, — still more, no one can 
 come to know them as personal friends, — with- 
 out recognizing the deep, spontaneous genuine- 
 ness of their emotional nature. This phase of 
 their temperament as a nation is more pro- 
 nounced, if possible, than the admirable intel- 
 lectual one on which our consideration of the 
 French universities has touched. Rather para- 
 doxically, however, it is less evident in their 
 educational surroundings and systems than almost 
 anywhere else. 
 
II 
 
 THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 
 
 IT was not long before the nature of my aca- 
 demic mission began to reveal the French to 
 me in other aspects than the professional one 
 on which we have been dwelling. As the first 
 American lecturer at the French Universities, I 
 was expected to enter into personal relations with 
 as many as possible of those who for any reason 
 felt interest in strengthening sympathy between 
 their country and ours. Meanwhile, my official 
 status in the university system gave me, for the 
 moment, a definite position in the extremely sys- 
 tematic official society of France. These facts 
 compelled me both in Paris and elsewhere to 
 present myself not only to people whom 1 met 
 officially, but also to those with whom, by letters 
 of introduction or by other chance, I was brought 
 into personal contact. 
 
 Whether the origin of my acquaintance with 
 French people was official or private, it regularly 
 began in the same way. You leave your card at 
 the door of the person on whom you wish to 
 
*8 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 call, and there it is taken in charge by that 
 peculiarly French functionary — the concierge. 
 At least in Paris, French people generally live 
 in large houses, containing a number of apart- 
 ments with a common entrance and staircase. 
 Close to the entrance door, on the level of the 
 street, are some stuffy little rooms inhabited by 
 the concierge — or porter — with his family. 
 Their duty, among other things, is to keep strict 
 watch on whoever goes in or out ; and at least 
 one of them, often the porter's wife or half-grown 
 daughter, is always at hand. The chief peculi- 
 arity of their temperament seems to be insatiable 
 appetite. At whatever hour of day or evening 
 you confront a concierge^ you are sure to find 
 somebody eating or just risen from table ; and 
 the atmosphere inhabited by this bustling per- 
 sonage seems immortally laden with the fumes of 
 something recently boiled. No matter whether 
 you call on a friend who lives in some unpreten- 
 tious, out-of-the-way place or on one who inhabits 
 a palace, the concierge is always about the same. 
 You can detect little difference between those in 
 charge of important doors and of insignificant ; 
 they are as like as house flies. Of course, you 
 occasionally come across private houses, with 
 regular domestic servants such as you would find 
 anywhere. But these, grand or simple, are so 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 49 
 
 unusual that you remember the concierge as 
 standing between you and further human inter- 
 course throughout France. 
 
 In response to your card, which the concierge 
 duly sees delivered, comes his master's card, often 
 with some cordial words of greeting written on 
 it, or perhaps with a friendly note. If this ac- 
 knowledgment of your existence contains an inti- 
 mation of when your French acquaintance may 
 be found at home, either habitually or for your 
 special benefit, you make your second visit at 
 the appointed time; and thus enter into real 
 personal relations. Otherwise, your intercourse 
 has limited itself to a polite exchange of cards. 
 Generally speaking, you never expect or attempt 
 to see French people socially except when they 
 have asked you to one of their regular days of 
 reception or have made a definite appointment. 
 To call in person at any other time — to do more 
 than leave your card with the concierge — would 
 be an intrusive pretence to mtimacy. 
 
 When you are really received in a French 
 house — of whatever rank — you are conscious, 
 at first, of a certain formality, or at least of a 
 certain precision of conduct somewhat foreign 
 to our usages. But you soon grow to feel that 
 this is not a bit invidious. It means only that 
 the social customs of France are more punctilious 
 
50 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 than ours. You must observe them carefully, if 
 you would have the reward of social kindness. 
 Observance of them brings, in return, a welcome 
 which could nowhere be ^lu-passed in hospitality. 
 A characteristic instance of what I have in 
 mind may be observed at almost any French 
 dinner-party. Instead of sitting at the ends of 
 the table, where they are as far apart as physical 
 conditions will permit, the host and the hostess 
 sit opposite one another in the middle, where the 
 table is narrowest, and w^here they are able at 
 once to keep in touch with each other, and 
 easily to talk with three guests on either side 
 of each. Thus a company of twelve is at once 
 brought into a single social group, and the out- 
 lying members of a larger party are not so far 
 away but that they can readily listen to the gen- 
 eral talk, or even take part in it. And the talk 
 is always general — addressed, no doubt, to one 
 or another of the company, as the tact of the 
 hosts happens to find pleasantest; but never 
 broken into a system of separate dialogues, as is 
 generally the case at home. A French dinner is 
 not noisy, any more than a French drawing- 
 room is ; but in either case the deeply subdued 
 tone of voice prevalent in England and among 
 the better sort of Americans would be almost a 
 breach of polite manners. Every social function 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 51 
 
 in France, you grow to feel, even to the most 
 informal, has a social character far more pro- 
 nounced than we are used to in America. The 
 individual is there to enjoy himself; but he is 
 also there to play his part. In consequence, all 
 social intercourse in France has a quahty less 
 personal, less confidential, somewhat more re- 
 served than an American is used to. Whoever, 
 even in private places, finds himself in the pres- 
 ence of fellow-beings, conducts himself in many 
 ways as if he were in public. The French are 
 in no way conscious of this phase of their man- 
 ners. To them it is as normal as it is novel to 
 an American visitor ; and it results in a general 
 and cheerful, though not quite intimate convivi- 
 ality which makes our own manners seem some- 
 what melancholy in their dual isolation. 
 
 Another detail of French custom soon became 
 evident to me. In any company where the talk 
 is thus general whoever is present may take part ; 
 there is no need of any other personal introduc- 
 tion to a fellow-guest than the fact that you find 
 yourselves, for the moment, under a friend's roof; 
 but there is no need of regarding the acquaint- 
 ance as more than momentary. If, as a visitor, 
 however, you are presented by name to any of 
 the French people present — particularly at a 
 dinner-party — you are rather expected to recog- 
 
52 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 nize the courtesy by leaving your card at this 
 new friend s door within twenty-four hours, and 
 so referring to him the choice of whether the ac- 
 quaintance shall persist. In such cases, of course, 
 various questions of tact may arise. The sim- 
 plest way of settling them is to take some occa- 
 sion of mentioning to your hostess the pleasure 
 you have found in meeting these delightful 
 people. If, in her opinion, they expect you to 
 call, she will incidentally tell you where they 
 live. If she does not afford you this information 
 there is some reason to infer that you need not 
 pursue the matter. A foreigner at first presses 
 this sort of question more directly, and is most 
 kindly and frankly answered. It is in better ac- 
 cordance with French tradition, however, to ask 
 and to learn incidentally, as it were; and after 
 a while you grow French enough in sympathy to 
 feel that your earlier impulse of inquiry was 
 almost rustically crude. 
 
 In the society which I thus came pleasantly 
 to know, my position proved as exceptional as 
 that which I enjoyed for the moment in the 
 French universities. Visitors to France, like 
 foreign visitors to our own or any other country, 
 generally find themselves there in some fairly 
 distinct social surroundings. Americans, for 
 instance, are apt to be received, according to 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 53 
 
 circumstances and position, by diplomatic or 
 fashionable or artistic circles. These they some- 
 times grow to know pretty intimately. It is far 
 from usual, however, that an American should 
 at once have considerable access to French 
 society, and not be confined to some particular 
 phase of it. Yet this was precisely my situation. 
 My academic mission was addressed to no one 
 kind of French people, — official, learned, artistic, 
 financial, or commercial; Christian, Jewish, or 
 pagan; distinguished by the graces of fashion, 
 or indifferent to such vanities. It was addressed 
 equally to all. My welcome duty was to culti- 
 vate cordial intercourse, on the most friendly 
 terms, with reputable people of every shade — 
 many of them by no means disposed to be on 
 friendly terms with each other. So far as lay in 
 my power, I must identify myself with no single 
 phase of the confused life of modern France, 
 however that phase might attract my sympathy ; 
 I must be at one with all its phases, however 
 likely some of them might have been, at a less 
 critical moment, to excite my prejudice. I did 
 my best, with aU my heart; and I have been 
 rewarded by sentiments of enduring friendship 
 very wide in social range. 
 
 In the nature of things, however, my acquaint- 
 ance had its centre in the universities. The uni 
 
54 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 versity officers with whom I was brought into 
 professional contact were among the first of the 
 friends who received me unofficially as a human 
 being. One and all of them had passed through 
 the various stages of the rigid educational system 
 at which we have glanced together. All had 
 attained some degree of distinction in the pro- 
 fession of learning. In the university hierarchy 
 each had his precise place, which involved, of 
 course, a certain degree of recognition in official 
 society — a status, on strictly formal occasions, 
 something like that which would anywhere exist 
 in the case of military or naval officers. In the 
 general relations of private life, on the other 
 hand, the social circumstances of these university 
 officials were controlled, as would be the case 
 anywhere, by more personal considerations. And 
 these were perhaps more evident in France than 
 they might have been elsewhere, for the reasons 
 that the structure of French society remains 
 rather rigid, and that university life there is so 
 professional a matter that it has hardly any of 
 the convivial character which marks university life 
 in England, and to some degree in America as 
 well. 
 
 My colleagues, accordingly, varied widely in 
 their social relations, according to their origin, 
 their disposition, and their fortune. A few were 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 55 
 
 of aristocratic type ; a few were able and hon- 
 orable men who had risen, by force of ability 
 and industry, from the common people. Most 
 of them, however, though not forming, in their 
 quality of professors, a class apart, proved to be 
 living much as their fathers and their grand- 
 fathers had lived before them — to be continuing 
 and sustaining the general social traditions in 
 which they had been born and bred. And when 
 men of this kind, whatever their condition of 
 fortune or the scale of their households, fell to 
 speaking of themselves and of their friends, they 
 used a word which foreigners are apt completely 
 to misapprehend. As simply as Englishmen in 
 similar circumstances describe themselves as of 
 the middle class, these French friends of mine 
 spoke of themselves as bourgeois. 
 
 Despite our fondness for democratic common- 
 place, we Americans are apt to have a weak- 
 ness which makes us fancy this term — like 
 its English equivalent — to be invidious. Our 
 classic conviction that all men are created equal 
 assumes in its social aspect a peculiar form ; it 
 contents itself on everybody's part with a dog- 
 matic denial of social superiority. Every Ameri- 
 can believes that he should derogate from his 
 personal dignity if he did not assume and assert 
 himself to be as good as the best anywhere. By 
 
66 ,THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 no means all of us stop to consider the conclu- 
 sions obviously involved in this conviction. If 
 we are as good as the best, it follows as the light 
 the day that those who are not of the best are 
 not so good as we. Wherefore any foreigner 
 who frankly acknowledges himself secondary to 
 any other is apt to impress us as secondary to 
 ourselves. The result is often comical — at least 
 in the eyes of the foreigners concerned, who 
 cannot perceive why a good Yankee who has 
 made an honest fortune should share the aristo- 
 cratic prejudice of societies which regard the fact 
 that a man is engaged in business as a reason 
 why he should not be invited to dinner. But 
 there is no doubt that your stout Yankee does 
 so, which has a good deal to do with the artless 
 preference of American girls who marry abroad 
 for husbands who, whatever their personal merits, 
 are duly equipped with titles. Accordingly, we 
 Americans are given to innocent wonder as to 
 how self-respecting Englishmen can admit them- 
 selves to belong to the middle class — which 
 involves admission that a class in existence is 
 superior. And when it comes to the analogous 
 French term bourgeois, we find it so far from 
 congenial that you need not listen long to hear 
 Americans using it as contumeliously as if we 
 were all dukes and peers. 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 57 
 
 For this prejudice of ours there is an obvious 
 reason, not generally remarked. Our impres- 
 sions of French society are almost always indirect. 
 They are derived either from accounts of it fur- 
 nished by compatriots who have enjoyed the 
 privilege of seeing it with greater or less inti- 
 macy, or else from books written by the French 
 themselves. In general, our compatriots who 
 have seen French life belong to one of four 
 classes : diplomatists, artists, people of some pre- 
 tence to fashion, and residents in the American 
 colony of Paris. All four of these classes observe 
 French society from angles not favorable to 
 bourgeois sympathy. Diplomatists have their 
 own special world, closely related to the actual 
 possessors of political power everywhere, and 
 accustomed — whatever the personal origin of its 
 members — to share the sentiments as well as to 
 assist in the functions of sovereignty, whose 
 concern with the middle classes has a quality 
 of benevolent patronage. American artists cul- 
 tivate and rather exaggerate the distaste for 
 humdrum and thrifty virtues which has always 
 animated the temper of Europeans devoted to 
 the fine arts. Pretenders to fashion would sac- 
 rifice this meaning of their existence — so far as 
 it has any — if they did not echo the common- 
 pi aces of the noble society to which they ingenu- 
 
58 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ously aspire. And "colonists," particularly if 
 their personal acquaintance with the French is 
 limited, preserve their self-respect by excessively 
 cherishing the conventional opinions which flour- 
 ish at home. Americans in France, accordingly, 
 whether diplomatic, artistic, fashionable, or colo- 
 nial, are very apt to speak of bourgeois — people 
 of whom their knowledge is usually external — 
 as of inferior beings. 
 
 When it comes to the impressions of France 
 which we derive from French writers, the case 
 proves similar. Broadly speaking, these writers 
 are of two classes. The first, and the elder, con- 
 sists of those writers of memoirs who have so 
 long ornamented French literature ; the second, 
 and more modern, consists of the novelists and 
 dramatists whose work has been so plenteous 
 and so admirable during the last hundred years. 
 In general, the writers of memoirs have been 
 aristocrats, with all tlie limitations of their class ; 
 in general, the writers of novels and plays have 
 been eminent personages in the world of fine art, 
 with equally pronounced limitations of a some- 
 what different complexion. The one point in 
 which the sentiments of these classes regularly 
 agree happens to be that both regard the bour^ 
 gedsie externally and with imperfect cordiality. 
 Accordingly, our French accounts of bourgeois 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 59 
 
 character are apt to harmonize with those fur- 
 nished us by compatriots. They present it to 
 us as on the whole sordid, uninteresting, and 
 vulgar ; at best they dispose us to regard it as 
 what the cant of a few years ago used to call 
 Philistine. 
 
 Hampered with such inevitable prepossessions 
 as these influences involve, I was somewhat 
 startled by the assurance with which so many 
 of my French friends spoke of themselves as 
 bourgeois. To their minds the term evidently 
 suggested nothing which involved the smallest 
 sacrifice of self-respect. The word seemed to 
 them no more invidious than the word Yankee 
 would seem to an honest gentleman of Boston. 
 It implied only what any candid man is willing to 
 admit anywhere — a simple statement of incon- 
 testable fact. In any society which has reached 
 the state of civilized organization there must 
 always be various kinds of people. In most 
 countries there have been more or less acknowl- 
 edged governing classes — priestly, military, bu- 
 reaucratic, noble, and the like. In all societies 
 there have inevitably been laboring classes. In 
 all healthy societies there have been classes be- 
 tween the two. Such classes exist to-day in 
 England and in France, extending from every- 
 body engaged in the learned professions, in 
 
60 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 finance, or in commerce, to the smallest shop- 
 keepers. In England such people call themselves 
 of the middle class ; in France they call them- 
 selves bourgeois. That is the whole story. 
 
 It would be the whole story, at least, for any- 
 body but ourselves of America. The accidents 
 ■ of our political and social history have prevented 
 the growth in our country of any rigid class sys- 
 tem. In consequence, our professional men and 
 our chief men of business, flourishing in regions 
 where no military or landed aristocracy has kept 
 their aspirations in check, have been apt to 
 develop, together with the sound middle-class 
 virtues necessary to their existence anywhere 
 else, a rather unusual degree of that wholesome 
 self-confidence which is among the stronger vir- 
 tues of foreigners of rank. To be sure, this has 
 never resulted in anything like acknowledged 
 hereditary dignities. Yet anyone who under- 
 stands the actual structure of American society, 
 past or present, must admit, even among our 
 republican selves, the existence — at any given 
 time — of certain distinguishable social classes. 
 We have always had fellow citizens whose cir- 
 cumstances have allowed them a range of free- 
 dom not open to those who were less able or less 
 fortunate. We have always had our leaders of 
 the professions, in former times perhaps more 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 61 
 
 secure of general esteem than has been the case 
 since the Civil War. We have always had our 
 honorable men of wealth, rather more conspic- 
 uous in our recent period of national expansion 
 and prosperity than they used to be in simpler 
 times. At the other end of the social scale, we 
 have always had our laboring classes, as well. 
 Between these two extremes there have always 
 existed other classes, not so fortunate as the one, 
 more so than the other. The flexibility of our 
 ; system has prevented these worthy people from 
 f admitting to themselves precisely the position 
 f they perforce occupy. Yet obviously it is neither 
 so influential as that of some compatriots nor so 
 submerged as that of others. Like that of both 
 the other kinds of people, meanwhile, it is com- 
 pletely compatible with self-respect and with 
 edifying conduct of life. The fact that we have 
 no accepted name for this social situation doubt- 
 less reveals a sensitive weakness in our national 
 temper; but it cannot disguise, even from our- 
 selves in honest moments, that most of us, and 
 most of our acquaintance, are neither " captains 
 of industry " nor " knights of labor." And all 
 that the term middle class implies in England, 
 or the term bourgeois in France, is that such a 
 class, inevitable in any civilized society, has the 
 candor to acknowledge its existence. The char- 
 
62 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 acteristic vice of middle-class people is doubtless 
 vulgarity; but this no more means that, as a 
 class, the bourgeois are vulgar than the fact of 
 any other characteristic vice comprises the whole 
 character of the class which it tends to weaken. 
 One might as soon pretend that all aristocracy 
 is heartlessly insolent, all art shamelessly licen- 
 tious, all capital cynically rapacious, all labor 
 stupidly brutal. " 
 
 So far from comprehensively characteristic, 
 indeed, is the occasional vulgarity of the French 
 bourgeoisie, that anyone who should approach 
 them without prepossession would hardly per- 
 ceive it for himself. His first impression would 
 rather be of the quality which is implied in the 
 very frankness with which they describe them- 
 selves as bourgeois. He could hardly fail to 
 recognize, with admiration, the genuine simplicity 
 of their temper, their cheerful readiness to admit 
 the circumstances of their lives and to adapt their 
 livj^s to their circumstances, without a touch of 
 either pretentiousness or false shame. If they en- 
 tertain him in their homes, for example, they do 
 so according to their means. Very likely, they 
 make an occasion of his visit ; if they failed to, 
 they would be falling into the pretentiousness of 
 making believe that such visits occurred every 
 day, or into the still worse pretentiousness of 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 63 
 
 neglecting hospitality. But a man whose means 
 are limited, and whose daily life is simple, would 
 never dream of making the circumstances of your 
 reception inharmonious with the surroundings in 
 which he receives you. Everyone has his own 
 scale of life, prudently adapted as a rule to the 
 means at his command. Everyone lives and 
 entertains accordingly. 
 
 The next impression of a candid visitor might 
 well be that these new friends are remarkable for 
 intellectual honesty. Of course they have their 
 prejudices ; if they had not they would lack one 
 of the most profoundly attractive qualities of 
 human nature. And in various ways their prej- 
 udices may not readily coincide with your own. 
 You can never resent, however, the honesty with 
 which these Frenchmen cherish their opinions, 
 nor fail to respect the courteous fearlessness with 
 which they express them. Some concern man- 
 ners ; some concern onvictions — social, reU- 
 gious, political — with which you are not familiar ; 
 some obviously result from limitations of environ- 
 ment, distinctly different from the perhaps equal 
 limitations to which you have been subjected at 
 home. But however limited a Frenchman's 
 range of vision may sometimes appear, you will 
 never find it inconsistent with a stimulating 
 degree of intellectual activity. The French 
 
64 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 mind is alert and logical ; otherwise French soci- 
 ety and French universities, to go no further, 
 could not persist so systematically as they do. 
 And this alert and logical habit is quite as obvi- 
 ous a factor as any phase of prejudice in the 
 candor with which the bourgeois^ of whatever 
 shade, consider both the details of their daily 
 affairs and any questions which chance to arise 
 for discussion. The pervasive frugality and 
 thrift of French life is implicit evidence of the 
 intellectual sincerity I have in mind. More 
 stirring evidence of it anyone would find in talk 
 with the French which should rise to the dignity 
 of an exchange of ideas. Cherishing their pre- 
 possessions as premises, Frenchmen will unpre- 
 tentiously endeavor either to reconcile any new 
 suggestion with their systems, or else to prove 
 the suggestion mistaken, in fact or in reasoning. 
 As marked as their virtue of simplicity is that of 
 the honesty with which they confront the cir- 
 cumstances and the problems of earthly per- 
 plexity. 
 
 Meanwhile, a third quality, of inspiring strength, 
 could hardly fail to impress you. This is one 
 which any visitor to the universities must al- 
 ready have felt in the character and the con- 
 duct of both teachers and students — cheerful 
 and unremitting industry in the serious work 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 65 
 
 of life. On the surface, perhaps, the French 
 still preserve something of the gayety which 
 has made foreigners suppose them to be agree- 
 ably frivolous. When you grow to know them, 
 at least among the bourgeoisie, this characteristic 
 is no longer salient. Rather you find yourself 
 constantly surprised that so many people, with 
 honest simplicity of heart, can devote themselves 
 so assiduously to the far from alluring duties — 
 professional, domestic, or whatever else — of daily 
 weekly, yearly existence. However gay a friend 
 may be concerning trivial matters, you may be 
 sure that, at heart, he will take life in earnest ; 
 and that when it comes to hard work, he will 
 attack it with a persistent vigor which might 
 sometimes set a Yankee to wondering whether 
 our lucky compatriots have any notion of how 
 lovingly we cherish our national aptitude for 
 dawdling. I do not remember that I ever saw 
 a French boy whittle a stick ; I doubt whether 
 you could quite make one understand why any- 
 body should like to. 
 
 This honesty, simpKcity, and industry of the 
 French bourgeois could not help resulting in an 
 impression so far from one of vulgarity as to 
 be rather one of dignity. And together with 
 this comes another — a shade more precise — 
 which if possible is further from vulgarity stilL 
 
6« THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 The French bourgeois have a quality for which I 
 know no better EngUsh term than one which al- 
 most suggests aristocratic grace — the term good- 
 breeding. To put the matter otherwise, there is 
 a familiar French word which so resembles a fa- 
 miliar English one that it has given rise to much 
 misconception. This word is gentilhomme. It 
 looks remarkably like gentleman, and indeed it 
 literally means neither more nor less than that. 
 In France, however, the word has retained its 
 original meaning ; it signifies gentleman only in 
 that limited English sense which would confine 
 it to men of gentle or noble birth. It implies not 
 personal virtues but social rank ; and the famihar 
 title of Moli^re's comedy — " Le Bourgeois Gen- 
 tilhomme " — is consequently a humorous contra- 
 diction in terms. No frank bourgeois would ever 
 pretend to be a gentilhomme ; to do so would be 
 to deny that he was bourgeois, and thus not only 
 to make himself ridiculous, but also to sacrifice 
 his self-respect. In our later English sense of 
 the word gentleman, we find a different concep- 
 tion — a conception which concerns moral quali- 
 ties so much more than social condition that the 
 French themselves sometimes borrow the English 
 word for precise expression of a meaning not com- 
 pletely conveyed by any of their own. This lack 
 in their vocabulary, the while, is not for lack of 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 67 
 
 the thing which the woiid should name. For 
 if there be better gentlemen on earth than you 
 shall find far and wide among the bourgeoisie 
 of France, it has never been my good fortune 
 to meet them. I doubt, indeed, whether you 
 could anywhere find a social class more solidly, 
 more profoundly, more quietly, more admirably 
 persistent than these same bourgeois of the pres- 
 ent day. It is a commonplace that the middle 
 class must be the core of any nation, compara- 
 tively spared from the over-ripeness of aristocracy, 
 and from the crudity which must everywhere 
 be the lot of the masses. The better you come 
 to know the middle classes — the bourgeoisie — 
 of France, the deeper must grow your conviction 
 that a nation of which the core is so sound must 
 be essentially vigorous. 
 
 Of course, a social class so comprehensive as 
 the bourgeoisie, extending from the summit of 
 professional life to the base of shopkeeping, can- 
 not be rashly generalized. There are many vari- 
 eties of it, particularly where it approaches some 
 other phase of society. In Paris, for example, 
 the richer men of business and the more influen- 
 tial practitioners of the learned professions tend 
 toward a scale and manner of life very like that 
 of aristocracy. If in the process they begin to 
 lose something of their simplicity, they may 
 
68 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 perhaps fall into a certain ostentation. But this 
 is chiefly what happens to the newly rich any- 
 where. The marvel in France is not that it 
 exists ; but rather that it is not more frequent 
 and palpable. The reason is that so many bour- 
 geois fortunes seem to be solid and, in their way, 
 hereditary. So long as people are living in the 
 manner to which they were born, you may al- 
 ways trust them to live with confident ease of 
 mood and manner, free from the distortions of 
 undue self-consciousness. 
 
 Again, particularly among those university 
 people whose work is concerned with matters 
 of literature or of the fine arts, you will often 
 find the temper and the conditions of bourgeois 
 life tending to merge with those of the world of 
 fine arts. There is a considerable frontier on the 
 borders of Philistia and Bohemia, and the region 
 is pleasant to ramble about. For the solid virtues 
 whose enemies miscall them Philistine tend to 
 correct the vagrancies which in full Bohemia 
 appear excessive to unsympathetic observers ; 
 and the volatile impulses of Bohemia tend to 
 counteract the want of breeze which might make 
 the inner atmosphere of Philistia a little stifling 
 to one who did not find it congenial. 
 
 Again still, there are phases of bourgeois 
 life not yet quite remote from the wholesome 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 69 
 
 old condition of peasantry out of which they 
 have grown. Among my memories of France 
 there is none more pleasant, nor any more full 
 of such sentiment as makes me feel the bour- 
 geoisie remarkable for good-breeding, — a gentler 
 quality than gentle birth itself, — than my mem- 
 ory of the manner in which a friend welcomed 
 me to his* home. And there, treated with that 
 affectionate respect which the French so delight- 
 fully show their parents, was the old mother, 
 still in the neat dress of the region where every 
 country lass had worn it fifty years ago. She 
 had very little to say; but no one could have 
 seemed happier or kinder, more at ease, less self- 
 conscious, as she ate a little meal specially pre- 
 pared for her rather exacting taste and habit. 
 
 In general, the while, one's impression of the 
 bourgeoisie is not of its frontiers, but rather of 
 its innermost security. Perhaps the most vividly 
 typical of my memories concerning this is of a 
 summer dinner in a provincial town. A manu- 
 facturer had invited us to his house. On going 
 thither, we found it hidden behind his large fac- 
 tory buildings, and accessible only through the 
 walled enclosure where they had grown up about 
 it. Indeed, the whole approach was so far from 
 what one is conventionally used to that I be- 
 gan to wonder whether we were not unwittingly 
 
70 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 bound for some sort of picnic. The house, when 
 we got there, looked rather small — partly, I sup- 
 pose, in contrast to the big factory buildings so 
 near by. The moment you got within its doors, 
 however, it proved commodious, comfortable, and, 
 above all, in thoroughly good taste. There was 
 not too much of anything ; but everything was 
 worth while. The pictures were real works of 
 art — by the right men, too. There were plenty 
 of books, evidently in use, and all of the sort one 
 likes to read — not of the teasing kind which one 
 finds in American railway stations and country 
 houses ; yet they did not seem a bit priggish, 
 either. The dinner was memorable, both for 
 its quality and for the skilful service thereof 
 by two or three trim maids. Apart from the 
 good cheer the chief difference between this 
 occasion and a similar one at home was that, 
 inasmuch as the occasion was not formal, the 
 men appeared in frock coats instead of in even- 
 ing clothes, and the women wore high-necked 
 dresses. This is general among the French 
 everywhere, by the way ; what we call even- 
 ing dress they seem to regard rather as a cos- 
 tume appropriate only for occasions of ceremony. 
 The talk was animated, easy, and wide in its 
 range. And after dinner, in the long summer 
 twilight, before we were summoned to the 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 71 
 
 drawing-room for some excellent music, we sat 
 and smoked in a library built on an arch over 
 the mill-stream. And we looked through a 
 large window at the swirling current, as it 
 dashed along between walls and banks heavy 
 with verdure, and disappeared, not far off, under 
 a bridge, still within our host's premises, which 
 had spanned it — he told me — for more than 
 six hundred years. 
 
 He had inherited his property, his duties, and 
 his house, I was given to understand. He was 
 devoting his life to the care of them. He would 
 pass them on to his children, just as any great 
 nobleman might pass on to his heirs the heredi- 
 tary possessions which chance had placed for a 
 while in his care. No social type could have 
 seemed more admirably permanent. In the fine 
 little details of accomplishment, of impulse, of 
 manner, you could not have found a better 
 gentleman. And yet he was in no respect a 
 gentilhomme. He was of the class which the 
 old-fashioned aristocrats of France traditionally 
 disdained as bourgeois moyens. His house was 
 accessible, in all probability, only to people 
 whose origin and whose personal traditions re- 
 sembled his own. You felt there, beyond all 
 things else, that you were in the very heart 
 of the bourgeoisie of France ; and furthermore. 
 
72 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 that there are few pleasanter places, and no 
 better ones, in all this wicked world. 
 
 Not the least profound feature of your im- 
 pression, the while, was that these surroundings 
 have a quality of surprising fixity. Among the 
 bourgeoisie you find yourself in a world of hered- 
 itary tradition, as stoutly cherished as the more 
 widely known tradition of aristocracy, or as the 
 more vagrant tradition of art. And any class 
 which is animated by attachment to its hereditary 
 traditions must inevitably be, to some extent, a 
 class apart — a separate thing ; not quite a caste, 
 of course, but not free from caste virtues and 
 caste prejudices. The virtue which from time 
 immemorial has distinguished the middle classes 
 of France is probably the virtue most dear to the 
 middle class of England, as well as to the better 
 sort of Americans, among whom middle-class 
 manners have grown to something like the 
 assurance of aristocratic feeling. In a word, 
 we may call it respectability — a somewhat ex- 
 cessive observance of regularity in the conduct 
 of life, a somewhat austere disapproval of even 
 minor vagaries. This quality is not instantly 
 attractive to people whose taste for it chances 
 not to be ancestral. They think it dull at best, 
 as no doubt it is if you do not happen to enjoy 
 it ; and when anybody thinks anvthing dull any- 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 73 
 
 where he rarely resists the impulse to assert his 
 own jfreedom from dulness by declaring his opin- 
 ion. Now, even though you may prefer to be 
 respectably dull, you resent being called so. As 
 a natural result, the deepest prejudice of the 
 bourgeoisie is of the self-protecting kind which 
 entertains a certain suspicion of the imperfectly 
 sympathetic classes which environ it. 
 
 These, as we have seen, are the aristocracy and 
 the artists. Between them and their bourgeois 
 neighbors there seems to persist an immemorial 
 hereditary distrust. The traditional privileges of 
 aristocracy permitted them, and tended to make 
 them pretend to delight in, a liberty both of 
 speech and of conduct extremely foreign to the 
 staid respectability of bourgeois sentiment. The 
 somewhat anarchistic impulse of artists to assert 
 their individuality amid the benumbing monot- 
 ony of prim custom has always tended to excite 
 them to similar manifestations of personal free- 
 dom from conventionalities. Both aristocrats 
 and artists have accordingly been accustomed, as 
 we have seen, to represent the bourgeoisie in a 
 far from friendly spirit. What is less evident 
 to casual foreigners is that this sentiment of dis- 
 trust and dislike is mutual. Your typical bour- 
 geois regards your aristocrat or your artist with 
 as little cordiality as is evident in the more 
 
74 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 familiar opinions of aristocrats and of artists 
 concerning the bourgeoisie. 
 
 The strength of this resentment was oddly 
 evinced one day when I chanced to be talking 
 with a bourgeois friend. The matter under dis- 
 cussion reminded me of a shrewd remark lately 
 made me by a man who happened to possess 
 a thoroughly authentic title. I repeated the 
 witticism. It seemed to impress my friend fa- 
 vorably, for he eagerly asked me from whom I 
 had heard it. I told him, asking in return 
 whether he did not think it admirable. The 
 name of the originator of the epigram appeared 
 to have altered his estimate thereof. It had a 
 vein of good sense, he said, even of wit ; but it 
 was too noble. " C'est trop noble," was his 
 final opinion. 
 
 On the whole, however, the course of mod- 
 ern history seems tending, in France as well as 
 throughout the older regions of Europe, toward 
 modification of these somewhat obsolete states 
 of feeling. The barrier between the aristocracy 
 and that part of the bourgeoisie which most 
 nearly approaches it seems hardly so high as used 
 to be the case. For this there are several evi- 
 dent reasons. The privileges of aristocracy have 
 long been withdrawn ; for three or four genera- 
 tions all classes in France have been equal in the 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 75 
 
 sight of the law ; and partly from a rigidity of 
 principle or of training which has tended to 
 result in imperfect flexibility of intelligence, the 
 aristocracy has so generally withdrawn itself 
 from public affairs that, as a class, it retains no 
 vestige of political power. Its importance is 
 only social. Now this phase of its importance 
 seems to have been rather rudely shaken by the 
 accidents of French history during the past 
 hundred years. There remain, no doubt, authen- 
 tic titles of the old regime ; but Napoleon cre- 
 ated titles by the hundred, and titles were 
 created under the Restoration and under Louis 
 Philippe, and more still by the second empire. 
 Again, if I am not in error, every son of a baron 
 is himself a baron, too, and so on. Further- 
 more, there is no serious obstacle at this moment 
 — any more than there is in America — to the 
 assumption of a title by anybody. A highly 
 respectable citizen of Boston is known to have 
 been christened by the name of Marquis. With- 
 out scrutiny of official record, a stranger in 
 France might well be at pains to know whether 
 the same title on a French visiting card has any 
 more technically noble authority. The true aris- 
 tocracy of France knows itself, of course, by 
 heart; but hardly anybody else knows it with 
 much certainty. And so far as general social 
 
76 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 importance goes, the frequency of French titles 
 and the variety of their origin — even when 
 they are authentic — have probably done amal- 
 gamating work. 
 
 The increasing fortunes of many bourgeois, the 
 while, and the preponderance of political influence 
 which has been enjoyed by the bourgeoisie through- 
 out the past century have done their work as 
 well. Marriages between the two classes — such 
 alliances as you will remember in "Mademoiselle 
 de la Seigli^re " and in " Le Gendre de Monsieur 
 Poirier " — have perhaps grown more frequent ; 
 and everybody knows that titled Frenchmen 
 have often married eligible foreigners. The fail- 
 ing of the old aristocratic fortunes, too, has some- 
 what modified aristocratic opinions in other 
 matters than that of marriage. Particularly of 
 recent years, men of birth have had the good 
 sense to drop some of their outworn notions 
 concerning occupation, and frankly to devote 
 their still vigorous energies to lucrative and re- 
 spectable careers which their grandfathers would 
 have disdained. In many ways, accordingly, the 
 aristocratic class of France is beginning to reveal 
 itself to the bourgeoisie as more deserving of 
 personal respect than bourgeois traditions used to 
 presume. Still more certainly, as the two classes 
 tend more cordially to mingle, the aristocracy 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 77 
 
 seem beginning to recognize in their bourgeois 
 neighbors qualities, ideals, and merits far more 
 resembling their own than they had been disposed 
 to expect. For all this, the real aristocrats still 
 retain, I think, a somewhat excessive degree of 
 their ancestral disdain for any traditional inferior. 
 Hereditary gentilshommes, they do not yet quite 
 willingly admit that these bourgeois, with whom 
 circumstances are gradually bringing them into 
 closer relations, are as good gentlemen as them- 
 selves. When all is said and done, however, you 
 can hardly help feeling that each class is growing 
 more aware of its community of interest with 
 the other. They must stand or fall together. 
 
 The relations of the bourgeoisie with the other 
 social class most near them — with artists in the 
 broadest sense of the term — seemed to me, on 
 the whole, rather less cordial.; The world oi 
 French art, in fact, though on the whole the 
 phase of French society most familiar to for- 
 eigners, who know France chiefly from books or 
 pictures, is probably the phase of French society 
 which these same foreigners least understand. I 
 am by no means sure, indeed, that I came to any 
 accurate understanding of its position myself. 
 I am sure, however, that my impressions of it 
 were at once unexpected and distinct. 
 
 Broadly speaking, French artists of every kind 
 
78 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 — literary, plastic, dramatic, musical — are men 
 of bourgeois origin, who are temperamentally 
 impatient of the respectable restraint of conduct 
 which characterizes bourgeois behavior. In their 
 artistic lives they are by no means frivolous or 
 trivial. The sturdily maintained academic stand- 
 ards of France in all matters of fine art compel 
 them to a degree of technical excellence which 
 nothing but hard, prolonged, whole-hearted work 
 can attain. Keen critical scrutiny combines with 
 incessant competition, on all sides, to keep them 
 assiduously at their tasks. Whether they submit 
 to academic convention or rebel against it, the 
 case is the same. As artists they are as impres- 
 sively and as seriously devoted to their duties as 
 university professors are to theirs. You cannot 
 observe Frenchmen at work anywhere, in fact, 
 without reverent acknowledgment of their inex- 
 haustible industry. The moment you find your- 
 self among artists of the better sort, furthermore, 
 you must surely be impressed by the fervent 
 earnestness of their artistic purpose. Like any 
 other human beings, they fall into little groups, 
 schools, sects, among themselves, each with its 
 virtues and vices, its powers and its limitations ; 
 but, whatever the result of their efforts, they give 
 themselves to their art with all their hearts. Yet 
 somehow as you contemplate French society in 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 79 
 
 its entirety, the artists, as a class, seem distinctly 
 apart from anybody else. They are not aristo- 
 crats ; they are not bourgeois. They are as good 
 gentlemen as either, and as honest men ; but 
 they form a separate social group, so distinct 
 from the others — and often so far from instant 
 sympathy with the others — that you can hardly 
 help feeling their temper concerning the others 
 to be tinged rather with defiance than with 
 cordiality. 
 
 Apparently, at the same time, their social sys- 
 tem is almost as definite in its structure as that 
 of the aristocracy or that of the bourgeoisie — 
 mingUng on its frontiers with each, but distmctly 
 different from either. Analogies in such delicate 
 matters are apt to be misleading, and perhaps 
 invidious. Yet I can find no better means of 
 indicating the position which artists, considered 
 as a social type, seem to occupy in France than 
 by comparing it with that occupied in England 
 and in America by professional actors — them- 
 selves often artists, in their own kind, of memo- 
 rable importance. There is no reason why a 
 dramatic artist should not be a person of unsul- 
 lied private character — as indeed is frequently 
 the case. There is also no reason why a person 
 of anything but unsullied character should not 
 be an excellent dramatic artist, This common- 
 
80 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 place is equally true of any other earthly occu- 
 pation, from the papacy to grave-digging. Just 
 why we should assume that the typical actor 
 leaves something to be desired in point of per- 
 sonal conduct I cannot pretend to say. That the 
 assumption exists, particularly among austerely 
 respectable Americans, is beyond dispute; and 
 so is the fact that, however cordially and unre- 
 servedly actors are at present received in English 
 and American society, they are usually received 
 in a manner which betrays an implicit assump- 
 tion that somehow they form a class apart — with 
 manners and morals, traditions and principles, of 
 their own. 
 
 Something closely analogous seems true of 
 art in France throughout all its phases. The 
 instantly obvious difference is that the artists of 
 France are not only far more numerous than the 
 actors of England and of America; they are 
 usually more skilful throughout the range of their 
 professions, they are more intensely industrious, 
 more persistently in earnest. Their masterpieces, 
 whether you enjoy them or not, are more nearly 
 excellent, more surely noteworthy. And the 
 social world which they form for themselves is 
 more systematic and more punctilious than is 
 the cheerily vagrant Bohemia of the English- 
 speaking stage. For all this, the world of French 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 81 
 
 art seems Bohemian still. It may sometimes 
 mimic aristocratic grace or bourgeois respecta- 
 bility; on the surface it is as orderly as bour- 
 geoisie or aristocracy ; at heart, however, it 
 cherishes something like the Rabelaisian maxim, 
 Fais ce que vouldras. For which it pays the not 
 unwilling penalty of tacit recognition that it is 
 distinct from either of the other social regions 
 on which it borders, and with the denizens of 
 which it often mingles. 
 
 Some such view of French artists as this goes 
 far to explain why, as one grows to know French 
 life in other regions than those of fine art, the 
 accounts of it in French Hterature and the 
 reproductions of it on the French stage are apt 
 to appear so external. French men of letters 
 undoubtedly know their France inconceivably 
 better than any foreigner can ever know it. Be- 
 yond doubt, too, their earnestness and their skill, 
 stimulated by intense criticism and competition, 
 combine to make their efforts sincerely faithful 
 with whatever aspect of life they deal. And 
 yet, when all is said and done, an artist who any- 
 where attempts to set forth humdrum existence is 
 inevitably dealing with a state of society at once 
 unsympathetic and not completely familiar to 
 his daily habit. This seems exceptionally true in 
 modern France ; and the general temper of the 
 
82 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 work which French writers and artists put forth 
 year by year rather emphasizes than obHterates 
 the line which separates them, in sympathy, from 
 the bourgeoisie. This is one reason, I beheve, 
 why we foreigners who have known France 
 mostly through its admirable literature have been 
 so apt to misconceive the prevailing sentiments 
 of every-day French life. 
 
 The better sort of people in France may gener- 
 ally be classed either in one of the three groups 
 on which we have touched — 'jthe nobility, the 
 bourgeoisie, and the artists — or on the borders 
 which separate them from one another. As you 
 grow more familiar with any of these groups, 
 you become more aware of its rather rigid struc- 
 ture. As you grow to know something of all 
 three, you come to feel that in their almost hier- 
 archical constitution they are not only very like 
 each other, but remarkably Hke the universities 
 as well. You begin, in short, to perceive, 
 throughout French society, the native charac- 
 teristic of French temper which is least evident 
 to foreigners in general. For all the revolutions 
 which have made the French history of the past 
 century so disquiet, the French love of order 
 and of system, the domestic conservatism of 
 French impulse, has kept the general structure 
 of French private life far more persistent, more 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 83 
 
 traditional) and less flexible than we are apt to 
 imagine. 
 
 Something of what I have in mind is im- 
 plied in the instantly obvious difference be- 
 tween French visiting cards and those used in 
 England and in America. To all appearances, 
 the fact that my own card bore nothing but 
 my name was apt to excite surprise among my 
 French friends. The nature of my temporary 
 appointment at the Sorbonne gave me, as we 
 have seen, a fairly defined position in the French 
 university system — a respectable degree of offi- 
 cial rank. Any Frenchman in this position would 
 have had his precise quaUty stated on his card as 
 regularly as his name ; not to have had it there 
 would have implied, on his part, some such per- 
 sonal eccentricity as occasionally impels Ameri- 
 cans to wear their hair long or to affect visiting 
 cards which bear facsimiles of their signatures. 
 To French minds unfamiliar with other than 
 French custom, I discovered, the simplicity of 
 my regular card actually conveyed the impression 
 that I was an ardent apostle of social equality. 
 This was rather comically revealed to me one 
 afternoon over a cup of tea. Before I had per- 
 ceived whither the pleasant talk was tending, I 
 found myself confronted with something as near 
 as politeness would allow to a direct inquiry as to 
 
84 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 why it was my custom to refuse honorary distinc- 
 tions. This was evidently meant to afford me 
 an opportunity of stating the dignities which my 
 visiting card did not reveal. That I returned 
 some elusive answer seemed, on the whole, to 
 commend me to my French friends. Extreme 
 directness of attack or reply is still unwelcome to 
 the civilized tradition of France. After all, it 
 was my affair, and not theirs. Whoever might 
 use a French qualification on his card might pre- 
 sumably use a better one still at home, where his 
 merits were better known and probably better 
 rewarded. If not, it was doubtless because he 
 was disposed to protest against official and other 
 social hierarchy with a radical enthusiasm like 
 that which induced Monsieur de Lafayette to 
 discard both his marquisate and his particle of 
 nobility. Such eccentricity is creditable to the 
 principle of the individual who displays it. 
 Whether it is equally creditable to his good 
 sense is another question. What remains be- 
 yond question is that it does not seriously im- 
 pair the dignity of the system which it chooses 
 to ignore. 
 
 The qualities and distinctions stated on French 
 visiting cards and the like — on formal announce- 
 ments of bereavement, for example — are of va- 
 rious kinds. They range from titles of nobility 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 85 
 
 to the mere intimation that a man is practising a 
 learned profession, or engaged in reputable trade. 
 In general, they imply with precision his place in 
 *TEe class of society to which he chances to belong 
 — noble, bourgeois y or artistic. Occasionally, 
 however, they indicate his place in some recog- 
 nized social system apart from all three phases 
 of personal station, and indeed embracing all 
 three together. 
 
 In the Chm*ch, for instance, or in the Army or 
 the Navy, which are obviously hierarchies quite 
 distinct from the personal origin of the men who 
 win place in them. Of these, however, I hap- 
 pened to see so little that I have no definite 
 opinions about them. It is clear, of course, 
 that among good Catholics the personaUty of 
 a clergyman counts for nothing, in comparison 
 with his spiritual authority. _Once in holy 
 orders, a peasant may meet, on equal terms, a 
 nobleman who would hold his brother in disdain. 
 And, at least since the First Empire, French 
 officers, military or naval, have been personages 
 of obvious consideration. What is more, Church 
 and Army have their own traditions, of far fromT 
 flexible kind ; and excite much enthusiasm or an- 
 tagonism, as the case may be. After all, how- 
 ever, this is true of the Church and of the Army 
 almost anywhere. For our purposes, it is better 
 
86 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 to turn to hierarchies which are peculiar to France. 
 Of these the two most evident are the Legion of 
 Honor and the Institute. 
 
 The Legion of Honor, to be sure, has become 
 so comprehensive that the right to wear a red 
 ribbon in one's button-hole has been pleasantly 
 declared to be more frequent in France than lack 
 of this privilege. In all seriousness, this order, 
 at least in its simplest form, is bestowed with 
 almost prodigal generosity on evident merit in 
 all ranges of French life — political, military or 
 n^al, artistic, financial, learned,, or whatever 
 else. You are not often in a company of a 
 dozen Frenchmen of the better sort where two 
 or three red ribbons and perhaps a red button 
 are not worn. There are moods in which you 
 would suppose that a distinction so general must 
 make little appeal to the imagination ; but such 
 a mood is not characteristically French. The 
 Legion of Honor has been refused, I believe, in 
 occasional instances where eccentricity of tem- 
 per, or lack of sympathy with the government 
 which chanced to prevail, have rendered it unwel- 
 come to a man who had deserved this widely- dif- 
 fused distinction. In general, however, it is not 
 only eagerly welcomed and ardently sought ; it is 
 honorably sought and welcomed as well. Who- 
 ever grows to know modern French society, J 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 87 
 
 think, must be surprised to recall the changing 
 sentiments with which he regards the bit oi^ 
 red ribbon familiar to every traveller's eye. At 
 first it seems comically general ; then it seems 
 puzzlingly various — worn of right by a be- 
 wilderingly contradictory diversity of persons : 
 noble and simple, learned and ignorant, accom- 
 plished and uncouth. Finally, without pretend- 
 ing that it has not fallen, now and again, on 
 unworthy breasts, you grow to feel that there 
 are few presumptions in the world more certain 
 than that a man who has won this decoration has 
 really shown himself superior to other men about 
 him. This may be as a shopkeeper ; it may be 
 as an actor ; it may be as a poet ; it may be as a 
 soldier ; it may be as a diplomatist ; it may almost 
 be as a saint. The Legion of Honor is as catholic 
 as the Church in its relation to all ranges of hu- 
 man life and conduct. But the dignity it con- 
 fers is essentially a true one. Men who have 
 attained decoration have generally done some- 
 thing well enough to deserve honorable recog- 
 nition ; and the very range of decoration implies 
 the deep human truth that honorable work any- 
 where, in whatever range of occupation or of 
 society, is in itself a reverend thing. You may 
 say clever things about the rain of the ribbon 
 rather than the reign. You may smile, if you 
 
88 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 like, at the childish vanity of a nation which 
 can breed mature men who care whether their 
 black coats are relieved by red specks or not 
 The Legion of Honor is not misnamed ; it im- 
 plies two impulses deep in the emotional nature 
 of the French, high and low alike : an instinctive 
 love of order, of system, and a fervent belief that 
 honor should be given where honor is due. 
 ^ Open, like the Legion of Honor, to all French- 
 men who may justly aspire for it, is the more 
 specific dignity of the, Institute. This learned 
 corporation consists of several separate academies 
 — of Political Science, of Inscriptions and Belles- 
 Lettres, and the Uke — of which the most emi- 
 nent is the famous " immortal " literary academy 
 of forty members, the Aca(Jerme Frangaise. 
 Certain familiar facts about this throw light on 
 French character. In principle, any Frenchman, 
 of whatever social rank, who has attained the 
 highest distinction in art, in learning, in letters^ 
 is eligible. There has been, I believe, no period 
 in its three centuries when it has not counted 
 among its members noblemen, bourgeois, and 
 artists alike. But membership in it does not 
 come without the seeking. The French are too 
 alertly honest to tolerate the kind of affectation 
 most humorously prevalent among ourselves — 
 that of pretending indifference to public honor. 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 89 
 
 and of assuming that respectable people are 
 bound to behave in daily life as if everybody 
 would like to be a Cincinnatus. When death 
 makes a vacancy in the Academy, whoever be- 
 lieves himself to merit the earthly, or Parisian, 
 immortality thus for the moment accessible, pro- 
 ceeds to inquire, of himself and of his friends, 
 concerning the precise aspect of his chances for 
 it. If these chances seem in any degree promis- 
 ing, he courageously offers himself as a candidate. 
 What the preliminary processes of such can« 
 didacy may be I do not know. The crucial part 
 of it is a series of some thirty-nine personal calls 
 on the surviving members of the Academy, from 
 each of whom the candidate formally requests 
 the favor of his vote. Sometimes this is cor- 
 dially promised ; sometimes the answer is politely 
 guarded. The visits do not secure the votes; 
 but without them, I believe, no votes could be 
 secured. 
 
 Whatever the personal prejudices of an acad- 
 emician — and these must certainly be widely va- 
 rious — most academicians concur in obedience 
 to the extremely catholic traditions which preserve 
 the vitality of the Academy. Of course it is aca- 
 demic ; it could not exist without sturdy main- 
 tenance of standards bound to impress vagrant 
 artistic impulse as rigid and repellent, and bound 
 
90 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 to be resentfully contemned by many intelligent 
 people who are restive under restraint, or who 
 come to believe themselves meritoriously disap- 
 pointed. But these standards do not confine the 
 membership of the Academy to any one class of 
 society or of personal character. There is always, 
 I believe, at least one eminent ecclesiastic among 
 its members ; when I was in France this was 
 the venerable Cardinal Bishop of Autun, who 
 has since been succeeded by Cardinal Mathieu. 
 There are always noblemen who have dis- 
 tinguished themselves in learning; the Due 
 d'Aumale, a royal prince, held his membership 
 of the Academy among his dearest honors. 
 There are men of letters, too, scholars and play- 
 wrights, of whatever origin. At the two public 
 meetings of the Academy which I had the privi- 
 lege of attending, the presiding member chanced 
 to be an accomplished dramatist. The perma- 
 nent secretary was M. Gaston Boissier, that hap- 
 pily immortal scholar whose works have made 
 modern folk understand, for more than fifty 
 years, as no one ever understood without them, 
 what the human life of ancient Rome was like in 
 the days when the republic passed into the em- 
 pire, and the empire surged on to its ruin. 
 
 The ceremony of receiving a new member into 
 the Academy is interesting and characteristic. 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 91 
 
 In the hall under the dome of the Institute — 
 that dome so familiar to every eye in Paris 
 which has looked across the Seine from the quay 
 of the Louvre — a fortunate company is assem- 
 bled which has had the privilege of invitation. 
 Every seat is occupied ; for the hall is not very 
 large, and the interest in the occasion is eager. 
 Among the company, if you know anything of 
 your Paris, you will recognize people of all ranks 
 and stations — noble, fashionable, learned, artis- 
 tic, diplomatic, even respectably obscure. You 
 will see clergymen there, and actresses from the 
 Theatre Fran9ais ; bearers of historic names and 
 the wives of professors who began their careers 
 in Breton lycees; ambassadors and sculptors ; 
 journalists and generals. At a given moment 
 the members of the Institute enter, with almost 
 ostentatious informality, the semicircle of benches 
 reserved for all the academies alike; on these 
 occasions there seems no distinction between the 
 immortal Academic Fran9aise and its less emi- 
 nent fellows. On the presiding bench, in the 
 green uniform of the Academy, the principal 
 officers of the day take their places — the member 
 who happens at that moment to preside, the per- 
 manent secretary, and a third. The other acade- 
 micians seat themselves anywhere among their 
 fellow-members of the Institute. Only those 
 
92 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 who appear in some official capacity — like the 
 secretaries of the lesser academies — generally 
 wear their uniforms. The aspect of the company 
 is that of a group of gentlemen, on pleasantly 
 equal terms, who are separated from the pubUc 
 by a conventional barrier implying the momen- 
 tary inaccessibility of their eminence, and per- 
 mitting them serenely to ignore the presence of 
 anyone but themselves. 
 
 This medley of solemnity and simplicity per- 
 vades the whole ceremony. In a very few formal 
 words — hardly more than " La parole est a M. 
 X" — the presiding officer announces that the 
 fortunate candidate for immortality is expected 
 to speak. The candidate accordingly rises from 
 his seat, somewhere on the benches, between two 
 uniformed academicians who have been charged 
 with the pleasant duty of introducing him ; and 
 courageously delivers in impeccable French a 
 perfunctory and not very audible eulogy on the 
 deceased academician whom he has been chosen 
 to succeed. At the close of this masterpiece of 
 mortuary eloquence the presiding officer proceeds 
 to the official business of the occasion. And 
 this is the most surprising part of it all. 
 
 As a foreigner, unfamiliar with academic tra- 
 dition, I was prepared for some almost ritual 
 ceremony, of lastingly impressive dignity. In- 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 93 
 
 stead, the presiding officer only opened a care- 
 fully written manuscript, which he proceeded to 
 read in the simplest imaginable way. It proved 
 to be a cruelly candid account of just how, 
 in spite of his incontestable merits, the mani- 
 fold faults and infirmities of the candidate 
 had impressed the academicians who had been 
 called on to consider his case. With due allow- 
 ance for the beautiful precision of its language 
 and the extreme aptitude of its thrusts, it re- 
 minded me — so far as I could follow it — of the 
 sort of discourse with which neophytes used to 
 be received into college societies when I was a 
 student at Harvard. GeneraUzed, it was noth- 
 ing more nor less than a subHmated process of 
 initiation at which everybody — and most of all 
 the victim — was confidently and justly expected 
 to smile. If you had not known what it was 
 all coming to, you would have been disposed to 
 expect that the luckless man in question was 
 about to be condemned, at best, to oblivion. 
 Instead, it closed with the words — pronounced 
 with something Hke a sigh of comic resignation 
 — ** ¥ous #tes recu/V-Jfl^herewith the function 
 
 ended, and the happiness of immortality was 
 conferred on one ^more honorable gentleman 
 of France. 
 
 Among themselves, it is said, the academicians 
 
94 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 punctiliously maintain the fiction of absolute 
 equality. They are called immortals in jest ; so 
 long as their earthly immortality persists, they 
 make believe that they are immortal in earnest ; 
 and immortality doubtless confers freedom from 
 the inconvenience not only of human vexation 
 but also of human rank. Anywhere else a royal 
 prince, like the Due d'Aumale, would be ad- 
 dressed as Altesse ; a bishop as Monseigneur. 
 Here all alike are addressed simply as Monsieur. 
 Noblemen, bourgeois, and artists alike — royal- 
 ties, dignitaries of the church, and writers of 
 comedy — are just fellow-beings, like blessed 
 spirits before the throne of grace, or American 
 college boys at last admitted to Greek-letter 
 mysteries. The analogy goes deep. This class 
 of immortal equals is a class apart. It is a 
 brotherhood given to such mutual affection 
 and dissension as animates brotherly life in its 
 domestic phase; but banded together, so long 
 as fraternity exists, in common resentment of 
 unfraternal meddling from without. And the 
 ingenuous completeness with which this highest 
 of French intellectual dignities at once admits 
 the eternal boyishness of human nature, and, 
 with boyish generosity, holds itself open to any 
 aspirant who can prove his deserts, combines 
 with the fact of its recognized social dominance 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 95 
 
 in all three social classes — noble, bourgeois^ and 
 artistic alike — to make it perhaps the most pro- 
 foundly characteristic social fact in France. 
 
 At least, I believe, it is the most profoundly 
 characteristic of those regions of French life to 
 which the term " society " can fairly be applied 
 in any limited sense. It recognizes, it assimi- 
 lates, it harmonizes within itself, aristocracy, 
 \bourgeoisie, and art. It impHes, more than 
 anything else, what they possess, and what they 
 must perforce cherish, together and in common. 
 It leaves out of sight, as any such organization 
 must leave, the masses of the people. And now- 
 adays these masses are matters of such conspic- 
 uous interest that those are not wanting who 
 should pretend them ten times more important 
 than their comparatively few fellow-men who 
 have managed, in one way or another, to emerge 
 above the general level of humanity. 
 
 Of the masses in France I saw very little. 
 One heard, of course, a good deal about them 
 from friends who were eagerly interested in poli- 
 tics, in economics, or in philanthropy ; but one's 
 knowledge was at best a fairly intelligent kind 
 of hearsay. From this I derived one or two 
 general impressions. Taken by and large, I am 
 disposed to think, the unskilled laborers of France 
 are worthily stupid to a degree which must as- 
 
96 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 tonish anybody whose general estimate of French 
 character is derived from the alert intelligence 
 exhibited by such Frenchmen as we have hitherto 
 been considering. Certainly what I happened to 
 see in travel of the peasantry and of the lower 
 classes in the cities went far to justify the cari- 
 catures just now so widely familiar in comic jour- 
 nals or on the stage. Of recent years, on the other 
 hand, I was led to believe, the skilled labor of 
 France has developed a degree and a kind of in- 
 telligence which is both impressive and mislead- 
 ing. Skilled laborers have been intellectually 
 trained beyond any condition in their previous 
 history ; they have been immensely stimulated, in 
 both thought and feeling, by so unprecedented 
 political and economic circumstances as have 
 ever5rsvhere perplexed the social history of recent 
 times; and, being without prepossessing tradi- 
 ng tions, they seem at this moment Jess hampered by 
 \\ jl hereditary prejudice, more frankly curious, and 
 \ \J to all appearances more open-minded than any 
 ^^ other class of people in their aspiring country. 
 
 This apparent open-mindedness of skilled la- 
 bor in France has deeply impressed many edu- 
 cated Frenchmen whose personal sympathies are 
 philanthropic or radical. It goes far to justify, 
 at least in honest argument, the startling ten- 
 dency to socialism so evident throughout the 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 97 
 
 world to-day, and so extremely prevalent among 
 French people of a character which might lead 
 you to expect that they would regard social 
 revolution with suspicion. What we need to re- 
 vive the world, they seem to believe, is freedom 
 from the tyranny of prejudice — generous open- 
 ness of mind. Among the established classes — 
 noble, bourgeois, artistic, alike — they look for 
 this in vain. In meetings of skilled workmen, 
 assembled to discuss any topic of social conse- 
 quence, they find it. A company of devout hour* 
 geois, as a socialistic friend told me, will not 
 listen to a speech from an honest free-thinker; 
 they will execrate him, shout him down — "ils 
 le conspuent." ^ company of free-thinking,JL 
 
 trades-unionists will listen to the unwelcome 
 
 convictions -of an honest priest as respectfully as 
 if he were preaching what they hold better than 
 Law or Gospel. Better still, they will answer 
 him with fair argument, or something as near it 
 as their powers can command. They will weigh 
 what is said on either side. Wherefore, your 
 socialist concludes, salvation is to be sought 
 among the intelligent masses. 
 
 Perhaps so. Only the future can tell. To my 
 mind, this inspiring candor of the worthier kind 
 of laboring men seemed rather a normal phase 
 of social youth. In earlier days they had never 
 
98 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 thought at all. Stimulated to thought, they 
 begin to see, with the unqualified precision of 
 juvenility, how many ways there are of confront- 
 ing problems, and how much better the way they 
 H may chance to prefer must be than any other. 
 Still innocent of the inexorable test of resp onsi- 
 bility, they display to aii in^imigTegree the 
 infant virtues of the irresponsible. Give them 
 their way, let them feel the benumbing perplexity 
 of responsible power ; and who knows but you 
 shall find your generous confidence resulting in 
 the worst jolt yet known out of the frying-pan 
 into the fire? 
 
 At all events, one fact seems fairly clear. The 
 lower classes, stupid or graced with the candor of 
 open minds, are apt instinctively tojdistrust the 
 upper classes. And this tend^ency is beginnmg, 
 in some degree, to diminish the mutual distrust 
 of the upper among themselves. In the face of 
 what nobody can deny to be a common danger, 
 nobles, bourgeois, and artists alike seem some- 
 what more willing than of old to recognize the 
 interests and the ideals which, each in their own 
 '^ay, they traditionally cherish in common. 
 This tendency to concentration among the 
 higher classes of French society, however, is 
 as yet impalpable. It may not really exist at 
 alL My sympathetic wish to perceive it has 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 99 
 
 perhaps led me into the error of supposing it con- 
 ceivable. What is surely no error is that all the 
 upper classes have in common more qualities, 
 more strength, more virtue in the good old 
 sense of the term, than any of them are as 
 yet quite ready to admit. Among noblemen, 
 among bourgeois^ among artists, you can recog- 
 nize everywhere that honesty of purpose, that 
 dignity of character, that self-abnegating devo- 
 tion to~"3uEy'^ which combine in the character 
 ^ a true gentleman. If those whose ideals 
 are truly in harmony can ever learn to speak 
 a common language of the heart, there is little 
 to fear. 
 
 The less to fear, I believe, because the more 
 one sees of France the less apparent is that so- 
 cial peculiarity which foreigners are often led 
 to suppose the most deeply characteristic 
 In certain aspects, no doubt, French society is 
 morally corrupt. No civilized society has yet 
 gladdened this planet without considerable cor- 
 ruption to counterbalance its merits. You might 
 as wisely expect a human organism to flourish free 
 from all trace of disease or of decay. This does 
 not mean that we should not do our best, socially 
 and personally, to fight the microbes. But no 
 sane man foresees the end of microbes so long 
 as anything be left for microbes to prey on; 
 
100 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 they are a sad condition of existence. The 
 real question is whether an organism, social or 
 physical, has the kind of strength which shall 
 combat them victoriously. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a popular impression that 
 French society is morally diseased. On a ques- 
 tion so delicate as this, furthermore, it is hard 
 to pronounce a confident opinion which should 
 go far to contradict this commonplace assump- 
 tion. One fact, nevertheless, remains true. The 
 more you see of French people as they live 
 among themselves, in whatever station, the less 
 your attention is called to such irregular, if inter- 
 esting, social phenomena as foreign gossip had 
 led you to expect. On the contrary, you are 
 increasingly impressed not only with the general 
 regularity of their lives, but with the surprising 
 fact that this general regularity seems to have a 
 very strong hold on their affections. It can 
 hardly be long, indeed, before you begin to 
 wonder whether anyone can get near to the heart 
 of them without sympathetic understanding of 
 the intensity with which they cherish their 
 domestic relations. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 PERHAPS the first experience which 
 began to make me feel what family Ufe 
 means to the French was that, when 
 friends began to invite us to their houses infor- 
 mally, particularly at mid-day, one of my chil- 
 dren, who happened to be with us, was generally 
 included in the invitation. At a ceremonious 
 dinner or reception, of course, this would not 
 have been the case. The shade of difference 
 between such an occasion and a more intimate 
 welcome to a household, where you may see 
 people as they hve, lay in the fact that, in the 
 latter case, a child seemed to be expected as 
 regularly and as cordially as the parents. To 
 our French ftiends, in short, for all the kindness 
 which they showed us individually, we seemed 
 primarily a family, for a little while visiting their 
 '""feasant country. 
 
 As acquaintance thus began to strengthen 
 into friendship, I grew aware that a whole range 
 of commonplace, which would formally occur 
 
102 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 anywhere, has in France the sanction of genuine 
 feeling. When we are favored at home with polite 
 inquiry as to our near relatives, or with pleasant 
 messages to such of them as the inquirer may 
 chance to have known, such amenities seem 
 either matters of mere politeness or else dictated 
 by somewhat alert curiosity. In France you 
 soon come to feel that this interest in children 
 whom your friends have never seen is no mere 
 matter of form ; it is based on an instinctive 
 assumption that these children must be con- 
 stantly, anxiously, lovingly in your own mind, — 
 that, of course, they are the things nearest to your 
 heart. So, when French people come to care 
 for you, they show their regard by sincere and 
 alert interest in the family of which you are the 
 head, or a member. The fact of friendship im- 
 plies welcome not only from man to man, but 
 from all of one family group to all of another, 
 even though unknown a little while before. 
 
 Throughout France one met this phase of 
 friendship among all sorts of people, noble and 
 simple, in Paris and in the provinces alike. And 
 the fact that it was genuine was constantly 
 brought home to you by the confidence with 
 which friends who displayed eager interest in 
 your family affairs assumed, as a matter of course, 
 that you would take equally eager interest in 
 
THE FAMILY 103 
 
 theirs. Two or three instances of what I have 
 in mind may make it more clear. On one occa- 
 sion, I remember, a friend to whom we had 
 brought a letter of introduction asked us to dine 
 informally. At dinner we met his father, who 
 headed the table. Somehow, we came to know 
 before long that the mother had died a few years 
 ago and that the father had been welcomed to 
 the house of the son, who gave him precedence 
 as matter of course. It transpired also that the 
 robust elderly gentleman had other children. He 
 was justly proud of heading a family which 
 should put dread of race-suicide to sleep. And 
 after dinner, son after son came in to see us, each 
 with his wife, until I think we had the bewilder- 
 ing pleasure of meeting six couples in all, merged 
 in one confidently friendly family group. What 
 made this greeting so memorable was its com- 
 plete spontaneity. There was not an instant's 
 question in anybody's mind that familiar access 
 to anyone of this little company implied access 
 — cordially welcome on both sides — to all of 
 them. Again, on more than one occasion and 
 in widely different surroundings, I found myself, 
 when welcomed to a family table, not exactly 
 told, but almost assumed to know, that the fam- 
 ily circle was no longer complete. Children 
 dead years ago were still so living in the hearts 
 
104 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 of their parents that the memory of them cast 
 a shade of melancholy over the welcome of 
 any new friend, recalling what it might have 
 been if all the family had been spared to join 
 in it. 
 
 A still more touching incident comes to mind. 
 During our stay in Paris a very old lady died, 
 the mother of a friend who had received us 
 kindly. Though we had never had the privilege 
 of knowing her, who had been, I believe, long 
 invalid, a formal invitation to the funeral came 
 tons. And when the ceremony at the church 
 was finished we found that French custom ex- 
 pected us to pass, with the other mourners, before 
 the assembled family, and to express our sym- 
 pathy. The manner in which this assurance of 
 condolence was received made the sad ceremony 
 seem more than formal. The only one of the 
 bereaved family whom we had known we had 
 not known very well. Yet their very invitation 
 implied a frank assurance that we should care to 
 know of the bereavement. The passing word, and 
 pressure of the hand, meant that this human shar- 
 ing in such a grief as time must bring to us all 
 had changed what might have been a passing 
 acquaintance into a relation which, however little 
 we might see of one another in this transitory 
 world, should always have in memory the tender 
 
THE FAMILY 105 
 
 sanction of a momentary communion of the 
 spirit. 
 
 The unity of a family in France, indeed, is 
 implied in a phase of it familiar even to travel- 
 lers. Among small shopkeepers, and the like, 
 wherever you go, you will find the business in 
 personal charge not only of the head of the 
 establishment but of his wife and of his grown 
 children as well. A little adventure which befell 
 an American traveller not long ago will illustrate 
 what I mean. Just as he was about to leave a 
 town where he had passed the night, on a jour- 
 ney, he had the misfortune to tear his only 
 available trousers. It was necessary to repair 
 the damage at once ; so he presently found him- 
 self, early in the morning and with little time to 
 spare, in the apartment of a small tailor, who 
 lived in two ground-floor rooms looking out on 
 a delightful eighteenth century courtyard. The 
 tailor fell to work at once. His stout, bustling 
 wife, with a preposterously black false front of 
 hair, cheerily stopped feeding a cage full of twit- 
 tering birds and began to heat the irons which 
 would soon be required to complete her hus- 
 band's job. Meanwhile she was full of eager 
 chatter : Where did Monsieur come from ? 
 America? Then of course he spoke Spanish. 
 Monsieur was compelled to regret that he came 
 
106 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 from an obscure comer of the American conti- 
 nent where a knowledge of Spanish is not yet 
 prevalent. Ah, she said, that was a very great 
 pity. She could speak Spanish herself. She 
 had visited Gibraltar. So had Monsieur, it 
 appeared, a few years ago. The good woman 
 looked up eagerly: Had Monsieur descended at 
 the Hotel de TUnivers ? This innocent question 
 bred all the trouble to come. The traveller, 
 whose visit to Gibraltar was at least ten years 
 past, had quite forgotten the name of his hotel 
 there. One name would do as well as another. 
 Evidently his affable questioner expected an 
 affirmative answer. So he politely replied. Of 
 course ; who would go elsewhere ? The stout 
 woman beamed like the sun. ** C'est mon oncle 
 qui le tient," she said : " My uncle keeps it." 
 Monsieur was delighted. "Does he still wear 
 black whiskers?" she asked eagerly. Monsieur 
 was in for it now, and confidently announced 
 "Enormes" — huge ones. Whereupon she in- 
 terrupted her husband's work with a cry that 
 this visitor was an intimate fi:'iend of their dear 
 uncle ; and the conversation proceeded with ani- 
 mated cordiality of interrogation, which put 
 Monsieur's powers of invention to the test, until 
 the repaired trousers were ready. 
 
 Then came the crowning moment. How 
 
THE FAMILY 107 
 
 much did he owe the tailor, he asked, for his 
 kind services, out of hours. What the tailor 
 might have answered he never knew. The 
 bustling, voluble wife, who was then exhibit- 
 ing to him the accomplishments of her caged 
 birds, inten'upted : Owe ? He owed nothing. 
 Was not Monsieur the intimate friend of her 
 uncle? Was he not "ami de la famille"? It 
 was a point of honor that the question of money 
 should not arise between family friends. No — 
 she could not hear of such a thing ; neither could 
 her husband. And the poor husband, who had 
 worked hard for half an hour, said nothing in 
 denial. And Monsieur had a train to catch ; 
 and furthermore he had fallen into much con- 
 trite confusion of mind, which seriously impaired 
 his command of French. He saw no way to 
 explain his innocent deceit. To his deep dis- 
 may he found himself paying for his trousers 
 with cordial thanks, tremendous pressures of 
 hands, and deep protestations of what delight 
 he should take when he next visited Gibraltar 
 in informing the black-whiskered uncle of the 
 wonderful chance which had brought him the 
 pleasure of acquaintance with other members 
 of so agreeable and honorable a family. The 
 proceeding was not to his credit; but neither 
 was it characteristic. Before and since he has 
 
108 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 maintained the principles and the reputation of 
 an honest man. He told the story, indeed, with 
 didactically honest intent. It went to prove, he 
 declared, how scrupulously we should consider 
 the truth even on what might seem to be the 
 most trivial occasions. 
 
 On the other hand, this somewhat unseemly 
 incident was deeply characteristic of the good 
 people who so pleasantly deceived themselves 
 and betrayed a well-meaning American into the 
 technically criminal act of obtaining valuable 
 services on false pretences. It illustrated, in 
 more ways than one, the intensity of family feel- 
 ing prevalent among all classes of the French. 
 So intense was the feeling in this case that, for 
 one thing, it completely overcame the frugal and 
 thrifty impulses which form so considerable a 
 feature in the character of small tradesmen any- 
 where, and particularly in France. Further- 
 more, 'it implied how completely a French 
 family, once constituted, regards itself as a unit. 
 The imaginary innkeeper, with huge black 
 whiskers, was uncle not to the busy little tailor 
 who had been industriously plying his needle, but 
 to his wife, who had only been heating an iron 
 or two, and feeding canary-birds. No matter; 
 the uncle of one was uncle of both. It was a 
 family affair, as the rather meek husband seemed 
 
THE FAMILY 109 
 
 perfectly to agree. In the third place, inasmuch 
 as this incident occurred not in a shop or in a 
 public place, but in the little room where the 
 happy pair actually lived, it revealed what is 
 often true of French households — that,^ within 
 doors, the wife is in supreme command, if she 
 Jiave the vigor and the will to be. It left to 
 be explained, accordingly, that if the question 
 had involved the control of property, or any- 
 thing else in which the affairs of the family 
 had presented themselves not within doors but 
 to the outside world, the husband would have 
 been expected, at least in form, to take the 
 principal part. 
 
 Some such relations as were thus trivially in- 
 dicated are those which appeal most instantly to 
 the instinctive sentiment of the French. This 
 impulse is so deeply, so characteristically na- 
 tional that you will find it in all ranks of life. 
 It is at its strongest, probably, among the bour- 
 geoisie, — the middle class, the core of the nation. 
 It exists, however, everywhere ; and, when one 
 stops to consider the circumstances, it proves to 
 be based on a deep recognition of natural law. 
 
 Whatever else we may be, one thing is true of 
 every human being. As a matter of necessity 
 we all have parents. Without them we could 
 not exist. This obvious condition of our Uves 
 
110 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 involves the probability of inevitable relation- 
 ship with a good many other people who have 
 come into the world by channels analogous to 
 those which gave birth to ourselves. Most of 
 us, of necessity and not of choice, find our- 
 selves blessed with brothers, sisters, nephews, 
 nieces, uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as 
 with ancestors and descendants. Though human 
 recognition of this fact is everywhere cordial, 
 there seems a marked difference between the 
 cordiality with which it is recognized in France 
 and that prevalent in many other countries. Else- 
 where this cordiality often seems rather conven- 
 tional. In France it seems the most spontane- 
 ous of all impulses. And when you stop to 
 think you can hardly fail to agree that this state 
 of feeling is deeply reasonable. The ties it con- 
 secrates are evidently those of nature as distin- 
 guished from those of choice. We cannot help 
 being the children of our parents ; our children 
 cannot help springing from us ; common blood 
 cannot be denied by any process of disinheritance 
 or of adoption. On the other hand some of the 
 closest actual human relations in the world are 
 matters not of necessity but of choice. Nobody, 
 however devoted, is compelled by any inexorable 
 law of nature to be the husband or the wife of 
 anybody else. Comparatively accidental though 
 
THE FAMILY 111 
 
 marital relation may be, the while, there can be 
 no doubt that the conventional ideals of America 
 have always assumed, as a matter of course, that 
 it ought to be the object of prime human affec- 
 tion. Among the French, on the other hand, 
 though conjugal union seems generally full of 
 cordial feeling, the intensity of prime affection 
 seems more instinctively consecrated to the una- 
 voidable human relation of parents and children. 
 How far this emotional peculiarity is the cause, 
 or how far it is the effect of the manner in which 
 the French regard the organization, the struc- 
 ture, of the family, it is hard to say. One thing 
 is sure : the state of feeling could not persist in a 
 society where the family was not assumed to be 
 the prime social fact ; nor yet could the family 
 present itself as the prime social fact in a society 
 which was not deeply animated by this state 
 of feeling. To the French mind, accordingly, 
 the family, as a fact and as a conception, is 
 more constantly present than to ours. Now a 
 family evidently consists, in the first place, of 
 a husband and a wife, associated for the pur- 
 pose of founding, if so may be, a new human 
 strain. It is not complete until children are 
 born to them. When these children in turn 
 take mates to themselves, the family increases 
 in potential dignity and strength. It began. 
 
112 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 in some degree, as a venture, an experiment; 
 it has proved itself an organism, an institution; 
 it is capable of reproducing itself, and its like, 
 indefinitely ; for each branch of it may in turn 
 become a new parent stem. | Yet so long as 
 the original founders of any family line sur- 
 vive, they remain, in the estimate of its mem- 
 bers, what they are in the course of nature — 
 the fundamental fact without which the organism 
 could never have come into being. ^ The father 
 is in general control both of the family property 
 and of the relations of the family with other 
 families and with the whole outer world. The 
 mother, though formally in due subservience to 
 her lord and master, is virtually absolute in her 
 domestic authority. Their joint sovereignty is 
 one where foreign affairs are intrusted to the 
 man, and where the ministry of the interior 
 is the prerogative of the woman. And if by 
 chance a parent of either happen to survive, 
 this venerable personage, sovereign by the law 
 of nature over one or the other of these lesser 
 sovereigns, is apt to play the part of an en- 
 lightezied despot in supervising the wholelittle 
 govemmenf in question. 
 
 An amiable instance of this state of aifairs 
 happened to come to my notice. The daughter 
 of an old lady, herself sprung from the country- 
 
THE FAMILY 113 
 
 gentry — the petite noblesse — of a mid-French 
 province, had married, a good many years ago, 
 a highly respectable man of business. Their 
 affairs had not prospered. By the time when I 
 happened to know something of them, they had 
 been reduced to an inconveniently small way of 
 living ; their daughters, of twenty-five or thirty, 
 had to occupy themselves as teachers, and the 
 noble grandmother had been compelled by stress 
 of circumstances to become a member of the 
 rather frugal bourgeois household. There, as a 
 matter of course, her supremacy was admitted 
 by all her descendants as well as by that acci- 
 dental if inevitable incident in the line of their 
 descent, her son-in-law. The traditions of her 
 youth, and of the station which she had then 
 occupied, had been severe in the matter of con- 
 trol over the daily life of young girls. Two 
 phases of this discipUne impressed her as partic- 
 ularly important : a young woman of respecta- 
 bility should never go out of the house alone, 
 and she should never receive or write a letter, 
 even to or from her own brothers and sisters, 
 without submitting it to the head of the family. 
 The good old lady, being a person of intelli- 
 gence, felt herself bound to admit the unanswer- 
 able logic of circumstance. As it was obviously 
 out of the question that her granddaughters 
 
114 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 should be provided with maids, she reluctantly 
 consented that they should be allowed to go 
 out alone to give their lessons. In the mat- 
 ter of their correspondence she remained rigid. 
 Every letter addressed to either of them, even 
 by each other, she conscientiously expected to be 
 opened and read by their mother. Every letter 
 which either of them wrote she expected their 
 mother to read, from beginning to end, before it 
 should be allowed to leave the house. What is 
 more, the pious frauds by which her mandates 
 were sometimes evaded never seemed to attract 
 her attention. She fervently believed that she 
 was controlling her grandchildren, at thirty, in 
 the manner in which girls of gentle family had 
 always been controlled. She ignored the slightly 
 protesting attitude of her bourgeois son-in-law. 
 And, so far as I could understand, her grand- 
 daughters, though by no means disposed to sub- 
 mit their correspondence to scrutiny, however 
 affectionate, would have thought themselves 
 somewhat rudely radical if they had been so pre- 
 sumptuous as to criticise her principles. Pleasantly 
 extreme as this little instance of domestic hier- 
 archy may seem, it is really characteristic of 
 French family feeling, and by no means unique. 
 This conception of the family as the prime 
 social fact, and as the fact which must naturally 
 
THE FAMILY 115 
 
 appeal most directly to human emotion, underlies 
 certain phases of actual French law often mis- 
 understood by foreigners. Having no technical 
 knowledge of law, to be sure, and having made 
 no special study of the details in question, I 
 cannot pretend to authoritative accuracy in this 
 matter. I am sure, however, that several talks 
 with French barristers of my acquaintance deeply 
 modified my opinions concerning a phase of 
 French conduct which has often impressed 
 Americans unfavorably. In general, we have 
 come to understand, when a Frenchman desires 
 to marry one of our compatriots, he displays 
 eager interest not only in her person but also 
 in her worldly possessions ; frequently, indeed, 
 proceeding with the delicate negotiations in ques- 
 tion only on the specific understanding that she 
 shall have a fixed dowry, to be paid down on 
 the occasion of the marriage which, if all go well, 
 shall crown his wishes. We have furthermore 
 come to understand that a dowry paid down 
 under such circumstances regularly passes into 
 the complete control of the happy husband ; that 
 the wife, from whom the property is really de- 
 rived, has no voice whatever in the management 
 of it. We have accordingly been disposed to 
 imagine that a Frenchman in search of a wife 
 has the unromantic and sordid habit of offering 
 
116 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 himself for sale to the highest bidder — an obvi- 
 ous caricature of the truth, but not quite unwar- 
 ranted by the facts as they present themselves to 
 foreign ignorance. 
 
 For our foreign ignorance assumes that the 
 Frenchman who candidly requests a dowry, to 
 be placed under his complete control, desires the 
 same for his own personal use and advantage. 
 In point of fact, he regards it in a totally diiFer- 
 ent light. By the act of marriage he is about 
 to essay the founding of a family. If the fam- 
 ily come into existence, the maintenance and 
 strengthening of its position will demand means 
 which shall correspond with its social duties, 
 pretensions, and aspirations. Such means are 
 apt not to be at his unaided disposal. He is 
 cordially prepared to provide as much of them 
 as he can. To secure the interests of his pro- 
 spective family, however, he needs to have his 
 own provision — much of which will probably 
 come from his own family — supplemented by 
 adequate provision from the resources controlled 
 by the family of his beloved. The dowry, to 
 be sure, must be paid into his hands ; for he is 
 about to assume, in his turn, the dignity of the 
 head of a family, one of whose principal duties 
 is to manage its property and in all respects to 
 direct its material prosperity and its relations 
 
THE FAMILY 117 
 
 with that considerable part of the world which 
 must always remain external to itself. Though 
 in free command of the family property, however, 
 he does not look upon it as a personal possession 
 
 — any more than a sovereign would look on the 
 gross revenue of a constitutional nation as the 
 annual due of his privy purse. Morally a family 
 property, based on the portion brought by the 
 husband and the dowry paid by the family of 
 the wife, is felt to be a virtual trust, for the ulti- 
 mate benefit of the children who may be born 
 to them. 
 
 y^'To some extent, if I did not misunderstand 
 my legal friends, this moral view of the situation 
 is not only sanctioned but actually compelled by 
 law. The right of disposal of property by will, 
 so little restricted in America that every day 
 Americans are accustomed to assume it virtually 
 absolute by the law of natiu-e and of nations, is 
 rigidly limited throughout France. If parents 
 have children, those children have an indefeasible 
 right of inheritance in all but a limited portion 
 
 — by way of illustrative hypothesis, let us say 
 in all but one-tenth — of the property which the 
 parents possess. If a bachelor die, his parents, 
 his brothers and sisters, his uncles, aunts, and 
 cousins, as the case may be, — whoever, in short, 
 chance to be his nearest kin, — have not mere 
 
118 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 residuary rights, but a positive claim to a con- 
 siderable portion of his property, varying in pro- 
 portion to the degree of kinship which may 
 happen to exist between the decedent and his 
 legal heirs. Absolute freedom of bequest is pos- 
 sible in France only in those rare cases where a 
 human being, who owns property, finds himself 
 without kin — in a position where, by English 
 law, the property of an intestate would escheat 
 to the crown. This narrow limitation of testa- 
 mentary power, which the French assume as a 
 matter of course, is evidently based on the con- 
 ception that property, as such, really belongs not 
 to the individual, who must surely die, but to 
 the family, which by good fortune may indefinitely 
 persist. 
 
 The rights in a dowry, according to this sys- 
 tem, become, fi-om our American point of view, 
 unexpectedly instructive. If a marriage result 
 f in children^ the dowry of the mother evidently 
 I becomes a part of their prospective inheritance. 
 So long as the father lives, no doubt, it is wholly 
 in his possession. He is not expected to manage 
 / it quite as a trustee, bound to submit detailed 
 / accounts. He is assumed to have the interest 
 of his family so deeply at heart that he will fi-eely 
 use their property, to the best of his power, for 
 their common advantage. If he do so skilfully, 
 
THE FAMILY 119 
 
 it will increase more than if his management of 
 it were hampered by such legal conditions as are 
 needful in the case of trusts. On his death, his 
 children come into their possessions, except so far 
 as their widowed mother may have a life inter- 
 est in the same. In case, however, a marriage 
 prove childless, the fate of the dowry is quite 
 different. If a wife die without living issue, her 
 dowry reverts, as a matter of course, to her own 
 family, from which it originally came. Her hus- 
 band, who had complete control of it during her 
 married life, retains in widowhood no rights in it 
 whatever. She cannot even convey rights to 
 him by will, I understand, unless such power has 
 been originally and specifically given to her, so 
 far as it legally may be, by the terms of her 
 marriage contract. The dowry originally came 
 from her family, as their contribution to the 
 future of the family which they hoped might 
 spring from her marriage. Their hopes have 
 been disappointed ; the consecration of property 
 to such hopes has proved futile ; the property in 
 question must evidently revert to the family to 
 which it originally belonged. Their rights assert 
 themselves automatically. 
 
 For a la)rman to attempt exposition of law is 
 doubtless presumptuous ; and I do not pretend 
 this statement to be authoritative. Of one thing, 
 
120 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the while, I am confident. It does not misrep- 
 resent the spirit in which French law and French 
 sentiment regard the interests of a family as far 
 superior to any interests which concern only an 
 individual. When we begin to understand this 
 spirit, and only then, we can begin to see how 
 the requests for dowry, so deeply unwelcome 
 to American sentiment when international mar- 
 riages take place, do not really imply grasping 
 and cynical selfishness, on the part of the French, 
 but are rather an evidence of their affectionate 
 prudence. 
 
 For that French temper regards the family 
 with true and deep affection is beyond ques- 
 tion. This sentiment of unreserved, self- 
 sacrificing love for one's kin is that on 
 which you may most surely count in France, 
 throughout all phases of society. One is 
 tempted to say that of all the human rela- 
 tions in the world none is more deeply, more 
 sincerely, more beautifully constant and ten- 
 der than the love which persists between par- 
 ents and children from end to end of France. 
 An evidence of this anyone may find in the 
 word which I think makes instant appeal to 
 a marvellously profound and enduring phase 
 of French emotion everyw^here consecrated by 
 persistent purity of heart. At least in Amer- 
 
THE FAMILY 121 
 
 ica, we have a perversely mistaken impres- 
 sion of French Ufe, which finds expression in 
 the famiUar commonplace that the language 
 of France contains no equivalent for our ten- 
 derly cherished word home. Strictly, literally 
 speaking, this commonplace may be defensible. 
 There is no single French word completely har- 
 monious at once with our formal phrase "at 
 home " and with the lyric refrain, " There is no 
 place like home," which has made the other- 
 wise insignificant name of John Howard Payne 
 sentimentally immortal. English, on the other 
 hand, has no single word to express the various 
 shades of meaning comprised in the French word 
 chez; nor yet those implied in the idiom a la 
 maison, which means something different from 
 " in the house." And English has another lack, 
 generally ignored by English-speaking people. 
 Much as they have cherished the manifold and 
 gentle sentiments which cluster in their affec- 
 tions about the word home, the generations who 
 have traced their way from cradle to grave in 
 English terms have never found themselves in 
 need of a word which should comprise all the 
 affectionate tenderness of meaning gathered 
 together in the French v^orA foyer. 
 
 By a paradoxical chance, this word conveys 
 to travellers a completely erroneous suggestion. 
 
122 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 As everybody knows, it is applied to those bril- 
 liant antechambers of the not too commodious 
 theatres of France, where you go to relax your 
 joints and to breathe comparatively fresh air be- 
 tween the acts, and where you meet a company 
 which, whatever its merits, seems hardly inspired 
 by sentiments of domesticity. To foreign 
 minds, accordingly, the word foyer probably 
 suggests, first and only, the painted nymphs 
 who adorn the ceilings of the Opera, or the 
 inscrutable smile of Houdon's Voltaire, together 
 with mirrors, toilettes, and such human beings 
 as take delight in the wearing of the latter 
 and the contemplation of the former; while, 
 hardly in the background, lurks that range of 
 thought and emotion perennially excited by the 
 conventions of operatic Ubretti, ballets, and the 
 widely ranging stage of France. To the French 
 mind, the word foyer no more implies these con- 
 ceptions as primary than the word home im- 
 pUes, among decent Americans, a tidy house, 
 to be bought or hired on terms which should 
 attract people of limited means in search of an 
 abiding-place. The prime, original meaning of 
 the y^ord foyer remains the true meaning of it 
 throughout France, — or at least the true and 
 enduring origin of the sentiments now so richly 
 clustered about it. It is the chimney, the 
 
THE FAMILY 123 
 
 hearthstone, — the core of domestic life, where 
 the family gathers, complete in itself, distinct 
 from any other group in this confused and bus- 
 tling world, at one with each other, free for the 
 while from all the rest of humanity. 
 
 The Uteral meaning of the word, no doubt, 
 has long ago lapsed from the consciousness of 
 those to whom the word appeals beyond all 
 words else. The term foyer arouses no romantic 
 image of flickering bonfires in huts or halls, of 
 smoky rafters and chimneys, of uncouth or an- 
 tique figures, gentle and simple, warming their 
 transparent hands over the glowing embers, and 
 telling tales of things that were, — heroes, saints, 
 adventures, jests, ancestors and enemies, conquests 
 and defeats, loves and deaths, famines and crops 
 and herds ; and yet such depths of emotion 
 as the French find in the word even to this 
 day could hardly have emerged from a human 
 antiquity less immemorial than that wherein 
 such fantasies as these hover, from eldest time. 
 To the French still, the foyer is the region 
 where the family is all in all. It implies, ac- 
 cordingly, all the full, deep, complex strength of 
 family affection, which is to them the deepest 
 of national and personal emotions. These emo- 
 tions are most potent, most conscious, I suppose, 
 among the bourgeoisie; they seem to be least 
 
124 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 strong in the regions which we have called the 
 world of fine art ; in the complicated traditions 
 of aristocracy they sometimes take unexpectedly 
 cynical form. But they persist, with perennial 
 vigor, everywhere. And when you begin to 
 enter into them, when you begin sympathet- 
 ically to feel something of what they signify in 
 the lives of friends who generously welcome you 
 to their foyers^ your mind harks back to school 
 days. You find yourself dreaming not of the 
 homes so dear to England and to America, but 
 rather of the hearthstones you used to read 
 about in childhood; you begin to have a new 
 and a reverent sense of what the Lares and the 
 Penates signified who lingered in the devout 
 imagination of ancestral Rome. 
 
 The French, we have been accustomed to 
 fancy, do not know what we mean by home. 
 Well and good, they may answer; those who 
 speak only English have no conception of what 
 the French mean hj foyer. In tenderness of 
 sentiment, in instant appeal to emotions of en- 
 during purity, one word is as beautiful as the 
 other. In cherished sacredness of significance, 
 one sometimes comes to fancy, the full mean- 
 ing of the term foyer^ is richer than that of any 
 single word in our own language. And yet, 
 the better you come to know it, the more certain 
 
THE FAMILY 125 
 
 you grow that, despite all the analogies of its mean- 
 ing to those of our word home, it does not convey 
 quite the same implications. Which conception 
 may be held ideally preferable, we need not dis- 
 pute. The question would turn on abstractions 
 and prejudices, like disputes about the loveliness 
 of flowers or of melodies. Pleasant though it be, 
 there is no more inconclusive task than that of 
 those who give themselves up to reasoning about 
 love. There are shades of difference ; for the 
 wise it is enough that we recognize them, leaving 
 the judgment among perfections to intelligence 
 higher than that which obscures the mental 
 processes of this world. Such shades of differ- 
 ence as distinguish the French foyer from the 
 English home spring from the different moods 
 in which the temper of France and that of Eng- 
 land are apt to regard the comparative importance 
 of the family and of the individual. 
 
 To the French mind, as we have seen, the 
 family is the prime social fact. As a matter of 
 tradition and of system, — and tradition and sys- 
 tem are instinctively welcome to the French, — 
 society appears to them as a great group of 
 families ; and though each family must evidently 
 consist of the individuals which compose it, the 
 relations of the family to other families and to 
 the whole outer world seem far more important 
 
126 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 than the internal relations, within the family, of 
 the individuals whom it includes. The social^ 
 unit, in brief, is not the individual but the 
 family group. To maintain itself, accordingly, 
 this group must have a recognized organization 
 of its own, to which all its members must 
 submit. In point of fact, so far as my observa- 
 tion went, they generally do so, cordially and 
 willingly. In the very act of so doing, the 
 while, they sacrifice, perhaps without the least 
 sense that they do so, something deeply con- 
 genial to the domestic taste of England and of 
 America — secure possession of personal privacy. 
 The foyer itself is not a region where you may 
 permit yourself to be quite informally at ease, to 
 behave as your whims might suggest. It is an 
 intensely private little social organism. So far 
 as the rest of the world goes, it is absolutely in- 
 dependent. But within itself it has its own laws 
 of conduct, its own code of pleasant social forms 
 and duties, — something which for want of a less 
 formal term I may perhaps call its etiquette, — 
 no matter in what social rank you may chance 
 to observe it. 
 
 In general, I think, French family life — the 
 daily existence of the foyer — is full of real 
 charm. It is genuinely, eagerly friendly in its 
 pervasively affectionate feeling; it is pleasantly 
 
THE FAMILY 127 
 
 animated in its cheerfully persistent conversation ; 
 it is full of kindness, of gayety, of social grace 
 which you might well have fancied inconsistent 
 with the inevitable recurrences of domesticity. 
 It is delightfully agreeable, not only to a visitor, 
 who has some passing gUmpse of it, but still more 
 to its members, who find its charm strengthened 
 by all the welcome ease and force of lifeJong habit. 
 But it never suffers its own organization to be 
 forgotten. Every member of a family has, as 
 such, his duties and his dues. The love of French 
 parents for their children, and of French children 
 for their parents, is beyond dispute. It is so 
 fervent, indeed, that only fear lest one might 
 seem invidious prevents one from asserting it 
 stronger, deeper, more instant than such love 
 anywhere else. But even in its most closely 
 intimate aspect it never forgets that the parent 
 is the parent and the child the child. The fact 
 of authority implies the right to formal respect 
 as well as to obedience. The fact that you 
 belong to an organized social group, the while, 
 implies your duty, whatever your station therein, 
 to conduct yourself with courteous consideration 
 for the other members of it. This, too, neither 
 parent nor child ever suffers himself to forget. 
 The great and affectionate pleasure of French 
 domesticity is of a kind which could not exist 
 
128 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 if conventions were too much neglected. The 
 result is that, in the full security of their foyers, 
 the French seem surrounded by something like 
 the pleasures and the limitations which make 
 at once agreeable and a shade monotonous our 
 American experiences in general society. 
 
 This comparative lack of personal privacy in 
 French family life is not merely an external 
 thing. It goes so deep in the French nature 
 that, as a matter of course, each member of 
 any family takes a degree of interest in the 
 affairs of his immediate relations which, under 
 other conditions, might seem intrusive. The 
 simplest of examples will illustrate what I 
 mean. It happened that I had been talking 
 with some French friends about a young 
 American, whose family were in Europe, and 
 who had not found his prospects promising in 
 the profession which he was attempting to 
 practise. When a fortunate accident had of- 
 fered him an opportunity of more congenial 
 kind in a totally different occupation he had 
 not hesitated to seize it; and he had written 
 the news to his parents as a matter of mutual 
 congratulation — a view of the matter in which 
 they cordially agreed. He was something like 
 twenty-five years old ; according to American 
 ideas, he was quite of an age to decide such 
 
THE FAMILY 129 
 
 questions for himself; his parents were unaf- 
 fectedly pleased that he had done so. To my 
 French friends this state of affairs was com- 
 pletely perplexing. Their first impulse was to 
 condemn the boy's conduct as cruelly undutiful, 
 and to sympathize deeply with parents whose 
 dignity had been so neglected that they had not 
 even been formally consulted about a matter 
 which evidently concerned the professional fu- 
 ture of their child. When I had explained that, 
 so far from feeling neglected or slighted, these 
 parents were in a state of eager gratification, my 
 French friends were hardly able to understand 
 how the parents could be human. Had such a 
 question presented itself to a youth among them- 
 selves, they explained, he would have laid it be- 
 fore his father and mother, who would probably 
 have consulted in turn a considerable number of 
 relatives. Inasmuch as it involved a complete 
 change in the career probably before the boy, the 
 presumption would have been strongly against 
 the change. Unless arguments in its favor had 
 seemed convincing to his elders, almost against 
 their wills, their opposition to it would have been 
 decided. And a strong opposition on their part 
 would have prevented a dutiful youth from taking 
 any further steps in the matter ; he would regret- 
 fully have turned back to the professional career 
 
180 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 previously chosen for him, even though it offered 
 him small hope either of contentment or of suc- 
 cess. To my French friends, in brief, the ques- 
 tion of a boy's profession seemed primarily a 
 family question, and not one which chiefly con- 
 cerned the youth himself. They recognized, no 
 doubt, after due reflection, that our American 
 view of the case, once explained, was compre- 
 hensible. To all appearances, the while, it did 
 not impress them as exactly respectable. A 
 line of conduct which an American would have 
 found encouraging for its enterprise appeared to 
 French minds recklessly adventurous. 
 
 When you come to understand this state of 
 feeling, you begin to perceive how differently the 
 question of marriage presents itself in France 
 and among ourselves. To us, even though it 
 clearly involves some readjustment of family 
 relations, it seems first and foremost to concern 
 the happiness and the future of the individuals 
 who wish to marry. To the French, though 
 they by no means neglect this consideration of 
 happiness, a marriage seems even more obviously 
 a readjustment of family relations. In all likeli- 
 hood our conventional assumptions about the 
 manner in which French marriages are con- 
 tracted are mistaken. To arrange the marriage 
 of your daughter without regard to her inclina- 
 
THE FAMILY 131 
 
 tions would be as repugnant to French sentiment 
 as to ours. But when a project of marriage 
 comes to be considered, every member of a 
 family — from eldest grandparent to youngest 
 brother or sister — is disposed to view it in 
 France as a matter of deep and enduring com- 
 mon interest. 
 
 Take, for example, the normal position of any 
 French girl. So long as she remains unmarried, 
 her position, in her family, is inevitably second- 
 ary. She has her pleasant place in the foyer ^ 
 no doubt ; and her pretty little daily duties and 
 accomplishments. She is the object of domestic 
 affection, too, which she reciprocates. At the 
 same time, she is always the object of rather 
 extreme supervision. Anything like personal 
 independence can come to her only through the 
 medium of marriage. Naturally and frankly, 
 then, she wants to be married somewhat more 
 eagerly than is generally the case in America. 
 French girls, I believe, have been known to 
 regret this necessity of their existence, or at 
 least to express polite envy of American free- 
 dom in such matters ; but I never heard of one 
 who looked with complete equanimity on the 
 prospect of single blessedness in France. Any 
 other prospect, the while, depends on many other 
 considerations than those of unimpeded personal 
 
132 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 inclination. For one thing, the very nature of 
 the French family, in its pleasant social unity, 
 keeps young women always within sight of their 
 elders. Except in unusual cases — by accident or 
 by stealth — a French girl rarely sees a youth of 
 her own age, or indeed any man except her near- 
 est relatives, by himself ; wherefore anjrthing like 
 the innocent flirtations conventional in America 
 are out of the question, and with them the confi- 
 dent personal friendship between boys and girls 
 which is their frequent result. What youths a 
 French girl knows, she knows only as they appear 
 on their best behavior, before critical eyes. She 
 has not the happy privilege, assumed in America 
 as natural, of blamelessly inspecting her prospects 
 for herself To a very considerable degree, her 
 opportunities of acquaintance, not to speak of 
 friendship, must be controlled by the conditions 
 of her family life. This very limitation would, 
 of itself, prevent her from regarding marriage 
 so independently as American girls can. 
 
 Furthermore, the actual conditions of French 
 law make a mamage less an individual matter 
 than we of America are accustomed to consider 
 it. In most of the United States anybody can 
 get duly married at a few minutes' notice. In 
 France, not to speak of the somewhat intricate 
 official ceremonies required by the law, there is no 
 
THE FAMILY 133 
 
 convenient way in which anybody can be legally 
 married without the formal consent of parents, so 
 long as the parents survive. A mature man or 
 woman, to be sure, who desires to marry some 
 one unwelcome to a parent, may proceed to 
 summon that parent before a _^tribunal, and there 
 establish independence of consent. Such a pro- 
 cess, however, is evidently rather scandalous ; 
 and the last thing which any Frenchman would 
 desire in any aspect of his domestic relations 
 is a public scandal. More surely still, such a 
 process, even though sanctioned by the letter of 
 the law, generally seems quite without the sanc- 
 tion of decent public opinion. Arguments with 
 refractory parents are by no means unknown ; 
 they may well become prolonged and passionate, 
 or even complicate themselves with such devices 
 as make interesting the intricacies of many 
 French novels and comedies. But unless a 
 parent, willingly or unwillingly, gives formal 
 consent to the marriage of a child, the marriage 
 will remain, in the opinion of orderly friends, 
 almost as deplorable as if it had been dispensed 
 with. I remember a pathetic story of a man in 
 middle hfe who fell deeply in love with an irre- 
 proachable woman for whom his mother had 
 conceived insuperable dislike. He pleaded with 
 the old lady for years, in vain. At last she fell 
 
134 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ill. Her death would have removed the only 
 obstacle to his happiness. On her very death- 
 bed, however, her spirit did not relent. If her 
 son should follow his inclination, the mother in- 
 sisted, even when she was dead and gone, he 
 must always remember that it would be against 
 her passionately stated will. And he bowed to 
 the inevitable. His sense of family duty, of 
 obedience to a parent — even though cruelly un- 
 reasonable — was stronger than all the force of 
 an honorable and unshaken passion. He never 
 married at all. 
 
 To children and to parents alike, accordingly, 
 marriage seems less an individual matter than a 
 social. It evidently involves the readjustment 
 of a foyer, already affectionately established ; 
 if all go well, it will presently involve the 
 establishment of a new foyer, with all its pleas- 
 ures and its duties. It is this new foyer, as we 
 have seen, for which the much misunderstood 
 dot, or dowry, is arranged. Compared with any 
 conception generally familiar to good Americans, 
 this consecrated conception of domesticity in 
 France gives one of our conventional terms 
 for marriage a new and deeper significance. We 
 have immemorially spoken of marriage as a part- 
 nership ; but we are not apt to think of it as pri- 
 marily so. To the French mind, it seems to be. 
 
THE FAMILY 135 
 
 A marriage is too serious a matter to be dominated 
 by romantic notions of unimpeded inclination. 
 It involves too many questions of this work-a-day 
 w^orld — questions which can be met only by the 
 prudence of corporate good sense. There is no 
 reason why a partnership, even of the literal kind, 
 should not be confidently cordial and friendly; 
 there is no reason why you should generally 
 enter into one with any violence to your incli- 
 nation; and these considerations become more 
 potent than ever when the partnership involved 
 is the life-long and intimate partnership of wed- 
 lock. But all such considerations rather empha- 
 size than obscure the truth that the French ideal 
 of marriage, tenderly admirable though it be, is 
 primarily an ideal of cordial and friendly domestic 
 partnership. 
 
 At the time when this view of the matter was 
 defining itself in my mind, an eminent member 
 of the Academic Fran9aise gave utterance to an 
 opinion which occasioned considerable momentary 
 discussion, sometimes rather exuberantly merry 
 in form. Precisely how he expressed the opinion 
 I do not remember. What remains fixed in 
 my memory is that, after pondering on the 
 general problems of life so frequently evident in 
 the literature of France, he permitted himself to 
 conjecture that things might go better if people 
 
136 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 who got married were more apt to be in love 
 with each other. To an American mind, this 
 opinion seemed either commonplace or else para- 
 doxical in emphasis. The matrimonial infelicities 
 which occasionally occur in our country more fre- 
 quently arise from bUnd intensity of love in the 
 beginning than from prudent lack thereof. To 
 his French readers, on the other hand, the opin- 
 ion seemed either exasperatingly or divertingly 
 to contradict established principle. To them 
 marriage was obviously a matter of serious pru- 
 dence — to be contracted as reverently, as soberly, 
 and as much in the fear of God as circumstances 
 would allow. Love was doubtless an admirable 
 and beautiful thing ; but in its mundane aspect 
 not to be controlled by all the reverent and 
 God-fearing sobriety imaginable. In this case, 
 accordingly, academic wisdom seemed a frivo- 
 lous guide, counselling that in the most solemn 
 business of life we should do well to throw 
 prudence to the winds. 
 
 For when once a French marriage is accom- 
 plished, and the new family life begins, there 
 arise for the parties concerned the new duties 
 involved in their resolution of partnership. Any- 
 where these duties are of different kinds. Any- 
 where you may generally classify them in two 
 groups : one consists of the purely conjugal duties 
 
THE FAMILY 137 
 
 involved in the individual relations of the happy 
 or unhappy pair ; the other consists of the do- 
 mestic duties involved in their common relation 
 to their parents, their children, their friends, 
 and their servants, — in their household govern- 
 ment and in their dealings, of whatever kind, 
 with other people than themselves. Everywhere 
 in the world, no doubt, both kinds of duty are 
 recognized, frankly, willingly, and loyally. It 
 would everywhere be recognized, too, that the 
 more nearly these not needfully divergent phases 
 of duty harmonize, the better for everybody con- 
 cerned. But certainly, in America, the conjugal 
 phase of duty is held to be the more essential ; 
 in France, on the other hand, the more essential 
 phase of duty seems rather the domestic. The 
 difference goes deep ; it is a question of im- 
 memorial tradition, strengthened by all the force 
 of affectionate instinct. With us the strongest 
 of human ties is believed to be that which 
 attracts human beings to one another. With 
 them, the most durable of human ties is, with 
 equal fervor, believed to be that of parentage, of 
 common blood. Both conceptions are beautiful ; 
 both noble ; it were futile to trouble ourselves 
 with wondering which may immutably be held 
 the better. 
 
 For, in the full meaning of a term familiar to 
 
138 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 anyone who has ever read French Uterature, 
 both are wonderfully implied. In all human 
 language, I believe, there was never gathered 
 together more admirable significance than you 
 shall find, when you come emotionally to under- 
 stand them, in the French words honnete femme. 
 The Frenchwomen who deserve to be so called 
 are countless everywhere throughout France. 
 They are not only the most admirable type of 
 French womanhood ; they are the most perva- 
 sive, the most frequent, the most profoundly 
 characteristic. That they are not always the 
 most instantly evident to careless, to foreign, to 
 artistic eyes is partly because, like light and air, 
 you shall find them wherever you go ; and partly 
 because their unrepining devotion to their ab- 
 sorbing duties keeps them inconspicuous. They 
 would not be themselves if they were not con- 
 jugally faithful — and faithful not only in per- 
 sonal constancy, the sense most instantly implied' 
 by these terms, but faithful also in devotion to 
 their husbands throughout the complicated and 
 perplexing cares of incessant responsibility ; con- 
 jugal love would not be enough without life-long 
 conjugal friendship too. But all the conjugal 
 love and friendship imaginable would not suffice, 
 either, without faithful observance of domestic 
 duties, as well, in all their intricate range. An 
 
THE FAMILY 139 
 
 honest woman of France is not only a good 
 wife ; she remains, as she was in girlhood, a good 
 daughter, affectionately faithful to the family 
 which gave her birth. She is a good sister, too, 
 and a good friend, both to those whose ties of 
 blood are her own, and to those with whom her 
 marriage has brought her into relation almost as 
 dear as if it had been sanctioned by the full flood 
 of nature. She is a good mother, even more 
 surely still, cherishing with the purest of human 
 passion the children whom she has brought into 
 the world. And her very obligations to these 
 children, as well as to their father, compel her 
 also to be a good housewife — never to neglect 
 the humdrum details of her daily surroundings. 
 Unending, intricate, prosaic duty is the condition 
 of her whole existence ; and she does it, from 
 girlhood to old age, unselfishly, happily, cheer- 
 fully. For not the least of her convictions is 
 that she must make the life about her a pleas- 
 ant thing for those who have their part in it. 
 To fail in any of these ideals is to lack some- 
 thing of what an honest woman should be — no 
 less if the failure affect only domestic duty than 
 if it be concerned with conjugal. 
 
 And just as a good Frenchwoman must be 
 daughter, mother, sister as truly and as devot- 
 edly as she must be wife and partner, so a good 
 
140 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Frenchman must be not only husband but son, 
 too, and father and brother. Theirs is a far older 
 world than ours ; not necessarily a more intricate, 
 perhaps, but a far more systematic. It is more 
 /used than ours to the conditions which must 
 /everywhere surround and affect human nature. 
 I It has fewer dreams, more certainty of what must 
 befall us^glL^ It is far more wilUng to general- 
 ize the condition of any individual. It admits 
 more of what, however unwelcome, is inevitable. 
 It accepts limitations, bereavements, errors, — 
 not because they can ever lack poignancy, but 
 because with all their poignancy they are like 
 death and sunset, conditions of all human exist- 
 ence everywhere. The French, perhaps, have 
 strayed further from Eden than we. That need 
 not mean that we have travelled beyond them 
 on the road to Paradise. 
 
 Among ourselves, no doubt, the ethical ideal 
 is perfection. So it is everywhere, and not least 
 in France. The standards by which the French 
 would judge one another are at least as severe 
 as any which we should ever think of applying 
 among ourselves. But, even more surely than 
 we, the French are aware that humanity can 
 never be quite perfect. And when, in consider- 
 ing all the range of a man's life, they feel that 
 we should be a little blind to his faults and very 
 
THE FAMILY 141 
 
 kind to his virtues, their prepossession, in judg- 
 ing him, is not the same as ours. With us, 
 unless we are boldly unconventional, the chief of 
 all our human duties is assumed to be conjugal 
 rectitude. So long as a man faithfully observes 
 his marriage vows, the lenient opinion of America 
 will not so carefully scrutinize his conduct to his 
 parents and his children, his brothers and his 
 sisters. Above all, it will hardly trouble itself to 
 inquire whether he behaves agreeably at home, or 
 permits himself, within doors, the luxury of com- 
 plete freedom from uncomfortable self-control. 
 In France, on the other hand, where the family 
 is so deeply rooted in national affection, no man 
 can neglect his homely domestic duties without 
 braving public opinion. For this severity there 
 is a touch of compensation. So long as he does 
 his faithful best in his domestic relations, his 
 conjugal vagaries may perhaps be held secondary 
 — much as domestic vagaries might be held 
 among ourselves. 
 
 It is with no purpose of maintaining either 
 view to be better or worse than the other that I 
 am trying to make clear this deep difference of 
 ethical feehng. It is only for the purpose of 
 defining, so far as lies in my power, the extraor- 
 dinary intensity of love for the family which in- 
 spires all classes in France. One finds it often 
 
142 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 satirized in French literature, where complete de- 
 votion of family affection — particularly among 
 the lower classes — is frequently presented in 
 salient contrast with the lines of conduct to 
 which one or another member of the affectionate 
 family may be led by perversity or compelled by 
 circumstance to resort. One meets it, again and 
 again, in every phase of French life, and some- 
 times sui-prisingly. 
 
 Not long after I first arrived in Paris, I remem- 
 ber, a rather scandalous case happened for some 
 days to occupy the public prints — until some- 
 thing else distracted popular attention. A certain 
 unfortunate Parisian had been detected in a course 
 of gallantry unhappily remote from conjugal rec- 
 titude. The matter got into the courts, and in- 
 volved the pubhcation of letters which he had 
 written, in vain hope of averting a catastrophe. 
 In these he made no pretence of denying his mis- 
 behavior ; but he begged, most piteously, that it 
 should be forgiven, or forgotten, or hushed up — 
 as the case might be — on the ground that, if 
 matters were pushed to extreme, the most sacred 
 fact of his existence — his foyer — would be 
 broken up. Such an appalling event as this, 
 he implied, would make his life meaningless ; the 
 prospect was one which must induce even ven- 
 geance to relent. To me^ ^§ ^ stranger, these 
 
THE FAMILY 143 
 
 letters seemed inconceivably grotesque. How 
 anyone who had been so far from exemplary as 
 this errant husband could pretend to cherish 
 domestic sentiment, I could not imagine. Not 
 the least repellent phase of the whole thing was 
 what thus seemed to be his clumsy hypocrisy. 
 
 As I came to know the French better, I 
 began to feel how deeply mistaken I had been. 
 I may be so still ; for I do not remember having 
 verified my final impression of this incident 
 by referring it to any of my French friends. 
 Nothing, of course, could have averted, or much 
 have modified, the grotesque contrast between 
 the unhappy man's conduct and the considera- 
 tions which he invoked in his appeals for mercy. 
 But the appeals themselves ceased to seem trans- 
 parently hypocritical ; in the end I came rather 
 to believe them pathetically sincere. Whatever 
 he might deserve as an individual, I could see, 
 this human being, bom and bred in the intensity 
 of domestic tradition so genuine among all the 
 French, could not contemplate without passionate 
 grief the destruction of his domestic interior 
 where, for all that appeared to the contrary, his 
 kindly social qualities had made daily life pleas- 
 ant to his nearest — if not quite to his dearest. 
 So long as he had done his duty at home, he 
 could still be conscientious in believing himself 
 
144 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the only safe and sure protector and guide for his 
 unfortunate children. 
 
 In brief, as one grows familiar with the French, 
 one grows more and more wonderingly aware of 
 how their whole conception of the family, with all 
 the consecrated emotional sanction of the foyer ^ 
 makes them look upon themselves primarily not 
 as individuals, but rather as members each of 
 his own little society. The family is a partner- 
 ship, if you will, — a corporation, or a clan. It is 
 something more than the sum of the individuals 
 whom it comprises in all their human and fallible 
 complexity ; it has a dominant, supreme claim 
 to devotion for its own sake. The human beings 
 who compose it, like those who at any given 
 time may compose a nation, must pass into 
 oblivion ; but the family itself can outlive them 
 perennially. The first of human duties thus be- 
 comes not individual, but rather self-abnegating 
 and social. To this ideal of duty the French 
 are deeply loyal. If they had not followed it 
 throughout the generations with eager, unselfish, 
 persistent fidelity, their society could not exist in 
 the form which it has inherited fi-om their past 
 and is transmitting to their future. 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 
 
 THE considerations on which we have been 
 dwelling may seem to point towards the 
 conclusion that the French, as one grows 
 to know them, prove to lack individuality. This 
 is far from the case. We might equally have 
 fancied, from our consideration of their university 
 life, that they are deficient in emotion, or at least 
 in tenderness of sentiment. How deep that 
 error would have been our glances at their family 
 life must have served to show us. To understand 
 how individual they remain, amid all their willing 
 acceptance of traditional system, we must try to 
 sympathize with certain marked characteristics 
 of their national temperament. 
 
 This is not so easy a matter as it might seem. 
 An attempt sympathetically to understand any 
 foreign people, however cordially disposed, must 
 always be undertaken with delicacy — not least 
 because you can never be quite sure that you 
 may not inadvertently fall into errors, or infelici- 
 ties of phrase, more than likely in turn to bring 
 
 10 
 
146 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 about unhappy misconception on the part of the 
 friends whose character you are endeavoring to 
 explain, j Dehcate anywhere, such an effort seems 
 especially so when it concerns the French ; and 
 this for more reasons than one./ As the whole 
 world knows, they are full of sensitive feeling, 
 and, like all swiftly emotional human beings, they 
 are almost equally ready to welcome sympathy 
 and to resent misunderstanding. What seems 
 less generally understood is that when mere ac- 
 quaintance deepens into friendship, they often 
 prove, in comparison with Americans, remarkable 
 for the last quality which the simple ease of 
 their manners and the extreme frankness of their 
 mental habits might have led you to expect. 
 This is something very like personal reticence. 
 
 No people could be more free or more kindly 
 in their general talk ; none could receive you in 
 a spirit more genuinely and delightfully friendly ; 
 none, when they welcome you in their homes, 
 could make you feel the welcome more unre- 
 served, less clouded by any shade of consciousness 
 that you are not quite of themselves. And yet, 
 after many a pleasant hour with them, often full 
 of stimulating intellectual interest, you may find 
 yourself surprised, on reflection, that you have 
 not really grown to know these friends any better 
 than before. At least, if you have, it is not be- 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 147 
 
 cause they have told you anything more of their 
 inner lives ; it is only because the eager anima- 
 tion with which they have discussed matters 
 apart from themselves has incidentally implied 
 what has been going on within them. It would 
 be a grave error, I think, to conclude from this 
 that they have meant to hold you, as a visitor, 
 at any distance ; or even that, without intention, 
 they have in any manner done so. The better I 
 knew them, the less I was inclined to believe 
 that there was any shade of difference between 
 their treatment of me, as a foreign friend, and 
 their treatment of the French friends whom 
 they welcomed at the same time. Even among 
 themselves it seemed to me — in the full con- 
 fidence of life-long friendship — they were far 
 less apt than we to stray into speech, or even 
 into thoughts which, in distinction from con- 
 fident, might be called confidential. 
 
 It was more than once my privilege, for ex- 
 ample, to dine with a company of men who had 
 been friends from boyhood. Nothing could have 
 been more spontaneous than the eagerness of 
 their enjoyment in meeting each other familiarly 
 and in strengthening at each new meeting the tie 
 which had held them together through years of 
 busy maturity, in some instances crowned with 
 conspicuous success. Nothing could have been 
 
148 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 more delightful than their alert, helpful interest 
 in whatever concerned any of their little group 
 
 — their sympathy with the trials of one, their 
 complete enthusiasm when another achieved some 
 object of his effort, or some just reward for work 
 well done. One felt as one might feel when re- 
 ceived into the full and confident intimacy of 
 some affectionate club of congenial classmates, 
 graduated years ago from an American college. 
 Such an experience is not only pleasant; it is 
 tender. You remember those who have so wel- 
 comed you with something like their own conta- 
 gious sentiment of mutual good-will. And yet all 
 the while, when I was with these French friends, 
 
 — who were among those, I hope, who shall 
 always stay friends, — I was aware, even when 
 they were talking most freely with one another, 
 of something more like restraint than would 
 normally have characterized such a company in 
 America. It was not easy to define. It was 
 not reserve, yet it had some touch of reserve. 
 It seemed based on a deep, impulsive, instinctive 
 sentiment that the innermost truth of personal 
 feeling could not decently be revealed — that 
 such truth should be kept sacred for occasions 
 almost of confession, devout or mundane, as the 
 case might be. To unveil it, as we might un- 
 veil it at home, I sometimes came to fancy, 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 149 
 
 would have seemed to them Kke some shameless 
 exposure of spiritual nudity. I can find no 
 better name for the trait I am trying to define 
 than an instinctive modesty of the spirit. 
 
 Indefinite, elusive, though this peculiarity be, 
 in its teasing contrast with their voluble frank- 
 ness concerning other matters than spiritual, there 
 can be no doubt that something of the sort is 
 deeply characteristic of the French. However 
 infelicitously I may have explained it, I am sure 
 that it is there to explain. I am sure, too, that 
 one must understand it sympathetically, no 
 matter how little one can articulately define it, 
 before one can fairly understand the mutual mis- 
 apprehensions which have so long obscured the 
 personal intercourse of the French with their 
 neighbors, the English, or with us of America. 
 To put the matter most gently, there can be no 
 question that, broadly speaking, the French are 
 apt to appear in English or American eyes, and 
 the English or Americans in French eyes, as 
 somewhat deficient in a virtue equally respected 
 by all three — the virtue of candor. Now all 
 three of us understand that, so far as this opinion 
 concerns ourselves, it is mistaken. No fervor of 
 French conviction could ever bring Englishmen 
 and Americans honestly to agree that the typical 
 nature of England — which so far as this consid- 
 
150 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 eration goes includes that of America as well — 
 is perfidious and hypocritical. Nor could all 
 the virtuous indignation ever expressed across 
 the Channel or the Atlantic ever induce honest 
 Frenchmen to conceive their national character 
 as intentionally insincere. Nobody can doubt, 
 however, that these misconceptions have long 
 had, on both sides, the rooted sanction of tradi- 
 tion. Our present business, accordingly, is not 
 so much to disprove the traditions as to seek for 
 something which shall explain them. 
 
 This may be found, I think, in the different 
 aspects in which the national tempers of Eng- 
 land and of France regard the quality of candor. 
 The English ideal of candor, which I con- 
 ceive to be substantially ours of America too, 
 is intimately personal : a candid man we think 
 is one who reveals to us, at any moment, exactly 
 the condition of his inner life, in all its trouble- 
 some complexity of thought and emotion. So 
 long as he does not keep this hidden, we are 
 more than merciful to the manner in which he 
 may confront the specific problems of life and of 
 philosophy ; we see no everlasting reason, for ex- 
 ample, why he should put himself to any incon- 
 venient pains in order that his preaching and his 
 practice — or his assertions and the facts they 
 concern — should agree. If he let us know him- 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 151 
 
 self as unreservedly as he can, we believe him 
 completely candid. The French ideal of candor, 
 on the other hand, is rather intellectual than 
 personal. It admits, it almost demands, a degree 
 of personal reticence which, by tempers like ours, 
 might well be held to pass beyond the extreme 
 of prudence ; but when it confronts problems, 
 whether of life or of philosophy, it rigidly de- 
 mands a degree of intellectual frankness which 
 our less alert mental habit has hitherto allowed 
 us cheerfully to neglect. 
 
 The difference we are trying to understand is 
 not, to be sure, a contradiction; it is rather a 
 matter of ethical emphasis. Frenchmen and 
 Americans would equally admit that ideal can- 
 dor in all its heavenly perfection should be in- 
 tellectual and personal al ike._ To the French, 
 however, the intellectual phase of this virtue pre- 
 sents itself as the more essential ; to us the more 
 important phase of it seems to be the personal. 
 As a nation the French are no more untruthful 
 than we are hypocritical. Yet the fact that each 
 of us is apt, at least in unthinking moments, to 
 suspect the other of such addiction to national 
 vice goes deep in the characters of us both. And 
 beyond peradventure, this unlucky tendency to 
 misapprehension makes profound mutual sympa- 
 thy or insight no easy task for one who should 
 
152 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 attempt to explain to either nation the tem- 
 peramental nature of the other. 
 
 What is more, when anybody tries to give 
 some account of the national temperament of 
 the French, another difficulty presents itself, ob- 
 vious the moment you begin to travel about the 
 pleasant land of France. In America we have 
 an artless way of deploring the ignorance of 
 foreigners who suppose the United States to be 
 the home of a single and homogeneous people ; 
 we smile at the ingenuous way in which Euro- 
 peans confuse North and South, East and West; 
 we wonder how anybody can pretend to intelli- 
 gence who does not recognize as fundamental 
 such distinctions as we all feel at home to differ- 
 entiate New England from the Middle States, 
 Virginia from Ohio, California from Nebraska. 
 With equal artlessness we of America seldom 
 trouble ourselves to remember that France ex- 
 tends from the Netherlands to the Pyrenees, and 
 from the Atlantic to the Alps ; that it borders 
 on Belgium, on Germany, on Switzerland, on 
 Italy, on the Mediterranean, and on Spain ; that 
 even well within its borders no two of the old 
 provinces, whose names and traditions survive 
 almost as lustily as if they still had political 
 existence, have been alike either in origin or in 
 history. The little differences in our own coun- 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 153 
 
 try on which we lay such emphasis are, at most, 
 the results of two or three centuries. Those 
 which must meet the eye of any traveller in 
 France are sometimes older than Roman Gaul — • 
 lost in the inscrutable distance of prehistoric an- 
 tiquity. There are few regions in the world 
 where you shall find more incessant variety of 
 landscape than in France, known to most trav- 
 ellers within human memory only from the trim 
 lowlands which flit by the windows of railway 
 carriages between Calais and Paris, or between 
 Paris and some Continental frontier. Flanders, 
 Normandy, Brittany; Auvergne and the Ce- 
 vennes ; Provence, the Gironde, Perigord ; Bur- 
 gundy and Champagne, have each their distinct 
 aspects, as various as if they were in different 
 continents or different planets. Each has its own 
 immemorial forms of human expression as well ; 
 above all, its own architecture, most surely evi- 
 dent in the country churches, which still imply 
 everywhere the pervasive power of the Catholic 
 religion, once dominant throughout them all. 
 Each, too, has its own type of human beings, 
 ancestrally distinct from all the rest. If ever 
 country or nation were composite, it is the 
 France of this very day. 
 
 And yet, as you begin to know France with 
 some approach to familiarity, there grows upon 
 
154 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 you the feeling that this composite, incongruous 
 variety of humanity can somehow be generaUzed, 
 despite the luxuriance of its incompatible detail. 
 After all, our foreign prepossession is not so base- 
 less as it might sometimes seem. Partly, perhaps 
 chiefly, because of the dominance of Paris, — 
 that extreme centralization of national life which 
 attracts the strong and the restless from every 
 nook and corner of France toward the capital, — 
 you come to perceive that in many ways the 
 French are really at one in some such sense as 
 our foreign commonplace has immemorially sup- 
 posed. Years ago, no doubt, this impression 
 would have been somewhat deeper ; for it would 
 have been confirmed by obvious peculiarities of 
 personal appearance, even in Paris itself. How- 
 ever various among themselves, the French as a 
 people used to look their part. John Leech, for 
 example, caricatured them, in a spirit as far from 
 sympathetic or appreciative as that in which 
 French caricaturists were apt, in his time, to por- 
 tray the teeth and the taste of English girls. In 
 his least happy efforts, the while, you were bound 
 to admit that his wasp-waisted men, with peg- 
 top trousers, fantastic hats, and inconceivable 
 methods of hair-dressing, resembled what any 
 traveller might see in Paris and nowhere else. 
 This specifically French aspect of humanity. 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 155 
 
 most familiar perhaps in the waxed moustaches 
 of Napoleon III, began to disappear, I think, 
 with the fall of the Second Empire. Nowadays 
 it is so much a matter of the past that your first 
 impressions at Paris, whether in the streets, in 
 any public assembly, or in the pleasant society of 
 the French themselves, is rather of their likeness, 
 in look and in dress, to other people than of any 
 unfamiliar traits peculiarly their own. In feat- 
 ure, in obvious manner, in costume, they rarely 
 delight us with such oddities as we used to fancy 
 typically French. Until people begin to speak 
 you may often be at pains to know whether they 
 are going to address you in the language of 
 France or in your own. The vivacious, erratic 
 Frenchman of traditional fancy is as obsolete 
 as that unwinsomely insular sort of Englishman 
 who once justified the *' Goddam" of Beaumar- 
 chais. This change, I think, is not wholly 
 external. It goes far more deep than the ex- 
 tending prevalence of London fashions. It is 
 one of many evidences that the French are less 
 disposed than of old to consider the rest of 
 humanity as barbarians. But it does not mean, 
 in any sense whatever, that the French are not 
 still as French as they ever were. 
 
 In their national character at the present time, 
 however, the most instantly obvious trait is 
 
156 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 by no means what you conventionally expect. 
 Whatever else the French have been, they have 
 managed, throughout the past, so to present 
 themselves to foreign eyes that foreign tradition 
 is everywhere agreed in supposing them to be 
 at least volatile and gay, if not completely frivo- 
 lous, in their general manner and address. So 
 far is this from the present case that I can hardly 
 believe any people anywhere to seem more 
 deeply, more impressively, more startlingly seri- 
 ous than they now seem both in formal inter- 
 course and still more when you begin to know 
 them. This phase of their nature is perhaps 
 more evident among rather young people than 
 among people old enough to remember other 
 days than these on which we are fallen. One of 
 my most agreeable talks in France was with an 
 elderly gentleman in whom the solemnity of the 
 present time had not quite overcome the more 
 gay traditions of social and conversational habit 
 prevalent in his youth. With a deep sense of 
 the perplexity of the situation he expressed in 
 epigrammatically happy phrase his despairing 
 wonder as to what could become of his coun- 
 try when it had passed into the hands of a gen- 
 eration so austerely in earnest as the dutiful sons 
 then hospitably gathered to meet me at his table. 
 Their respectful reception of his melancholy 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 157 
 
 pleasantry seemed in some degree complicated 
 by regretful conviction that it was deplorably 
 deficient in seriousness. 
 
 Yet, however deep this seriousness of temper 
 now so evident among the younger French, it is 
 not a bit priggish ; it is as far as possible from 
 such smug religiosity as associates itself with 
 our conception of serious-minded youths in Eng- 
 land or America. It is in no wise incompatible 
 with courage and courtesy as profound and as 
 punctilious as any which ever illustrated the tra- 
 ditions of elder France ; and furthermore it in- 
 volves a surprising degree of self-control. A little 
 incident of travel will illustrate what I mean ; 
 the better I knew French people the more it 
 impressed me not as exceptional, but rather as 
 just what one might expect of them. 
 
 It happened that a well-educated man of 
 thirty or so — a licencie, who had formerly con- 
 templated an official career — found himself 
 compelled by the illness of a chauffeur to take 
 personal charge of an automobile which had 
 been let to some Americans for a journey 
 through country regions. Something went 
 wrong with the machine ; so, while his travel- 
 lers were at luncheon at a wayside inn, he at- 
 tempted, though not an expert machinist, the 
 troublesome mechanical task of putting it in 
 
158 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 order. Exactly what happened to him the party 
 in his care did not understand. A commotion 
 outside the inn called them forth to the painful 
 discovery that, by reason of some unexpected 
 start of the machinery, he had broken both bones 
 of his right forearm. The poor fellow was in 
 great suffering and deathly pale, but as quiet as 
 if nothing had happened to him. His first words 
 were to express intense regret that his awkward- 
 ness should have resulted in an accident which 
 must interrupt, for a little while, the pleasure of 
 their journey. In all simplicity, his only thought 
 seemed to be not of his own misfortune but of 
 the inconvenience it involved for others. The 
 nearest medical attendance was in a large town, 
 six or eight miles away. The only means of get- 
 ting him thither was a jolting country cart. For 
 some half an hour after it stood ready he refused 
 to start, devoting himself, in spite of his pain, to 
 what he declared to be obvious duties — such as 
 arranging that his automobile should be duly 
 stored in a barn until it could be sent for, and 
 despatching telegrams for someone who should 
 come, as soon as possible, to replace him. Then 
 he finally consented to jolt oflT toward the distant 
 surgeon. He had not uttered a syllable of com- 
 plaint ; he had not shown a trace of excitement ; 
 his only reference to the accident was a re- 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 159 
 
 peated regret that it must inevitably annoy other 
 people. 
 
 They had to follow him by railway two or 
 three hours later. On their arrival at the hotel 
 where he had been driven they found that he 
 had been taken to a hospital, for the reason that 
 in the surgeon's opinion the setting of his arm 
 would involve a degree of pain requiring anaes- 
 thetics. They anxiously pursued him thither, 
 to find that he was no longer there. When he 
 had discovered that anaesthetics would confine 
 him to his bed for some hours, it appeared he 
 had insisted that the bones should be set without 
 them. He had things to do, he had informed the 
 surgeons, which would not permit him the lux- 
 ury of lying still, even for a single day. He had 
 borne the operation without a moan or a quiver. 
 Then he had hurried off to the nearest telegraph 
 office. Before he reported to his employers at 
 their hotel, late in the evening, he had arranged 
 that their automobile should be brought on to 
 them at once, and had received assurance that 
 a man who could replace him as driver should 
 start to do so the very next day. Nothing could 
 have surpassed his quiet, self-neglectful devotion 
 to duty ; unless, indeed, it were the simplicity 
 with which he seemed to assume it a matter of 
 course. 
 
160 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 And yet, a few days before, these same Amer- 
 ican travellers had been startlingly reminded that 
 he had a high temper. A French gentleman, 
 having lost a pair of spectacles at a hotel where 
 both parties were passing the night, had so far 
 forgotten himself as to inquire whether they 
 might not perhaps have been stolen by the chauf- 
 fem* who had placed himself at the disposal of 
 the American tourists. His suspicion, it may be 
 added, was perhaps faintly justified by the range 
 of anecdote, often without foundation, which 
 prejudices the reputation for minor honesty of 
 professional chauffeurs in France. Before the 
 inquiry had been pushed, the missing spectacles 
 had been discovered under a pillow in their 
 owner's bedroom ; and before the suspicion had 
 reached the knowledge of the innocent youth 
 suspected of petty thievery, their owner was 
 miles away in his own car. He had left behind, 
 however, a record of his name and address ; and 
 these the youth was presently observed to be 
 noting down. At the moment, he quietly ex- 
 plained to the head of his American party, he 
 was not in a position which would quite justify 
 him in demanding satisfaction of a gentleman ; 
 but his employment in his present capacity was 
 accidental and temporary — an act of courtesy 
 on his part to his employers and to their clients. 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 161 
 
 Not only his brother but his brother-in-law, too, 
 were officers in the army. As soon as his present 
 business was finished he should ask them to put 
 themselves in communication with this gentle- 
 man who had taken the liberty of doubting his 
 character. It was probable that when the situ- 
 ation was explained the gentleman would take 
 the occasion to express regret. If not, he would 
 have to fight a duel. 
 
 Whether this incident led to anything further, 
 I have never happened to know. It clearly 
 showed that, for all the self-control of the man 
 when duty was concerned, the traditional anima- 
 tion of French temper is no fiction. If worst 
 came to worst, it meant that the two Frenchmen 
 involved would by and by meet one another 
 somewhere, in the presence of friends and of 
 surgeons, and would cross swords or fire pistols. 
 It was highly improbable that, in any event, 
 either would be more than scratched. The mere 
 fact of the meeting would suffice to settle a 
 rather delicate point of honor to everybody's 
 satisfaction. The parties, thus introduced to 
 each other's notice, might perhaps become good 
 friends. And, according to the view of such 
 matters now conventionally accepted among 
 ourselves, the whole aflfair would have been 
 
 ridiculous. 
 
 u 
 
162 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Again, there is no reason why we should 
 trouble ourselves to consider whether our opinion 
 is wiser than theirs or not. Beyond dispute, 
 the two opinions are widely different ; and until 
 we try to take theirs we cannot pretend sympa- 
 thetically to understand what manner of men 
 they are. In one point, French and English 
 agree : whoever does not cherish a sense of per- 
 sonal honor is not exactly what either of us 
 would call a gentleman. In past times gentle- 
 men have been apt to resent any imputation on 
 their honor by challenge to mortal combat. Dur- 
 ing the nineteenth century this custom has dis- 
 appeared in both England and America; in 
 France it has been so modified that contemporary 
 duels rarely hurt anybody. Wherefore we have 
 grown to suppose that with the French the whole 
 thing has become a mere pretence ; just as they 
 seem disposed to think that, with us, the sense 
 of honor has fallen into abeyance. They are 
 mistaken, of course ; but no more so, I believe, 
 than we are. The diiference really goes deep in 
 our national tempers ; it turns on the fact that 
 they are at once more searchingly intelligent 
 than we, and far more disposed to believe in the 
 importance of established system. The only cir- 
 cumstance which we take the trouble to notice 
 in modern French duels is that they seldom do 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 163 
 
 much harm ; the fact apparently uppermost in the 
 French mind is the obviously implied one that, 
 whether a duellist come to any manner of grief 
 or not, a man cannot take part in a duel without 
 deliberate risk of his life. His act, though prob- 
 ably only conventional, may turn out to be mortal. 
 And even though, in general, it happily prove a 
 mere formality, it involves, on the part of all 
 concerned, a brave acknowledgment that anyone 
 pretending to membership of civilized society 
 must hold himself responsible for any deviation 
 from the code of conduct which its traditions 
 prescribe and which its existence involves. 
 
 So far as general behavior goes, I think, there 
 is little to choose between us. Our neglect of 
 punctilio during the past century has not resulted 
 in wide increase of misconduct. Their insistence 
 on punctilio, as was evident in the incident of 
 the traveller's spectacles, has not resulted in uni- 
 versally faultless behavior. And neither they 
 nor we are so much given as our ancestors were 
 to killing people with whom we may happen to 
 disagree. We should not be ourselves, however, 
 if we did not bluntly see only the formal ex- 
 terior of their insistence on regularity of system ; 
 and they would not be what they are if they did 
 not find our indifference to system reprehensible. 
 They are far more alive than we to all that formal 
 
164 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 system implies. Which is one chief reason why 
 they care so much for it. 
 
 This passion of the French for system is among 
 their most pervasive traits as a nation. The 
 considerations on which we have just been touch- 
 ing have reminded us how animated their temper 
 remains when chance involves any violation of 
 the respect due to their persons or to their dig- 
 nity. In matters of this kind, any of us can 
 easily sympathize with their impulsive reaction 
 of feeling, however Uttle we may approve the 
 form which their acts of resentment take. A 
 more puzzling phase of their emotional sensi- 
 tiveness appears when the exciting cause of it 
 is such as we should personally hold second- 
 ary. Anybody can understand why men should 
 grow highly excited when personal dignity or 
 personal interest is concerned. It is harder to see 
 why mature people need lose their heads and their 
 tempers over abstract propositions. Yet hardly 
 anything is more frequent among the French, 
 with their persistent attachment to intellectual 
 candor. The circumstance most Ukely to rouse 
 them into animated display of feeling is any- 
 thing which should appear to threaten, or even 
 to call in question, the validity or the pros- 
 perity of any system — established or ideal — 
 sanctioned by their approval. 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 165 
 
 Among the general questions frequently dis- 
 cussed nowadays in France, for example, is that 
 of divorce. It happened one day to occur at 
 the house of an intelligent and interesting woman 
 who had previously impressed me as remarkable 
 for repose of manner. This range of speculation 
 revealed her in a new character. She became 
 almost dramatically animated in her intensity. 
 For various reasons — we were not all of the 
 same way of religious thinking, for one — the 
 ecclesiastical aspect of divorce was not mentioned. 
 The purely social aspect of it was quite enough 
 to excite her to an eloquence which I cannot pre- 
 tend to reproduce. The substance of her dis- 
 course, however, was too vivid to be forgotten. 
 She took, as her example, a concrete, though 
 apparently imaginary case. Suppose, she said, 
 that a man marries a young girl of irreproachable 
 character, an ideally honest woman. Their life 
 has its hardships and its trials. The wife is not 
 only burdened with her domestic dijj:ies — the 
 monotony of her housekeeping, the bearing and 
 the care of her children ; as an honest woman 
 she is the constant counsellor of her husband in 
 the questions which perplex his own career and 
 his conduct of the family fortunes. The years 
 pass. The penalty of her devotion to duty is that 
 it must leave its trace on the charms of her per- 
 
166 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 son. She is no longer young, and she looks her 
 age. Her husband, meanwhile, is not yet so old 
 as to be insensible to the allurements of youth. 
 A young girl, somewhat older than his daughter, 
 becomes a member of the household, in the char- 
 acter of governess. The honest wife admits her 
 without suspicion to the foyer — the family 
 circle. The husband cannot fail to find her ap- 
 pearance more attractive than that of his elderly 
 mate. The girl proves to be of an intriguing 
 disposition. Well, that sort of thing is bad 
 enough at best ; but under the time-honored sys- 
 tem of marriage, the governess of intriguing dis- 
 position can be sent away, and — even if the 
 husband prove so errant as not to relinquish his 
 interest in her — at least the foyer is safe. What 
 is more, this unlucky experience will have taught 
 the wife to prevent such domestic misadventure 
 in future. 
 
 But suppose such liberty of divorce as your 
 self-styled reformers seem to urge. They would 
 stop at nothing short of absolute freedom in the 
 matter of elective affinities ; that needs no dis- 
 cussion. The governess of intriguing disposition 
 will be all smiles for the fatuous husband, and all 
 smiles at the fading wife — the fading of whose 
 charms may well be hastened by such vexation. 
 The poor woman will weep in secret, which will 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 167 
 
 be unbecoming. She may have the artlessness to 
 imitate some pretty detail of the governess's cos- 
 tume, which will evidently make her look ridicu- 
 lous. She may so far forget herself as to complain, 
 or even to plead ; which will render her husband 
 still more sensible of the coy charms of the gov- 
 erness with a turn for intrigue. And meanwhile 
 this demure young person will be far too intelli- 
 gent to rate her charms at anything less than their 
 full value — legitimate marriage. One can see 
 the whole pathetic story at a glance. It is need- 
 less to dwell on details. The infatuated husband 
 applies for divorce. As a matter of course, he 
 obtains it ; to deny it would seem to the authori- 
 ties a tyrannical denial of their cherished principle 
 of liberty in marriage ; according to them, mar- 
 riage should subsist only so long as it remains 
 agreeable to both parties concerned. The devoted 
 wife, prematurely old from suffering and from her 
 unfailing attention to domestic duty, is sent to 
 live and die as she may on what may chance to be 
 left of her inconsiderable dowry. The triumphant 
 governess of an intriguing turn takes her place at 
 the foyer, as its duly wedded mistress. A new 
 family succeeds the old one, whose interests are 
 thus utterly ruined. Anyone can see that such 
 incidents must lead straight to social chaos. 
 It is possible that the vividness of my friend's 
 
168 THE PRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 narration has betrayed me into some exaggera- 
 tion of her hypothetical case. If so, it is a tribute 
 to the art of her improvised discourse. For her 
 story carried one with it unresisting. She did 
 not pretend that it was true ; but it was intel- 
 lectually conceivable, to the most eloquent de- 
 tail, and each new detail made it more like a 
 reality. What is more, she appeared to feel that 
 she was presenting to us a pathetic and valid 
 argument in favor of the orthodox principles of 
 marriage. 
 
 Of itself, no doubt, this httle incident had 
 no importance. Very likely it was forgotten 
 in an hour by everyone else who happened to 
 be present at the tea-table thereby enlivened. 
 It has lingered in my memory not because it 
 was exceptional, but for the contrary reason 
 that it was so deeply, so typically French. Else- 
 where than in France, such a discussion, at least 
 under just these circumstances, would have 
 lacked, I think, several of its salient character- 
 istics. Throughout her vivid statement of an 
 imaginary case this Frenchwoman was intensely, 
 contagiously serious. She made one feel as if 
 a great principle were really at stake ; as if the 
 occasion forbade any manner of levity ; as if 
 what we thought, when she had finished, would 
 affect the future of society and of morals. It 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 169 
 
 was just such a tirade as we have been accustomed 
 to think pieces of stage convention in the comedies 
 of the younger Dumas. Again, her views con- 
 cerning the subject in dispute defined themselves 
 with the utmost precision. Not an outhne was 
 blurred, not a detail was neglected ; you felt as 
 if you had been privileged to look through an 
 intellectual microscope inconceivably delicate in 
 adjustment. Incidentally, too, her intellectual 
 candor was uncompromising ; she frankly recog- 
 nized and plainly set forth a range of human 
 error which the custom, and indeed the impulse, 
 of an English or an American woman in similar 
 circumstances would have disposed her to ignore 
 or to veil. The French state of mind in this 
 matter has no shade of conscious effrontery; 
 neither has the English or American any con- 
 scious tinge of hypocrisy. There is a deep dif- 
 ference, however, between people, like ourselves, 
 comfortably disposed to believe that things are 
 as they ought to be until the contrary is shown, 
 and people, like the French, who frankly recog- 
 nize that things are as they are — in which truth 
 they find no reason for pretending things as they 
 are to be what they ought to be. The formal 
 conventions of life are in many respects similar 
 with us and with them. The difference is that 
 we of English habit, never prying beneath the 
 
170 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 conventions, do not value them merely as con- 
 ventions, and hardly appreciate their full impor- 
 tance except in cases where we complacently 
 find them to coincide with actuality. The French, 
 on the other hand, look beneath conventions with 
 uncompromising keenness, and candidly admit 
 what they discern there. This, on the whole, 
 they most honestly regard as far too dangerous 
 not to be repressed by all imaginable insistence 
 on conventional system. Conventions to them 
 are not precisely truths, but neither are they 
 pretences. They are the fortifications of so- 
 ciety, neglected or abandoned only at the risk of 
 social peril. In which consideration we may find 
 something to explain my friend's impassioned 
 animation when she stated her extreme uncom- 
 promising conclusions about the question of 
 divorce. 
 
 Whatever she discerned was vividly distinct ; 
 the simile of the microscope comes to mind 
 again. You felt amazed at the precision of her 
 perception and at the intensity with which she 
 concentrated her powers on the task. But, as 
 with the microscope, — or with a telescope, either, 
 if the comparison seem at all invidious, — the field 
 of observation was rigidly defined. You could 
 not have grasped what lay within it unless, for 
 the moment, you had neglected what lay outside. 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 171 
 
 The very limitation of her sketch enabled her to 
 make it masterly. At the same time this limita- 
 tion prevented it from being comprehensive. The 
 moment you stopped to consider her imaginary 
 case, you could see that there was nothing to 
 prove it typical, any more than there would 
 have been if one who should wish to generalize 
 about the heavens should base his reasoning on 
 what he saw through a telescope directed to some 
 single point thereof, undisturbed by the swimming 
 passage of planets. And yet my friend would 
 not have been so admirably French as she was, 
 if she had not assumed her hypothesis to be 
 comprehensive, and if the conclusion she drew 
 from it had not appeared to her, at the moment, 
 absolutely, universally, conclusively true. 
 
 For, as you come to know the French, you 
 grow to feel that no quaUty is more deeply char- 
 acteristic than their passionate devotion to what, in 
 the widest sense of the word, we may call philoso- 
 phy. The trait in question, which has its origin 
 in an intellectual activity far beyond our habitual 
 conception, involves immense divergence of opin- 
 ion and of conviction. As every one knows, there 
 has never been a people less disposed than these 
 same French to remain contentedly unanimous. 
 And their uncompromising love for precision of 
 phrase has long made the term ^* philosophy " 
 
172 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 suggest, at least among themselves, something 
 not at peace with dogmatic religion. Philosophy, 
 as I conceive it at this moment, embraces such 
 cosmic and social conceptions as those to which 
 they jthus seem generally to confine it; it em- 
 braces as well, however, the scholastic definition 
 of philosophy as the handmaiden of theology. 
 The real distinction between devotion to phi- 
 losophy like theirs and our habitual neglect of 
 it Ues in the fact that a Frenchman is rarely 
 content until he has reduced his yiews of Ufe 
 to a system, and that, so long as afFaSTn this 
 wicked world proceed with reasonable prosper- 
 ity, we see no particular reason why we should 
 trouble ourselves to think about them. We are 
 content with commonplace, with common sense; 
 the French are passionately, alertly eager to 
 understand, to explain, to control. 
 
 Accordingly, whatever the shade of your 
 French friend's opinion, you shall seek far for 
 a Frenchman in whose heart two assumptions are 
 not so rooted that they seem to him, as a matter 
 of course, sanctioned by all the force of passion- 
 ate emotion. The first is that life, in all its be- 
 wildering complexity, can be generaUzed. Every 
 imaginable phase of it may be simpUfied if we 
 will, until we can perceive it clearly, firmly, 
 finally, in all the precision of fixed, immutable 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 173 
 
 system. How deeply this conviction is rooted in 
 the temper of the French is evident from the sub- 
 stantial conservatism which underlies all the vag- 
 rant radicalism of their utterance in recent years. 
 It is implied in their intense devotion to system 
 in such external matters as those which we have 
 considered together — the structure of their uni- 
 versities, their acceptance of national centraliza- 
 tion, and the orderliness of their social structure. 
 It appears even in that less obvious trait of their 
 character touched on when we began our present 
 attempt to understand them more intimately. 
 Their personal reticence, in its marked contrast 
 to their philosophic candor, implies, as we come 
 to appreciate it sympathetically, their devotion to 
 system. Even in the most friendly intercourse, 
 they regard the vagaries of individual temper as 
 subordinate to the larger truths, the general prin- 
 ciples, which we must recognize and support as 
 the true guides of life. The assumption that 
 everything can be generalized and reduced to 
 system lies at the very root of their emotional 
 existence. 
 
 Along with this lies a second assumption, 
 quite as dear to them : even though fact be 
 unwelcome, they ardently believe that you 
 must never shrink from acknowledging it. 
 In this philosophic conviction there is noth* 
 
174 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ing at all to preclude the polite vagaries of 
 social amenity. As is the case with any race 
 where society has persisted long enough to 
 make the inconveniences of earthly accident 
 habitual, their respect for casuistry is instinctive ; 
 and their appreciation of the rudeness inseparable 
 from excessive personal candor, in word or in act, 
 is keen. The very fact that things are not always 
 what they seem, however, is one to be candidly 
 admitted. To see things as they are, before we 
 can reduce them to system, is evidently a prime 
 duty of intelligence. In this passion for fact, 
 taken together with their passion for system, we 
 may find, I think, an explanation of what we have 
 been apt to feel the bewildering paradox of their 
 national character. 
 
 For when we come to consider together these 
 two almost equally ardent philosophic impulses, 
 we cannot long avoid perceiving that they are 
 contradictory. What is true concerning fact and 
 system throughout human experience remains 
 true as ever in France, for all the efforts of the 
 French to reconcile them. No philosophical 
 formula was ever so final as to include all con- 
 ceivable fact. Unforeseen facts occur every- 
 where. Radium, for instance, seems at this 
 moment to be irradiating unexplored regions 
 among the placid generalizations of physical 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 175 
 
 science. And you cannot forever protect prin- 
 ciples by the conventional assertion that an ex- 
 ception only proves the rule. For the essence of 
 an ideal rule is that it shall be unexceptionable. 
 
 Now, when facts fail to agree with systems, 
 you may take one of three distinct courses, be- 
 sides this makeshift one of saying that the in- 
 trusive facts are only what everybody ought to 
 expect ; and French temper, with its impulsive 
 love of precision, is even more disposed than ours 
 to take one of the three. Either you may at- 
 tempt forcibly to reduce fact to system ; or you 
 may virtually ignore fact, admitting it, if you like, 
 but treating it as negligible; or, if fact prove too 
 stubborn, the final course open to you is to re- 
 form your system, in order to make it correspond 
 with fact. If your philosophic impulse persist, 
 you must almost certainly take one of these 
 courses in the end. Which you shall take in 
 any given case depends on extremely compli- 
 cated conditions, among others on the incalcu- 
 lable peculiarities and vagaries of your individual 
 temperament. Which any Frenchman will take, 
 it is hard to predict. The one sure thing is that, 
 when his course is once chosen, he will take it 
 so fervently that anyone who takes another will 
 seem to him an enemy. 
 
 To illustrate what I mean, I may perhaps 
 
176 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 touch on a matter which, as the whole world 
 knows, was deeply disturbing every comer of 
 French society at the time when I was in 
 France. It still involved such intense feeling 
 that one could not tactfully speak of it. All 
 the more, one felt it close to the surface of 
 emotion ever5rwhere ; and one felt, as well, that 
 people of quite equal honesty — equally good 
 gentlemen, I mean, in our best sense of the 
 word — were to be found on both sides. From 
 our present point of view, this was the most 
 interesting phase of it. I refer, of course, to 
 the Dreyfus affair. Amid all its confusion, two 
 facts remained clear: one was that everybody, 
 having come to his own conclusion about it, was 
 honestly convinced that everybody who had come 
 to a different conclusion was reprehensible ; the 
 other was that no foreign visitor, whatever his 
 personal sympathy, could quite admit this to 
 be the case. 
 
 For the dispute really turned, I think, not 
 on questions of fact, but on one of principle. 
 Everybody admitted that the established system 
 of law, having regularly accepted certain state- 
 ments of fact, had proceeded to condemn an 
 individual who stoutly asserted his innocence. 
 Everybody admitted that some contrary and 
 unofficial statements of f^ct had subsequently 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 177 
 
 brought the justice of his sentence into question. 
 In other words, it was plain that the regular 
 working of a system did not agree with an 
 alleged state of fact. What is more, efforts to 
 suppress the alleged facts became out of the 
 question. One of two courses must be chosen : 
 Either the incompatible facts must be denied 
 by the supporters of the system, very much as 
 the Christian Scientists of America now deny 
 malady, under the convenient name of "error," 
 or else the system itself must be exposed to hos- 
 tile scrutiny. The true question was whether 
 the case should be reopened after sentence had 
 been duly passed. 
 
 This seems to me the crucial point. The com- 
 plications which ensued were embittered by contro- 
 versy, until the mutual sentiments of Frenchmen 
 grew as rancorous as those of Americans were 
 during our Civil War of forty years ago. The 
 reason for this animosity seems to me that both 
 sides, with eager French love for logical sys- 
 tem, regarded the question as an abstract one. 
 To each it turned on unquestioning belief that 
 a familiar legal maxim ought at any cost to be 
 carried to its extreme conclusion. The difference 
 between the parties was that, while both would 
 probably have admitted both maxims, one held 
 that the fundamental principle of public conduct 
 
 12 
 
178 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 is Fiat justitia^ mat coelum^ and the other that it 
 is rather De minimis non curat lex. At bottom, 
 I think, there were these two distinct impulses, 
 neither quite precisely formulated, and both turn- 
 ing not only on political conviction and on social 
 limitation, but also on pecuUarities of individual 
 temperament. One sort of man assumes, as a 
 matter of course, that the rights of the individual 
 should be maintained at all hazard, no matter 
 what happens to institutions. Another sort of 
 man believes institutions so needful for the wel- 
 fare of society that occasional vn'ong to an indi- 
 vidual — even though in itself deplorable — is 
 of no importance in comparison with loyal main- 
 tenance of the system which has had the misfor- 
 tune to inflict it. When a conflict between these 
 contradictory assumptions takes place, it is sure 
 to be violent anywhere. 
 
 More than anywhere else in France. The dis- 
 pute once started, everyone seemed impelled to 
 consider it much as my French friend, at whom 
 we glanced a little while ago, considered the 
 question of divorce. The fundamental position 
 was assumed to be axiomatic, morally beyond 
 dispute, sacred. Facts which seemed to justify 
 the position — whether real or imaginary, or based 
 on evidence, on hearsay, or on scandal — were 
 eagerly pounced on. Principle and facts were 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 179 
 
 used in impassioned processes of logical reason- 
 ing. Whatever this reasoning might lead to — 
 including the villainy of anyone who did not 
 agree with it — became an object of faith. The 
 actual point in dispute, at least as I apprehend 
 it, was quite lost from sight. Yet, in final 
 analysis, you could always reduce it to the ques- 
 tion of whether the case ought to have been re- 
 opened. People whose faith in institutions was 
 paramount thought not ; to reopen it would be 
 to question, to weaken the authority of the law, 
 the army, the Church. In any given case, of 
 course, the Church, the army, or the law might 
 err; nothing on earth is free from danger of 
 error. But the less we dwell on this, and the 
 more we insist on the benefits we derive from 
 such institutions, and on how fatally the weaken- 
 ing of them might injure civilization, the better 
 for everybody. In comparison with the stability 
 of society, the interests of any individual are 
 negligible. De minimis non curat lex. In con- 
 tradiction to this view, people who were disposed 
 to care more for individuals than for institutions 
 held that the only right course was to scrutinize 
 afresh every fact in the case, old and new. If 
 institutions had involved injustice to anybody, 
 so much the worse for institutions. Fiat justitia^ 
 mat coelum. 
 
180 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Of course, there were immense complications. 
 Dogmatic attachment to different systems of 
 rehgion or of pohtics entered into the matter. 
 CathoHcs and Jews, Radicals and Reactionaries, 
 naturally arrayed themselves against each other, 
 and found in the fact fresh warrant for their be- 
 lief that their opponents were villainous. And 
 everybody was most bitter of all against people 
 who on general principles should have taken his 
 side, and who, whatever their reason, took the 
 opposite. For, as we have seen, the choice of 
 sides often turned on questions of individual 
 temperament. Neutrality became impossible, 
 until even an attempt, like ours, to consider the 
 matter impartially, in distant perspective, may 
 probably seem partisan to everybody concerned. 
 In any event, if it should be brought to their at- 
 tention, it would seem immensely incomplete — 
 neglecting innumerable considerations essential 
 to valid opinion concerning this complicated 
 matter. Had our object been to arrive at any 
 conclusion about the case, or even to state the 
 facts plainly, we should certainly have had to con- 
 sider it with more deliberation. Already, how- 
 ever, we have done enough, I think, for our present 
 purpose. This was only to point out some deep 
 characteristics of French temperament. From 
 the very moment when the case was first brought 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 181 
 
 forward, the French took sides, with precision, 
 with logic, and with intense animosity. Nothing 
 in their recent history can better illustrate their 
 characteristics when they are brought face to face 
 with a situation where — in any sense of the terms 
 — system and fact are shown to be so far at odds 
 that readjustment is needful. They passionately 
 love system ; their alertness of intelligence makes 
 them passionately fond of reasoning; they passion- 
 ately desire to philosophize everything into order ; 
 yet all the while they insist with equal passion on 
 recognizing fact. When fact and system clash, 
 accordingly, the French are stirred to a degree 
 which at once intensifies and unduly concentrates 
 their processes of reasoning. And thus arise, 
 throughout the course of their history, their 
 tragic antagonisms of conviction. 
 
 For a Frenchman would be something more, 
 or something less, than characteristically French, 
 if at any given moment his convictions on any 
 subject in serious dispute had not an intensity 
 rare among other peoples. Whatever the ques- 
 tion, his first impulse is to define his views of it. 
 As a matter of conscience, his efforts to define 
 them will not rest until they have resulted in 
 a precision of which the very clearness involves 
 limitation. If this were not the case, he could 
 hardly be true to himself; if a bit untrue to him- 
 
182 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 self, if not unflinching in his intellectual candor, 
 he could not be an honest man. Almost un- 
 knowingly, then, he proceeds to make for himself 
 a new little logical system. He honestly believes 
 in it, at least for the while. He cherishes it, even 
 to its remote implications, not only with instinc- 
 tive devotion to his principles, but also with some 
 such jealousy as that with which creative artists 
 or parents cherish superficially unwinsome off- 
 spring. At any given moment he could not be 
 himself if he were not uncompromising. To 
 tolerate convictions or opinions contrary to his 
 own would be to yield himself contemptibly to 
 a contradiction of right and of truth, surely mis- 
 chievous and often wicked. 
 
 If I have made myself clear, I have perhaps 
 indicated how some of the most obvious peculi- 
 arities of the French, often puzzling to a foreigner, 
 and surely less menacing to national strength than 
 a foreigner would imagine, spring from an excess 
 of their national virtue — intellectual candor. As 
 individuals or as partisans they never quite ap- 
 preciate the limitation, as distinguished from the 
 precision, of their opinions and their convictions. 
 The results of this are familiar to everybody. 
 Superficially they take the form of demonstra- 
 tions, amusing or alarming to foreign spectators, 
 as the case may be. During the winter when T 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 183 
 
 was in Paris, for example, the teacher of history 
 at a secondary school gave expression to some 
 opinion about Jeanne d'Arc which offended the 
 prejudices of his pupils, boys sixteen or eighteen 
 years old. These youths accordingly hooted down 
 his lectures, refused to attend his classes, and as- 
 sembling in public places indulged themselves in 
 comically eloquent tributes to the character of the 
 Maid of Orleans. This particular incident, I be- 
 lieve, was settled by transferring the obnoxious 
 schoolmaster to an institution of learning where 
 the boys were more disposed to agree with his 
 political bias ; but when the characteristics dis- 
 played by these rebellious youths show them- 
 selves more profoundly among their elders, the 
 matter cannot be so easily disposed of Through- 
 out French history they have involved terrible 
 mutual misapprehensions on the part of men 
 equally honest and equally admirable. More 
 than anything else, I think, they have led to 
 those fatally uncompromising dissensions which 
 again and again have prevented tolerant co- 
 operation at crucial moments. The deepest weak- 
 ness of the French as a people seems to be their 
 inability to take confidently united action. They 
 know one another better than they can know any 
 foreigners. That is one reason why their history 
 has taken such a course that an English writer, 
 
184 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 who knows them well, has lately declared, in dis* 
 cussing their republican doctrine of fraternity, 
 that no Frenchman can ever hate a foreigner 
 quite so intensely as he hates Frenchmen of othei 
 opinions than his own. 
 
 At a French dinner-party I happened to hear 
 a phrase which, in this connection, seems to me 
 deeply significant. It was during those dis* 
 turbances about Jeanne d'Arc indulged in bj 
 schoolboys. Their master was believed to hav< 
 intimated that, according to his reading of th(; 
 evidence — duly confirmed by the decree of thi 
 ecclesiastical court which sent her to the stake 
 — her character left something to be desired. 
 His pupils, when you began to sift their elo- 
 quence, appeared to maintain — in accordance 
 with the decree of the equally regular ecclesiasti- 
 cal court which rehabilitated her memory — that 
 she was blameless to the point of beatitude. 
 The question gave rise to animated, though 
 friendly, debate among a company of French 
 people assembled at table. Everybody there 
 was alertly intelligent, everybody knew his his- 
 tory with surprising accuracy, everybody took 
 eager interest in the somewhat academic contro- 
 versy ; and the range of opinion extended from not 
 guilty, through not proven, to guilty. In the 
 midst of the dispute one of the company gave 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 185 
 
 utterance to a principle apparently accepted as 
 axiomatic by everybody present: — "// riy a 
 qu'une veritey' he exclaimed : " There is only one 
 truth " ; — a fact is a fact, or it is not ; that is 
 the whole story. 
 
 Everybody assented ; and the discussion went 
 on, so far as I remember, to no definite conclusion. 
 For my part, 1 did not venture to interpose. Yet 
 I felt at the moment, as I have felt ever since, that 
 no incident could better have illustrated at once 
 the uncompromising intellectual candor of the 
 French, and the most insidious limitation of it. 
 
 Take, for instance, the case then in dispute, 
 that of Jeanne d'Arc. Concerning her actual 
 conduct in this world, of course, the aphorism 
 was completely true. Either she was spotless, 
 or she was not ; and by carefully studying the 
 evidence about her we may very likely reach, 
 in the end, a pretty substantial opinion, one way 
 or the other. But suppose for the moment that 
 the weight of the evidence should prove to be 
 against her; suppose that, as a matter of his- 
 tory, we were forced to admit her frailty. That 
 would doubtless be a truth ; and in her own time 
 it might have been held pretty comprehensive. 
 Nowadays, however, the case is different. It 
 will soon be five hundred years since she gave 
 up the ghost in the market-place of Rouen. 
 
186 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Throughout these five centuries a crescent tradi- 
 tion — a legend, if you will — has consecrated 
 her memory. Even though she were proved in 
 fact to have been worse than scandal ever pre- 
 tended, nothing could prevent the equal truth 
 that thousands and thousands of her countrymen 
 have lived and died in the faith that she was the 
 pure and inspired savior of France. But for 
 that tradition, she might have been untainted as 
 driven snow, and yet today be remembered only 
 as a picturesquely eccentric soldier. That tradi- 
 tion itself, even if they could demonstrate that 
 she was no better than the dregs of a mediaeval 
 gutter, is a fact which must still be reckoned 
 with. There are at least two truths about Jeanne 
 d'Are — the truth of history and the truth of 
 tradition. If they coincide, so much the better. 
 If they prove hopelessly at odds, that is no 
 reason why we should not reverence her tradi- 
 tional memory ; for this consecrated truth is less 
 concerned with what she actually was than with 
 what generations of posterity have fervently be- 
 lieved her to be. 
 
 It is the same at home. On Boston Com- 
 mon there is a monument in honor of the vic- 
 tims of the Boston Massacre, a few years before 
 the American Revolution. Some of our note- 
 worthy authorities assert that they were drunken 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 187 
 
 rowdies. It is equally true that local tradition 
 has long since come to believe that they were 
 patriots who deliberately sacrificed their lives for 
 the principle of liberty. If we take that monu- 
 ment as a tribute to the actual men whose names 
 are carved on it, we might as well close our 
 police courts. If we take it as an assertion of our 
 popular tradition that they were devoted to what 
 they believed the highest truth, it must always 
 remain reverend. There is more than one phase 
 of truth, after all ; and the most deeply signifi- 
 cant, the most lasting, the most pregnant, is not 
 always that of mere reality. Oftener, I grow to 
 feel, it is that of the ideal to which some fleeting 
 reality — however sordid — has given inspiring 
 and deathless life. 
 
 Such a distinction as this any thoughtful 
 Frenchman would be apt to admit. Distinc- 
 tions, even when not very fine, appeal to tempers 
 so fond of exactness as that of the French. At 
 the same time the sort of distinction now, in 
 our minds would hardly occur to them spontane- 
 ously. Their instinctive, impulsive love of sys- 
 tem would prevent them from feeling its force 
 until they had carefully considered it. There is 
 something alluring in that phrase, to which the 
 whole disputing company assented — // rCy a 
 qu'une verite. Truth is single ; it must forever 
 
188 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 remain immutable, unqualified. Their system of 
 the eternities is based on this axiom. To ques- 
 tion it would be preposterous — until you stop 
 to think. 
 
 And meanwhile, let truth be single as you 
 please, and let each one of us, with all the candor 
 in the world, set himself the task of learning it ; 
 and you shall always find human beings at odds. 
 The more alike they are in fundamental charac- 
 ter, the more sharp their dissensions must be, and 
 the more intolerant they must be of one another. 
 Let them love system and love fact, as the 
 French do. Let them be beset by the tempta- 
 tion to admit fact only in forms which harmonize 
 with system. Let them grow to maturity each 
 amid the intense traditions of his class and kind. 
 Let each, as well, be conditioned by the acci- 
 dental fact of the temper, the character, the dis- 
 position, with which he happens to have come 
 into the world. And the world he must live 
 in must be, fi'om beginning to end, a world of 
 insoluble discord. 
 
 And yet, for all these dissensions which at 
 once spring from their individualities and inten- 
 sify them, you would never understand the tem- 
 per of the French if you stopped here. The 
 excess, the fineness, the limitations of their 
 strongest virtues, involve them in constant un- 
 
THE FRENCH TEMPERAMENT 189 
 
 rest, passionately resentful of their own images 
 in the likeness of their nearest neighbors. At the 
 same time there are enduring impulses in which 
 they remain unanimous. This tendency you can 
 feel in some of the phases of their character at 
 which we have already glanced. The very fact 
 of their school-boy demonstrations reveals their 
 eager response to the appeal of a common senti- 
 ment. In Asia, they tell me, French mission- 
 aries and the most radical of French diplomatists 
 mutually ignore everything but the fact that 
 both are loyal Frenchmen. And when a com- 
 mon sentiment proves to be broadly, deeply, 
 lastingly human, it springs to life with wonderful 
 strength and tenderness. 
 
 How full of tender feeling the French are 
 must be evident to anyone who comes to know 
 them in their family lives. A constant phase of 
 this tenderness — this impulsive human sym- 
 pathy, at its purest and most true in the pres- 
 ence of poignant experience inevitable in the 
 course of nature — must be familiar to every 
 traveller who lingers in France. Nowhere else 
 does all the world, of every rank, respond with 
 such instant, whole-souled, consoling sympathy to 
 the presence of death. We are sometimes apt to 
 think garish the conventional pomps of a French 
 funeral. We should rather dwell in thought on 
 
190 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the gentleness with which the French bare and 
 bow their heads throughout the streets while the 
 sad procession passes. The impulse may be mo- 
 mentary, the act of sympathy forgotten almost 
 before it is done ; but the fact of it remains 
 wonderfully significant. When, for a little while, 
 the French can find themselves at one, in response 
 to some deep human emotion, you may be sure 
 that they are at one with singular intensity of 
 tenderness. That is one reason why you grow 
 to love them so well 
 
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE 
 TO LIFE 
 
 IN this effort to give some account of the 
 French as I found them, I have followed, 
 so nearly as might be, the course of my 
 experiences in France. Beginning with the 
 universities, my official connection with which 
 opened my opportunities, I have touched on 
 what I next came to observe, the structure of 
 society ; I have then told of that more intimate 
 social fact, the family ; and finally I have tried 
 to make clear my impression of the French tem- 
 perament, as these various phases of life in France 
 revealed it to me. Our considerations henceforth 
 will be of somewhat different character. We 
 shall occupy ourselves with the manner in which 
 this national temper displays itself in connection 
 with some of the chief interests of modern French 
 life, — literature, religion, and politics. And first 
 with literature. 
 
 One thing must instantly be evident. French 
 life and character, as we have here approached 
 
192 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 them, have not appeared quite as foreigners, and 
 particularly English-speaking foreigners, are ac- 
 customed to expect. At least in America, the 
 French are supposed to be frivolous and un- 
 principled. And in our present considerations we 
 have found them so remarkable for seriousness 
 and for regularity that 1 may well seem to have 
 been writing deliberately virginibus puerisque. 
 
 If I had been, I should not have written much 
 otherwise. And here arises perhaps the most 
 perplexing question which must beset anyone 
 who, having been familiar with foreign prejudice 
 concerning France, finds himself among French 
 people in their daily lives. The France evident 
 to casual travellers and generally set forth in 
 such French literature as comes to foreign notice 
 is very different fi-om the France you come to 
 know for yourself The external aspect of them 
 is identical, no doubt ; just as the language is. In 
 both, too, as everywhere else on earth, there is a 
 regularly organized, orderly society, side by side 
 with various vagary from social order. The true 
 difference lies in the fact that those who know 
 France from report are apt to suppose vagary 
 to be the rule of French life, while those who 
 know France from personal experience vrill prob- 
 ably agree that the most profound characteris- 
 tic of the French is rather their conscientious 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 193 
 
 devotion to their regular duties. The question 
 accordingly becomes that of how such divergent 
 impressions can result from a common cause. 
 
 To begin with, we may well put aside some 
 obvious reasons for the opinion usually held by 
 foreigners. One general authority for it may be 
 found in the gossip of tourists. It is honest, 
 gleeful or indignant as the case may be, and 
 reducible to a simple fact true of travel any- 
 where. No matter where a stranger may stray, 
 he will see instantly the most irregular, the least 
 respectable, the most broadly commonplace phase 
 of the society which surrounds the hotel where 
 he has taken up his momentary abode. Through- 
 out the nineteenth century Paris has been 
 perhaps the most attractive capital in Europe. 
 It has attracted to itself, at least, more visit- 
 ors than any other. More than any other, 
 accordingly, it has developed into what seem 
 permanently established forms those various 
 catch-penny devices for the allurement of stran- 
 gers which make any great city, in certain as- 
 pects, more like a mere watering-place than one 
 always quite understands. In fact, however, the 
 Paris of travel — the hotels and the theatres, 
 the streets, the museums and the restaurants, 
 together with endless other places of public en- 
 tertainment — is the least Parisian, and the leas*, 
 
 ^ 18 
 
194 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 French Paris imaginable. It is only one more of 
 the great places of amusement, open — for human 
 good or ill — all over the world. 
 
 Not long ago a friend happened to tell me a 
 bit of experience which just here may be illumi- 
 nating. He was himself a respectable citizen of 
 New York. Something had called him to Brazil, 
 where, without personal introduction, he had 
 passed two or three weeks at Rio de Janeiro. 
 He had returned home with the honest convic- 
 tion that there was not a decent human being in 
 the whole Brazilian republic. Every prospect had 
 been pleasing, but men and women had displayed 
 an ultimate vileness of character in which the 
 corruption of Europe and the crudity of America 
 seemed indistinguishably blended. So Brazil was 
 not sweet in the nostrils of this reputable Ameri- 
 can, who honestly believed that he knew Brazil 
 from personal observation. The limits of his ex- 
 perience were startlingly revealed to him a year 
 or two later. On a steamer going to Europe he 
 had the pleasure of meeting a congenial fellow- 
 traveller, of about his own age. This gentleman 
 presently turned out to be a Brazilian, who had 
 passed a month or so in America on his way to 
 Paris. He had come to the United States as a 
 stranger, with no means of access to society; 
 he had spent a few days at the chief hotels of 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 195 
 
 our principal Eastern cities ; and his honest con- 
 clusion, derived from personal observation, had 
 been that nothing imaginable could exceed the 
 social corruption of Boston and New York. Per- 
 sonal respectability he conceived unknown in 
 either, just as my American friend had conceived 
 it unknown in Brazil. On the voyage they grew 
 to be great friends ; and as each was blest with 
 a sense of humor, they corrected each other's 
 impressions instead of quarrelling about them. 
 They parted happier men and wiser, having come 
 to understand that what each had seen in the 
 other's country was only what casual travellers 
 must always find everywhere. Vice is less various, 
 far less individual, than virtue. Of all common- 
 places, it is the most irredeemably monotonous. 
 
 Once for all, then, we may put aside the disre- 
 pute of France so far as it comes to us from trav- 
 ellers' tales. It is no more French than it is 
 Brazilian or American. We can hardly deal in 
 so summary a way with another source of our im- 
 pression of this deplorable social fact. Whoever 
 has looked into the windows of French shops, 
 where books and prints are displayed, whoever 
 has glanced at such French comic papers, and 
 the like, as stray into restaurants and barbers' 
 shops, and into club reading-rooms elsewhere 
 than in France, can hardly fail to have found 
 
196 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 endless warrant for our conventional faith in 
 French naughtiness. He may have been at- 
 tracted ; he may have been shocked ; the one 
 sure thing is that he will not have been enlight- 
 ened. For full enlightenment, indeed, he will 
 need an experience open only to those who come 
 to know French people as they actually live. 
 Then he will slowly grow aware that in decent 
 French opinion this kind of publication is no 
 more reputable than it seems to him, or to 
 anybody else. It does not express life in any 
 comprehensive sense ; it is so far from express- 
 ing life, as life presents itself to Frenchmen of 
 the better sort, that it does not even appeal to 
 ___jUtiem. They ignore it, just as respectable Ameri- 
 cans ignore the obnoxious advertisements of pa- 
 tent medicines so frequent in the cheaper sort 
 of newspapers or on flaming bill-boards. The* 
 simple truth is that all over the world you will 
 find disreputable objects of commerce, kept 
 technically within the law. Those most obvious 
 among ourselves are devices for encouraging tee- 
 totalers to drink adulterated alcohol ; those most 
 obvious in France are designed rather to encour- 
 age effrontery ; but both alike, and all other such 
 matters, are really to be classed together. Any 
 American would be surprised and pained to find 
 a worthy French family fuddling itself with one 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 197 
 
 of those proprietary nostrums which help debase 
 country folks and tired shop-girls in so many 
 parts of the United States. The sentiments of 
 Frenchmen, when brought face to face with cer- 
 tain Parisian publications in the reading-rooms 
 of American clubs, are said to be even more be- 
 wildering. They sometimes permit themselves 
 to wonder, I am told, whether their surroundings 
 can really be consonant with self-respect. 
 
 So far, accordingly, as our notions concerning 
 the French may be traced either to travellers' 
 stories or to objects of shady commerce, we may 
 dispose of them once for all. They are simply 
 stupid. Very clearly, however, this fails to cover 
 the whole matter. What remains for us to ex- 
 plain is considerable. It consists of novels written 
 by men who have attained the highest degree of 
 personal recognition as serious masters of litera- 
 ture — a seat among the forty immortals of the 
 Acaddmie Francjaise. It consists of plays which 
 everybody in Paris, French as well as foreign, 
 flocks to see, and eagerly discusses. It consists 
 of that great body of literature — in many re- 
 spects the most admirable of all modern times 
 — which any student of modern French must 
 eagerly and seriously study. Whoever has tried 
 to teach French in American institutions of learn- 
 ing where co-education prevails, must have found 
 
198 THE PRANCE OP TODAY 
 
 himself aghast. Countless writers who cannot 
 be neglected will bring him before long to 
 dangerous ground. In general, there can be no 
 denial that the novelists and the dramatists of 
 modern France set forth a state of society 
 deeply different from that described in English 
 or American works by writers of equal dignity. 
 Any foreigner would naturally infer that the 
 society on which their work is based must be 
 far more corrupt than ours. Of course, it may 
 be. In matters so intimate as this no one can 
 ever feel sure of anything more than personal 
 conviction. Beyond question, however, no one 
 who is cordially received by the modern French 
 would derive from his intercourse with them 
 any such impression as we have all derived from 
 what they write about themselves ; and anyone 
 famiUar with society in modem England or 
 America would probably find it about what 
 literature had led him to expect. Our precise 
 purpose now is to account, as well as we can, 
 for this deep difference. 
 
 In trying to account for it we must soon 
 remind ourselves of a fact asserted whenever 
 this question arises. Throughout the modern 
 English-speaking world, at least so far as hving 
 memory extends, there has been a general as- 
 sumption that standard literature is addressed 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 199 
 
 to everybody who can read, — men and women, 
 old and young, boys and girls. The very res- 
 tiveness occasionally displayed by English or 
 American writers in the presence of this con- 
 vention only serves to define it. Most of us 
 accept the limitations of it just as we accept 
 those of the language in which we are forced to 
 express our meaning as best we may. How 
 completely different this assumption is from that 
 of modern France, I may best indicate perhaps 
 by a specific instance. After one of my lectures 
 at the Sorbonne, a French lady, accompanied by 
 her daughter, a girl of eighteen or so, did me 
 the honor to present herself to me with a request 
 for a little expert advice. The daughter, it 
 appeared, had learned to read English fluently 
 and desired to extend her reading beyond the 
 classic novels of Cooper and of Sir Walter Scott. 
 Could I name some contemporary works which 
 she might find interesting ? My impromptu 
 answer took the form of a few hasty memo- 
 randa setting forth the names of some standard 
 writers, and of three or four popular magazines. 
 The good lady was perplexed. I could hardly 
 have understood her, she thought ; she had not 
 asked me what authors were eniinent, she had 
 asked what books were suitable for a young girl ; 
 as to the magazines, she was right, she believed. 
 
200 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 in supposing them to be addressed to the general 
 public — in which case they were, of course, not 
 the kind of thing she had in mind. I tried to 
 explain that any young girl might range securely 
 throughout the work of the novelists in question, 
 and that our most respected magazines would 
 not cloud the innocence of a nursery. My efforts 
 seemed fruitless. She attributed my opinions, I 
 think, to my obviously imperfect command of 
 French. The fact that a popular literature could 
 anywhere be addressed to a public so comprehen- 
 sive as to include respectable youth seemed to 
 her inconceivable. And how her daughter s 
 education proceeded in the matter of EngHsh, I 
 have never been privileged to know. 
 
 The public to whom French literature is ad- 
 dressed, in short, is always assumed to be ma- 
 ture. To grown-up people anywhere you may 
 obviously say things unmentionable to children. 
 Maxima reverentia debetur pueris ; nobody ques- 
 tions that, either in France or among ourselves. 
 The difference is that we are disposed to display 
 our reverence for youth by excessive attention to 
 , our library shelves, and that the French dis- 
 play theirs by the more summary process of 
 keeping the library door shut. 
 
 Such differences of national impulse as this are 
 never without cause. The cause in this case 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 201 
 
 may be traced pretty readily to the different con- 
 ceptions of education, and particularly of domestic 
 education, entertained by the French and by our- 
 selves. The fundamental question of education 
 everywhere is how to prepare children for ma- 
 turity. In English-speaking society, which, as 
 we have seen, is far less systematic than that of 
 France, this is held to mean that we must train 
 them to make their way. In the much more 
 systematic society of France, on the other hand, 
 it seems rather to mean that we should fit them 
 to take their places in the world. Slight as the 
 difference between these assumptions may seem, 
 it tends to widely different conclusions of prin- 
 ciple. Everybody knows everywhere that all 
 things are not what they seem. Everybody 
 knows that preaching and practice can nowhere 
 quite agree. Everybody knows that so long as 
 civilization persists we must keep on both preach- 
 ing and practising — bringing precept and prac- 
 tice into some semblance of harmony, each for 
 himself, as best we may. We try to meet these 
 conditions by giving our children the greatest 
 degree of experience which is within the range 
 of safety ; the French prefer to surround theirs 
 with the greatest degree of protection which is 
 within the range of prudence. Each of us is 
 prone to excess. Our children are sometimes left 
 
(202 ) THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 V _^^ 
 
 too much to themselves; theirs sometimes ap- 
 pear distorted by undue control. You will feel 
 the difference when you compare a French 
 Lycee with an English public school. You will 
 feel it just as much, and hardly more, when 
 you compare a Yankee play-room with the 
 children's corner of any French foyer. We 
 try to make our children face fact, insisting less 
 than we used to on abstract principle. The 
 French still insist on principle, dissembling, so 
 far as they can, discordant or unwelcome fact. 
 We desire to develop the individual ; with them 
 the prime impulse is to maintain the social 
 system. 
 
 In any such contrast as this it is hard to avoid 
 the appearance of urging one side as better than 
 the other. I have been trying not to do so. The 
 reward of our methods is found, perhaps most 
 surely, in the frank personal candor of our young 
 people. The reward of theirs is found most 
 surely in the deep intensity of their family affec- 
 tions. In each process there must be a stage 
 disturbing and even alarming to people who be- 
 lieve in the other. But when we come to the 
 end and ask ourselves which of the methods 
 makes the better men and women, there is no 
 answer. Each, honestly pursued, leads to the 
 same result. What almost surely ends ill is an 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 203 ^ 
 
 attempt to train the children of either society 
 in the manner generally upheld by the other. 
 
 Far as we may have seemed to stray from lit- 
 erature, we have only been reminding ourselves 
 of one reason for the widely different assump- 
 tions concerning its function among ourselves 
 and in France. Our whole conception of educa- 
 tion implies our belief that literature should be 
 addressed to everybody who can and will read 
 it. Their whole conception of education implies 
 their contrary belief that literature should ..Jbe 
 addressed only to those who have outgrown do- 
 mestic supervision. Our custom compels more 
 reticence than theirs. To each of us his own cus- 
 tom is bound to seem a law of nature. So they 
 think our novels hypocritical, and theirs seem to 
 us corrupt ; and both of us are wrong. ..-*--—-' 
 
 When we foreigners fully agree that French 
 literature is addressed only to mature people, 
 we may, perhaps, begin to understand it better. 
 One delightfully evident feature of it is clearly 
 due to this fact. I mean the beautiful precision 
 and finish of French style. Whatever a French 
 writer's topic, he must never forget that his read- 
 ers will be of such age and disposition as to be 
 competent and scrupulous critics of his literary 
 manners. When, Hke any English writer, you 
 are addressing so widely general a public that 
 
204 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 you cannot feel sure of their intelligence, you 
 may permit yourself, even without quite realiz- 
 ing that you do so, considerable carelessness 
 in expression. When, like all French writers, 
 you are addressing only a mature and highly 
 cultivated public, you must be more careful, 
 even though you do not deliberately try to be, 
 of duly accepted conventions. In consequence 
 you will generally be more agreeable. Obser- 
 vance of convention is always pleasant ; sur- 
 prising people are not comfortable companions ; 
 good style is a phase of good manners. Our 
 certainty that French books will be well written 
 affects us like the certainty with which we expect 
 and find civilized conventions in the homes of 
 some of our friends, and not gladdening our 
 essentially cordial relations in those of others. 
 American books and English are not always 
 careless ; but you never know what to expect 
 of them. Some, and parts of many, are de- 
 lightfully written ; some, inoffensively ; most 
 of them seem written anyhow. A kind of restless 
 insecurity results each time we take up a 
 new one. Our own Ufe, our own style, are 
 wanting in civilized grace and amenity. These 
 qualities in the style of the French are very 
 welcome to our foreign taste. 
 At the same time there can be no doubt that 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 205 
 
 these conventions of French style often impress 
 us as artificial. At least in matters of form, the 
 literature of France seems far less at liberty than 
 ours to stray where it will. And the impression 
 which it thus makes on us is strengthened by 
 some obvious features of its substance. A novel 
 or a play, for example, almost always presents 
 definite pictures of social life. Take a scene from 
 any standard comedy. A man enters to make a 
 call on a lady. He wears his gloves and he car- 
 ries his hat — circumstances evidently affording 
 him opportunity for a little easy stage business 
 with his hands. Obviously, we think, these de- 
 tails are literary conventions, Uke the pleasantly 
 formal phrases with which he is received. Or a 
 company is assembled, each in his own chair, and 
 each takes part in the general conversation, with 
 no symptom of such division into groups of two 
 as is pretty sure to take place among ourselves. 
 Again, we think, this is a piece of literary con- 
 vention, pleasantly like that which requires these 
 creatures of conventional imagination to talk in 
 happier style than we are used to at home, and in 
 English novels. There seems, too, on reflection, 
 a sound artistic reason for the conventional reg- 
 ularities of French literature and the French 
 stage. Nothing could more strongly emphasize, 
 by contrast, the rather irregular lines of conduct 
 
206 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 to which punctiliously decorous persons prove to 
 be addicted. 
 
 As you grow to know France better, your 
 notion of these conventions of manners will 
 be quietly modified. Conventions they remain, 
 of course, — matters of civilized system, as dis- 
 tinguished from momentary impulse. But they 
 prove to be conventions of quite another char- 
 acter than you had supposed. They had seemed, 
 like the conventions of style through which they 
 were made known to you, amenities of literature, 
 and hardly anything more. They turn out to be 
 the accepted amenities of French behavior. The 
 manners presented on the stage and in novels 
 are photographically true to the social habits of 
 the present day. You were right, no doubt, in 
 supposing that gloves and a hat furnish an 
 actor with easy business for his hands ; but 
 that is not the reason why he comes on the 
 stage with them. A man enters a room with 
 them throughout France ; not to do so would 
 be to make himself unceremoniously at home, 
 almost to the point of scandal. You were right 
 in supposing that conversation addressed to 
 everybody within hearing is inevitable on the 
 stage and convenient in fiction ; but that is not 
 the reason why you will find it everywhere in 
 French literature. 4 To talk to your neighbor in 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 207 
 
 a French drawing-room, instead of addressing the 
 whole company, would be almost as uncouth as 
 if at home you should plant your chin on his 
 shoulder and whisper in his ear. , These French 
 conventions, at first blush so evidently literary, 
 turn out to be conventions not of literature but 
 of life. 
 
 Beyond question they are among the condi- 
 tions which make French life agreeable. You 
 will find them in all ranks of French society. 
 What is more, you will find them in all degrees 
 of French friendship, even to the domestic pri- 
 vacy of the foyer. You must stray further in 
 France than ever I did if you would seek such 
 unsocial carelessness of behavior as you shall often 
 find at home without the seeking. Wherefore, 
 you may safely conclude that French life in its 
 daily detail is pleasanter than Hfe among our- 
 selves — far more deeply permeated with the 
 graciousness of civilization. To find yourself, 
 wherever you are, in a little company, — one of 
 an affable group, — is a less perplexing experi- 
 ence than to find yourself in a collection of 
 casual couples trying to think of something to 
 say to each other. And yet you presently begin 
 to perceive that this is not the whole story. 
 More agreeable in any given instance, this pre- 
 cision of conduct tends to grow a shade mo- 
 
208 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 notonous. The formal comedy of daily life in 
 France repeats itself as interminably as the pleas- 
 ant pictures of it on the French stage repeat 
 one another. Though it never ceases to please, 
 its charms soon fail to include the charm of 
 novelty. One interior is so like the last, or the 
 next, that when you have made six or eight calls 
 in Paris, you will be at pains to remember which 
 was which. The ease and the grace of French 
 life depend on a degree of convention unfavor- 
 able to variety. Uiiless you pry far beneath 
 the surface of daily life in that pleasant France, 
 you grow to feel, it offers rather less scope for 
 obvious individuality than you have been used 
 to elsewhere. 
 
 Here at last we can begin to understand the 
 full significance of an epigram which, a few 
 years ago, startled a company of Americans as- 
 sembled to welcome an eminent French man of 
 letters. When the speeches of formal greeting 
 were over, the after-dinner eloquence took a more 
 familiar turn, and one of our own novelists ven- 
 tured to ask the Parisian writer why the heroines 
 of French fiction are so generally given to mis- 
 behavior. He could not believe, he politely 
 added, that misconduct was general among the 
 women of France ; in reality, he could not doubt 
 that French women are among the best creatures 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 209 
 
 a good God ever made ; why should they not ap- 
 pear so in French hterature ? The French writer 
 replied with that delightful ease of manner and 
 of phrase which makes post-prandial discourse 
 in France a matter rather of anticipation than of 
 dread. Our friend, he assured us, could not have 
 generalized French womanhood more happily if 
 he had enjoyed the privilege of knowing from 
 infancy how completely it justified the reverence 
 in which all who understand it must hold it. 
 And, in explaining why this aspect of it was not 
 more salient in the long historical perspective of 
 French literature, he could not find a happier 
 phrase than one uttered under similar circum- 
 stances by his lamented friend, Monsieur Guy de 
 Maupassant. When that most eminent of liter- 
 ary artists was once asked, in a familiar company, 
 whether he might not some time gladden us with 
 a heroine more sedate, if not more alluring, than 
 those with whom we were all familiar, he had 
 resolutely said, No — for " Vhonnete femme ria 
 pas de roman.'" 
 ^ The idea that good women are not interesting 
 baffled this company of intelligent Americans! ^; 
 They were familiar only with their own society, 
 where young girls have their blameless romances 
 as regular preliminaries to happy and faithful 
 
 marriages, where good married women — young 
 
 U 
 
210 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 and old — have their friendships and their inter- 
 ests, apart from domestic life, as innocent as the 
 romances of their girlhood. To these Americans, 
 accordingly, Maupassant appeared to assert that 
 no woman could be interesting, in any aspect, 
 until she took to mischief. This I conceive to 
 be far from the true meaning of his epigram. 
 His comment was concerned not with human 
 character in general but with a state of society 
 extremely different from that to which Americans 
 are accustomed. We all know how deeply for- 
 eigners misapprehend our manners; few of us 
 stop to think that we may equally fall to mis- 
 understandilTg theirs. 
 
 Such social conventions as ours, or such lack 
 of them, if you choose, — such freedom from fixed 
 system, — make life, in its every-day aspects, a 
 tolerably varied thing. Even the most innocent 
 young girl properly has her Uttle secrets, her 
 pretty perplexities ; and this with no disregard 
 of the customs in which she has been brought 
 up. Social conventions, on the other hand, so 
 precise and so systematic as those of the French, 
 Wo far to keep young girls and good women from 
 such experiences as should avert the drowsiness 
 of monotony. Our ideal of womanly conduct 
 demands little more than rectitude and candor. 
 Theirs demands that a good woman attend un- 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 211 
 
 remittently to the obvious business of her useful 
 life. Each of us would probably agree in respect 
 and admiration for the ideal most cherished by 
 the other. Each might well believe that the 
 ideal of the other was implied in his own. But 
 the emphasis would differ, just as we have seen 
 the emphasis of America to differ in other re- 
 spects from that of France. And no matter 
 how much Americans may prefer their own em- 
 phasis, they cannot deny that the emphasis of 
 the French on obedience to conventional system 
 must tend to prevent, in every-day life, that sort 
 of individuality among good women which often 
 makes them, among ourselves, happy subjects for 
 literary treatment. The moment that we reach 
 this point of view we can see — whether we re- 
 sent the epigram or not — what a French novelist 
 means when he declares that good women afford 
 no opportunity to a writer of fiction. 
 
 The honnete femme of France, in short, is a 
 devoted woman who has more things to do than 
 waking hours suffice for. These she does cheer- 
 fully, faithfully, beautifully. She has the cares 
 of her household ; she is passionately devoted to 
 her children; so long as her parents live, she 
 is devoted to them as well ; the interests of her 
 brothers and her sisters are her own ; more still 
 her own are the interests, in every sense, of her 
 
212 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 husrband. She is the central fact in the national 
 life of her country. But from the point of view 
 of the story-teller her career is not interesting. 
 
 The essence of any interesting literary prob- 
 lem, indeed, may perhaps be reduced to this : it 
 involves a conflict, more or less impelled by per- 
 sonal passion, between individual impulse and 
 social surroundings. The question, in its sim- 
 plest and most comprehensive terms, is one of 
 adjustment between an organism and its en- 
 vironment. The more rigid the environment, 
 the more sternly it represses and controls in- 
 dividual tendencies to variation. What would 
 be normal in a society which cherishes above all 
 the ideal of individuality becomes exceptional in 
 a society which cherishes, with almost religious 
 fervor, the ideal of system. When any question 
 of individual variation from an accepted type 
 declares itself in France, accordingly, it involves 
 a far more abrupt divergence from general pre- 
 sumption than is necessarily, or even usually, the 
 case among ourselves. 
 
 For various reasons, too, these exceptions to 
 the rule of social life, interesting anywhere, make 
 exceptional appeal to interest among the French. 
 One condition of a systematic habit of life is that 
 whoever is addicted to it must grow, by very 
 force of habit, to feel it at once a phase of the 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 213 
 
 law of nature and, like other such conditions of 
 existence, exasperatingly repressive. We human 
 beings, compelled to live on the surface of the 
 earth, would now and then like to soar in the air, 
 partly because we know that if we could do so 
 at will, we should be workers of miracles. And 
 with people to whom, for generations, social re- 
 straint has been the unbroken rule of life, vagaries 
 from such restraint, though not miracles, have 
 a touch of miraculous fascination. When New 
 England was given to godly austerities, small boys 
 thought it a fine thing to say damn ; nowadays, 
 amid more relaxed surroundings, this expletive 
 has lost its charm and is getting out of fashion. 
 
 Again, and far more characteristically, when 
 such fixed lines of conduct as prevail in France 
 become the regular rule of existence, they are 
 bound to present themselves, to people who accept 
 them, as generalizations. Any system tends to 
 reduce itself to a series of propositions ; and when 
 propositions are once stated and received as true, 
 it is not only in mathematics that we are dis- 
 posed to regard them as universal. Now, the 
 propositions which govern the social life of the 
 French, even in their most whole-souled domes- 
 ticity, have gone beyond any mere formulas of 
 language. They have embodied themselves in the 
 forms, the manners, the details of all terrestrial 
 
214 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 habit. Take any French family, for example, 
 whom you may have had the privilege to know. 
 Every one of its members will have some stated 
 occupation for every hour from morning till night. 
 The old lady in Pailleron's comedy, who regu- 
 larly makes her appearance in the drawing-room 
 at four in the afternoon, might be taken, in this 
 respect, as an incarnation of France. And, even 
 among people who live in the simplest way, there 
 is very little personal, as distinguished from do- 
 mestic, privacy. A Frenchman's house is his 
 castle, even more than an Englishman's; it is 
 his own, inaccessible except to those whom he 
 favors with the password of the day. But within 
 it he is so little alone that, if he wants to be by 
 himself, his only resource is some holy of holies, 
 where he can lock himself in. Among his own 
 family he has his open and regular part to play, 
 as surely and as socially as the least of them. 
 He plays it cheerfully, willingly, happily, as they 
 play theirs. Human nature and human life gen- 
 eralize themselves unopposed. Love of system 
 makes system the stronger, and the growing 
 strength of system strengthens the love for it 
 with all the security of habit. 
 
 Amid such strength of beloved environment, 
 the persistent tendency of human nature to vari- 
 ation presents something more than a specific 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 215 
 
 problem; it gives rise to many general consid- 
 erations, which people unused to such conditions 
 would hardly suspect. One reason why this is 
 not instantly evident lies in the fact that, whether 
 in literature or in life, any individual variation 
 from an accepted type — any assertion of per- 
 sonal independence from the control of accepted 
 custom — is bound to seem peculiar to the indi- 
 vidual involved. Otherwise human beings would 
 be no more stimulating facts than algebraic sym- 
 bols or tin soldiers. The precision of the French 
 mind, too, demands that when the problem of any 
 such variation is presented in literary form it 
 shall be stated concretely. You must read far in 
 standard French novels or plays before you shall 
 discover there a character who shall not seem to 
 be somebody in particular as distinguished from 
 somebody in general. And yet, all the while, 
 this individuality, this vivid personality, of the 
 characters in French literature or on the French 
 stage is itself a matter of convention. It is a 
 phase of the same mental habit, the same im- 
 memorial tradition of expression, which makes 
 the style of France so admirably, so brilliantly 
 precise. In point of fact, you will find, these 
 characters — vividly individual though they be — 
 are accepted by the public for whom they are 
 imaginatively created not quite as individuals, 
 
216 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 but far more instantly as types, as abstractions, 
 as terms to be used in social reasoning rather 
 than as objects of sympathetic contemplation. 
 
 What I have in mind must be familiar to any- 
 body who has heard French people discuss current 
 literature among themselves. You make a call 
 in Paris, for example, and find six or eight peo- 
 ple accidentally gathered together in a pleasant 
 drawing-room. They prove to be talking about 
 a play just brought out at one of the better 
 theatres. You have happened to see it — with 
 alert interest, and at the same time with a dis- 
 tinct emotion of such sort as used to impel the 
 English of French caricature to summaiize their 
 impressions of the Parisian stage in the single 
 word shocking. Rather to your dismay, some 
 of the ladies present appear to have shared your 
 interest without a tinge of your emotional reac- 
 tion. They say acute things, which would never 
 have occurred to you, about details of the acting. 
 You begin to perceive the standard of art to 
 which a French actor is held by the critical intel- 
 ligence of his public. In reflecting on this aspect 
 of the situation, you forget for an instant your 
 Yankee displeasure at the lines of conduct which 
 these admirable histrionic artists had called to 
 your attention. You lose the thread of the con- 
 versation. When you try to catch it again, you 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 217 
 
 find that it has led to another phase of the drama 
 in question. These excellent women — there are 
 no young girls in the company — are no longer 
 discussing the art of the actors ; they are eagerly 
 expressing their opinions concerning what the 
 characters in the play were about. And here 
 comes your enlightenment. To you the situation 
 in question had seemed vividly individual; Ar- 
 mand was Armand, Germaine was Germaine. To 
 them, for all the precision of the terms which set 
 forth the loves of Armand and Germaine, the situ- 
 ation had evidently seemed generalized. You had 
 been thinking of it in arithmetical terms ; to them 
 the terms had rather been algebraic. It is ten to 
 one that where you would have said Armand in 
 discussing the situation, they will say a man ; that 
 where you would have said Germaine they will say 
 a woman, or a wife, or an honest woman. Before 
 you have quite realized this difference, the conver- 
 sation will very likely have pursued its way still 
 further. It will have generalized itself, you hardly 
 perceive when and how ; and these volatile peo- 
 ple will be gravely, animatedly, yet dispassionately 
 discussing an abstract problem of psychology, of 
 conduct, of morals. That now and again they 
 revert to a man or a woman, to Armand or 
 Germaine, does not alter the case. What has 
 really interested them, what they will discuss 
 
218 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 until some more apposite topic distracts them, 
 might just as well have been suggested by a ser- 
 mon, or by an open lecture at the Sorbonne, as 
 by a dramatic performance which had seemed to 
 you, in certain respects, abominable. 
 
 In almost every instance, meanwhile, at least 
 nowadays, such general discussions as arise from 
 novels or plays will be found to turn on the 
 fundamental point which we have been trying to 
 keep in mind. There is a fixed system — social, 
 religious, moral, whatever you wiU. The accepted 
 conventions of this would relentlessly repress the 
 impulses of some individual ; and very probably 
 they would go far, at the same time, to repress 
 or to contradict some impulses common to the 
 human race. To make this situation clear, an 
 author has stated it in concrete terms of Armand 
 and Germaine. Armand and Germaine, however, 
 bear to the point at issue no more comprehensive 
 relation than that borne to a proposition in ge- 
 ometry by the figure used to illustrate the reason- 
 ing involved. They are necessary to the process ; 
 but once so used, they remain important only for 
 the precision of line with which they may have 
 been drawn. The real question is whether, in a 
 case where the rigidity of system and the impulse 
 of human variation are at odds, the system or the 
 individual should yield. 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 219 
 
 Obviously and everywhere assertions of indi- 
 viduality are apt to take licentious form. You 
 may illustrate this truth, if you prefer, by blame- 
 less reference to the poetic license indulged in 
 by men of letters impatient of academic restraint. 
 How far from dreary such purely literary discus- 
 sion may become in France anyone knows who 
 has read of the devotees of classic tradition en- 
 deavoring, when " Hernani " was new, to suppress 
 the unorthodox metaphor, 
 
 " Vous ^tes mon lion, superbe et g^n^reux." 
 
 Without appreciating episodes like this you can 
 never understand the French point of view, when 
 systems and individuals, organisms and environ- 
 ment, come in conflict. But all the distraction 
 of your attention in the world to poetic license 
 can never avoid the truth that the questions of 
 license involved in such conflicts are apt rather to 
 involve license of personal conduct, such as our 
 English habit is disposed not to talk about in 
 general society. 
 
 Just here we are confronted again with the 
 deep contrast between the intellectual candor 
 of the French and the personal candor of English- 
 speaking peoples. In certain respects, one some- 
 times conjectures, the French are less scrupu- 
 lous concerning statements of concrete fact than 
 
220 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 our own convictions would generally approve* 
 When, on the other hand, the matter in question 
 is either a general proposition, or the implica- 
 tions which it involves, they become unflinching. 
 With us the case is precisely the opposite. In 
 discussing concrete fact we mercilessly demand 
 truth from ourselves and from everybody else; 
 but when it comes to scrutinizing general prop- 
 ositions, we permit ourselves a degree of mental 
 indolence regrettable in the eyes of our alertly 
 intellectual neighbors ; and when the further 
 question arises of what our general propositions 
 may logically imply, we are not only disinclined 
 to think it out, but even resentful if we are pressed 
 to do so. In a specific case, the right sort of a 
 Frenchman might be rather more disposed than 
 we to assert the spotlessness of a lady who had 
 the misfortune to be discovered in an equivocal 
 situation ; on the other hand, he would be far 
 more ready than we to admit the unhappy truth 
 that wherever men and women are gathered 
 together equivocal situations frequently occur. 
 ^ So the French, to the end of time, will think us 
 hypocritical; just as we, with equal error, shall 
 think them mendacious.^:. 
 
 It is in no small degree this intellectual can- 
 dor of the French which permits them, through- 
 out their literature, to deal with topics on the 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 221 
 
 whole forbidden among ourselves;^ Among other 
 things, it leads them to assume as a matter of 
 course what is everywhere true, namely, that the 
 most instantly suitable subjects for literature are 
 not the commonplaces of every-day life^ Other- 
 wise a shopkeeper's ledger might serve the pur- 
 pose of a novel. Literature, in general, must 
 concern itself with interesting exceptions to the 
 conmiohplace.^ Of these the most interesting, 
 on the whole, arise from the vagrant tendencies 
 of affection between men and women. If such 
 incidents were not exceptional, they would not be 
 interesting; you can imagine a state of society 
 where monogamy might have all the fascination 
 of romance, but that is not the society of Euro- 
 pean civilization. To deny these general truths 
 would be, from the French point of view, per- 
 verse ; worse still, it would be silly. 
 
 Meanwhile, there can be little doubt that an- 
 other reason why the substance of French litera- 
 ture misrepresents French life may be found in 
 another phase of French attachment to tradition. 
 The intellectual candor of the French, their insist- 
 ent admission of generalized fact, is no new trait 
 of theirs ; it has persisted ever since they have 
 been a nation. And though in its present form, 
 which happens to be intensely serious on the 
 surface, it may seem different from what it used 
 
^ 
 
 222 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 to be, the nature of it stays much the same. 
 The old folk tales of France, and the like, are 
 full of ribald fun — *' gaiete gauloise,'' they some- 
 times call it now. France has always had its 
 systems, and has always admitted the persistent 
 recurrence of exceptions. Of old it used to laugh 
 at them ; just now it is disposed rather to phi- 
 losophize about them. Whether you laugh or 
 whether you reason is a question of mood. What 
 they reason about now is what they used to laugh 
 about, and what very likely they will laugh about 
 again in days to come. In any event, it is not\ 
 only something which their intellec tual can dor j 
 must admit to be of perennial Human interest ; 
 it is something which the immemorial conven- 
 tion of their race has assumed to be the normal 
 subject of literature. The frailty of woman is as 
 old as Eve, and the place of it in French litera- 
 ture has analogies to the place of Harlequin in 
 Christmas pantomime. 
 
 All of these considerations should help us to- 
 ward the end of which we are now in search — 
 the understanding of why the life of modern 
 France, when you come to know it, seems so 
 different from the same life as set forth in the 
 most highly developed Uterature of modern Eu- 
 rope. We have seen that convention has much 
 to do with this paradox. We have seen, as well. 
 
^ 
 
 LITERATURE AND LIFE 223 
 
 ^hat it springs in no small degree from the in- I/" 
 sistent intellectual candor of the French. We 
 have seen that this candor, or any semblance of 
 it, involves the admission that the subject of lit- 
 erature in general should rather be interesting 
 exceptions to a rule than the rule itself. And 
 thus we find ourselves led toward a conclusion, 
 or at least a suggestion, astonishingly remote 
 from our original assumption. There is reason, in 
 short, for beUeving that the per vasive hce ntious- 
 ness of literature in France so far from proves 
 licentiousness to be the rule of French life that 
 it may rather be held to imply the reverse. 
 
 Another consideration, on which we have not 
 yet touched, should strengthen this conclusion. 
 As the whole world knows, the French are not 
 a sluggish people. They are probably the most 
 alertly intelligent in the modern world, and this 
 both from native impulse and from the training 
 consequent upon the circumstances of their in- 
 tensely competitive lifej. The intensity of their , ^ 
 competition, so evident in the details of their » 
 university system, demands incessant, unremit- 
 tent, intellectual work. So does their attachment 
 to their social system. A good Frenchman must 
 not only do his utmost to maintain and to ad- 
 vance his own position in the world ; he must 
 occupy himself as well with the interests of his 
 
^ 
 
 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 family. He must provide for the careers of 
 his sons ; he must provide for the dowries of his 
 /^ daughters ; he must see to it that his household, 
 ^ large or small, is conducted prudently ; he must 
 end each year in a little more security than he 
 enjoyed when he began it. He can never remit 
 his attention to detail. Well and good. This 
 means that when the day's work is over he would 
 not be human if he were not pretty well tired 
 out. He needs amusement, diversion, distrac- 
 tion, recreation. To recruit his powers of at- 
 tention, he needs something different from what 
 has engaged them yesterday and today, and 
 must engage them again tomorrow. He would 
 not be French, either, if he did not demand this 
 stimulating distraction in a rigorously precise 
 form. He is more fond of generalization than 
 we are, I dare say ; but he likes to base his gen- 
 eralization on concrete terms, and on concrete 
 terms of a kind which shall readily hold his tired 
 attention. And what is true of him is just as 
 true — perhaps more true still — of his honest 
 and devoted wife. She would not be French, 
 again, any more than he would, if she lacked the 
 strong habit of an intellectual candor which at 
 once admits the existence of things we English- 
 men or Americans are apt to ignore, and main- 
 tains the perhaps deplorable but surely undeniable 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 225 
 
 truth that such things have an enduring power 
 of exciting interest, of holding the attention, of 
 making us forget for the instant such monotonies 
 as have engaged us all day and as must engage 
 us again, day after day, until the melancholy 
 day arrives when they send out notice of the 
 fiineral. As a mere matter of recreation, the 
 French demand in their literature something 
 different from what they find in life — just as 
 Yankee factory-girls like to read about duchesses. 
 iThey turn instinctively to the ranges of fact least 
 familiar in their daily experience, and least likely 
 tQ^strain their attention. Obviously such a range 
 of fact is apt to be licentious. 
 
 A vivid instance of what I have in mind was 
 lately told me by a French friend who has Uved 
 for some years in America. During a visit to 
 Paris, he strayed into a small popular theatre, 
 frequented by petty shopkeepers and the like. 
 At his side he found a stout, motherly person, 
 whose daily duties were evidently absorbing ; for 
 he could not help overhearing her voluble dis- 
 course about housekeeping, the shop, and the 
 children ; where you could buy your groceries 
 cheapest, what promised to sell well or ill, in 
 terms of pocket-money, and whether it was nec- 
 essary to buy Louis a thicker pair of shoes, in 
 view of his tendency to colds in the head. The 
 
 16 
 
226 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 curtain rose. The one-act play proved to be 
 of a freedom which, after my friend's prolonged 
 habit of America, impressed him as appalling. 
 The good matron by his side felt no such scruples. 
 Beyond question, it was very funny, and you 
 could not help attending to it. She laughed 
 wath a merriment which did your heart good. 
 And when the curtain fell, to rise again in due 
 time for a farce as unrestrained as the first, she 
 filled the interval with the same sort of devoted 
 domestic chatter as had served her for prologue. 
 A good soul, tired with assiduous attention to 
 duty, she found innocent pleasure — and nothing 
 else — in giving herself up to what honestly 
 amused her.y You could no more feel her to be 
 depraved than you could feel a pretty girl to be, 
 delighting in the waltz. 
 
 The phenomenon is not peculiar to the French. 
 A famously austere American senator, remark- 
 able for conscientious work in Congress, was 
 lately asserted by a librarian to have been in the 
 habit of reading himself out of torpor in books 
 which would have made his constituents and his 
 family shudder. This does not mean that he 
 ever relaxed his conduct, for an instant, either in 
 public or in private ; it rather proves the con- 
 trary.-4-SQ#, J believe, the persistent irregularities 
 of conduct incessant in French literature may 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 227 
 
 most^ sensibly be regarded as the intellectual 
 counterparts of lives benumbing in their general 
 regularity. \ 
 
 One phase of this regularity must often sur- 
 prise a foreigner who finds himself in a company 
 of Frenchmen familiarly talking to each other. 
 I can best illustrate what I mean by an anecdote 
 told me by an American in Paris. He Uked to 
 read French novels, and believed himself by no 
 means squeamish. Certain incidents in the works 
 of one popular French author, however, had been 
 too much for him. The man, he had been given 
 to understand, was personally respectable. It 
 seemed incredible. He put him on his unwritten 
 indevC eocpurgatorius. Wherefore, he was startled 
 one evening to find himself sitting next to this 
 deplorable person at a dinner-party. The aspect 
 of the novelist was irreproachable. His per- 
 sonahty and manners were attractive. The talk 
 was general and animated. It began with the 
 soup, and kept on till late in the evening. All 
 the company, but my friend, it happened, were 
 French. He took little part in the conversa- 
 tion, partly for want of command of their fluent 
 language. To all appearances, they talked with 
 perfect freedom, saying whatever came into 
 their heads. The novelist talked most of all. 
 My friend avers that he never passed a more 
 
228 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 delightful evening. And it was only after he 
 got home that he quite appreciated an astonish- 
 ing fact. Through all the hours when these 
 Frenchmen had been talking together, not a 
 word had been uttered which might not have 
 been uttered in the presence of a young girl. 
 So far as my friend's memory could serve him he 
 had never enjoyed quite this experience among 
 any company of English-speaking men. He re- 
 minded me, with a sigh, of a Une from an imi- 
 tation of Elizabethan comedy in which 1 had 
 indulged myself some years ago : " When knew 
 you a company of men left to themselves but 
 that straight they fell to talking bawdy ? " 
 
 And yet not only the novelist who had been 
 the leader of this animated talk about politics, 
 and fine art, and philosophy, and travel, had 
 written things which no self-respecting American 
 would sign; others in the company had sinned 
 likewise, if not so deeply. The conclusion at 
 which my friend arrived I am inclined to think 
 true.^The French are given to writing things 
 which they would not say ; English-speaking men 
 are given to saying things which they would not 
 write... Comments on a truth like this may be 
 various. Six of one, you might conclude, and 
 half a dozen of the other ; it is only that people 
 of decent life approach things differently, accord- 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 229 
 
 ing as they are familiar with the customs of 
 French society or of ours. A good American 
 woman in whose presence I ventured to make 
 this remark declared it to signify, in absurdly 
 minced words, that all the men in question ought 
 to be ashamed of themselves. I should be the 
 last to deny this proposition as a matter of 
 principle. I refrained from pointing out to her 
 that if I had assented to it as a statement of 
 fact I should have exposed myself — at least in 
 the just opinion of such intellectual candor as 
 prevails among the French — to the charge of 
 English-speaking hypocrisy. 
 
 Still another consideration may throw light on 
 the conventional subjects of literature in France. 
 As we reminded ourselves when we were dis- 
 cussing the structure of French society, the artists 
 of France — using the term artists in its most 
 comprehensive sense — are a class apart. With 
 us the word artist suggests a man who devotes 
 his life to the art of painting. In French, I 
 believe, it has hardly any such limitation ; it 
 implies, to begin with, only that a man's life is 
 devoted rather to contemplation and expression 
 than to the kind of labor which the political 
 economies of my youth used to call productive. 
 An artist's effort is not to increase the wealth of 
 society, but to enlarge its intelligence, and above 
 
230 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 all to intensify its assthetic pleasure. Painter, 
 sculptor, architect, musician, actor, man of letters 
 — it is all one. There are grades, no doubt, in 
 the hierarchy of art, just as there are in the 
 learned professions or in the army. At one time 
 one service may be the more in fashion ; at 
 another time the same may be the less favored. 
 These shades of difference do not obscure the 
 
 ( great difference of all. The world of fine art 
 in France is a world by itself with a pretty 
 
 \ distinct existence of its own. 
 \ Artists may be of noble origin ; oftener they 
 come of bourgeois stock ; sometimes they spring 
 from the common people. Once artists, they 
 belong first of all to their own class — I had al- 
 most said their own caste. In their art they are 
 consummately serious, untiringly industrious. In 
 superficial aspect, their lives are as orderly, as 
 regular, as punctilious as the lives of anybody 
 else. Beneath the surface, however, the question 
 of regularity is in many aspects a matter of more 
 indifference than is the case with people of similar 
 character among ourselves. I permitted myself 
 to compare this state of things with what we 
 generally recognize in America to be the case 
 with the dramatic profession. So long as an 
 actor plays well and conducts himself agreeably, 
 we ask fewer questions about him than about 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 231 
 
 other people. And if our taste lead us away 
 from a society where questions might perhaps be 
 awkward, we are not quite disposed to cultivate 
 his acquaintance in private. This is no reflection 
 on his numerous excellences of heart. It is only 
 a candid admission that his standards of daily 
 conduct will probably differ — for better or for 
 worse — from those which we have happened to 
 find most congenial. _^ 
 
 The case of a father and a son almost equally 
 eminent in the French literature of the nineteenth 
 century will illustrate what I mean. Among 
 the perennial books are the novels of Alexandre 
 Dumas. If you ever think them trivial when 
 you are well, turn when you are ill to " Monte 
 Cristo " or " The Three Musketeers," and you will 
 never want other diversion. As is generally 
 known, the life of Dumas, while full of amiability, 
 was not conspicuously austere — a fact which 
 has no more bearing on the charm of his narra- 
 tive than the personal morals of an opera singer 
 have on the quality of the notes produced by 
 her vocal organs. You would not have chosen 
 him as private tutor for your sons, no doubt ; 
 there it ends. The whole world may forever 
 enjoy his animated romances. You may feel, 
 however, a shade of embarrassment if they ask 
 you too definitely about his son, the younger 
 
282 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Alexandre Dumas. His origin, regular in the 
 course of nature, was not preceded by all the 
 legal formalities conventionally assumed among 
 ourselves to be preliminary to such incidents; 
 and the circumstances of his youth were such 
 as to find normal expression — at an age when 
 most of our boys are still at college — in " La 
 Dame aux Camelias." 
 
 Whatever the ultimate moral of this classic 
 work, no one can deny its astonishing power, nor 
 yet that this power springs from two qualities 
 deeply characteristic of its author. It enlists your 
 sympathy for the moment ; without stopping to 
 inquire whether you approve of these people, or 
 agree with them, you understand them and share 
 their griefs. More conspicuously still, it is appar- 
 ently serious; it discusses matters with intense 
 gravity. In this aspect it could hardly be outdone 
 by any sermon. 
 
 Both of these traits persisted throughout the 
 admirable artistic career of the younger Dumas. 
 What is more, as he grew in maturity he became 
 the serious expounder of a moral code as simple 
 and as sound as you should find in any ortho- 
 dox Sunday-school. He preached it, no doubt, 
 in terms of his own, instinct with the animation 
 inseparable from lasting literary work in France. 
 He preached it, too, with something of the fervor 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 233 
 
 which animates the spirits of converts or of moral 
 discoverers. The commonplaces of our nurseries 
 blazed for him with the splendor of new, self- 
 revealing truth. His career as an artist was 
 honorable, conscientious and distinguished. It 
 was remarkable for popularity, for endurance, 
 and for recognition. Among the members of 
 the Academic Fran9aise in his time hardly any 
 was more widely known, or more secure in public 
 esteem. As a man of letters, he commanded not 
 only admiration but respect; and I have been 
 given to understand that he commanded them 
 equally from those who had the privilege of 
 knowing him in private life. 
 
 Yet, from the " Dame aux Camelias " to 
 "Denise" and " Francillon," he set forth his 
 principles in terms of social surroundings and 
 conduct conspicuous for irregularity. He rose 
 from a world of frank disrepute, through that 
 ambiguous society to which he gave the name 
 of Demi-monde^ to the established social system 
 of the middle and the upper classes of France. 
 Throughout he showed you everywhere the mis- 
 chief which must ensue from misbehavior, and 
 showed it by means of pitiless detection and analy- 
 sis thereof. Partly, no doubt, this was a matter 
 of his art, due to the conditions which we have 
 already taken into account. Partly, on the other 
 
234 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 hand, it seems a question of his own personal ex- 
 perience. Bom in the artist class, he lived in it, 
 worked in it, and attained in it a dignity respected 
 not only in Paris and in France, but all over the 
 world. Yet the facts of his personal career might 
 almost be inferred from the subjects of his art, as 
 we recalled them a moment ago. Much of his life 
 was passed amid surroundings where vagaries of 
 conduct are more usual than most of us habitually 
 find them. This would have been true of any 
 actor among ourselves ; it has nothing whatever 
 to do with his personal character or principles. 
 It is true, in general, of all artists in France — 
 from the Academy to the cafes of the Champs 
 Elysees. Anybody, artist or not, must generally 
 assume as normal the phase of life he knows 
 best. Thus we have found another, and a differ- 
 ent, reason for the range of topic which pervades 
 French literature. 
 
 And yet, after all, it is possible that we have 
 long been straying too far afield. We have been 
 trying to account for the wide differences between 
 French Ufe as one finds it and French life as 
 it is set forth in the literature on which foreign 
 notions of France are based. We have discovered 
 for this difference various reasons — traditional, 
 psychologic, social. Very likely we might better 
 have illustrated it by an analogous difference, 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 235 
 
 equally obvious to any foreigner who should first 
 travel in America and then come to know Amer- 
 icans as they are. If I may trust my own ex- 
 perience, after more than one journey abroad, the 
 most salient literary fact in America, when you 
 view things with a fresh eye, is the prevalence of 
 newspapers. You see them everywhere, in every- 
 body's hands ; and of late the custom of filling 
 space with huge headlines has so flourished 
 that you cann,ot help remarking what they oflfer 
 as the principal subjects of interest. When I 
 last returned to Boston, after a year's absence, 
 this happened to concern the identity of an un- 
 happy girl whose body had been discovered in 
 two or three separate packages floating about the 
 harbor. Day by day the accounts of this incident 
 were copiously illustrated in the newspapers which 
 confronted you in every public place. It may 
 be taken as typical. Murders, burglaries, elope- 
 ments, accidents, rascalities stare you in the face, 
 in monstrous type, morning, noon, and night. 
 Railway trains are full of people with their noses 
 buried in these savory sheets. Any stranger might 
 well infer this America of ours to be a land where 
 his most respectable neighbor would probably 
 be a pickpocket. Wealth here appears to be re- 
 garded as the result of robbery applied to pur- 
 poses of deliberate corruption. Political eminence 
 
236 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 seems to be, at best, demagogic arrogance devot- 
 ing itself to oppression of the deluded poor. The 
 principal occupation of those who purvey food is 
 presented in the light of an endeavor to strike a 
 working balance between rapacity and poisoning. 
 And so on. I do not intentionally exaggerate the 
 probable impression produced on any foreigner 
 by the muck-raking and the yellow journals now 
 so popular throughout the United States of 
 America. 
 
 In the matter of taste, nothing can be said for 
 this phase of depravity. Psychologically, on the 
 other hand, it is both interesting and instructive. 
 It is only a vulgar example of the same human 
 impulse which, in anything but vulgar form, may 
 be detected in the topics most frequent through- 
 out the standard Hterature of France. The in- 
 ference to be drawn from it is not that you are 
 in the presence of a society so corrupt as to be 
 obviously on the verge of dissolution. It is 
 rather that tired human beings, fatigued by lives 
 of conscientious regularity, find diversion in con- 
 templating something different from the monot- 
 onies of their daily routine. . Literature affords 
 them this chance. In France, the literature has 
 great intrinsic merit ; in America, it has only the 
 ephemeral vivacity of popular journalism. In 
 both cases its relation to every-day life is about 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 237 
 
 the same. It sets forth irregularities, for the pur- 
 pose of counterbalancing the benumbing torpor 
 of recurrent regularity. If you imagine other- 
 wise, you will fall into the fatal error of supposing 
 the exception to be the rule. 
 
 At least, I hope, the manner in which I have 
 tried to set forth this analogy will serve to define 
 my purpose. This has not been in any sense 
 apologetic. I have not meant either to com- 
 mend or to condemn the subjects most frequent 
 in French literature, any more than I have meant 
 to praise or to blame the course at present taken 
 by the daily newspapers of America. I have 
 attempted only to point out the likeness be- 
 tween a paradox which we all understand and one 
 which has generally misled us. American life is 
 not such as American newspapers would lead 
 a stranger to infer. Neither does French life 
 seem such as strangers infer who know it only 
 from French novels. In each case the facts set 
 forth are substantially true; in each case they 
 are comparatively unusual ; in each the vast 
 strength of social regularity is, for the moment, 
 ignored. In each, as one grows to know the 
 nation better, this strength proves so vital, so 
 incessant, that in generalizing the life which it 
 animates one is apt to think of little else. 
 
 For human life everywhere is a conflict be- 
 
238 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 tween good forces and evil — constructive and 
 destructive. It is the same with physical organ- 
 isms, with moral, with social. Without the evil 
 it could not exist; without the good it could 
 not persist anywhere. 
 
VI 
 
 THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 
 
 SO far we have touched Uttle on matters 
 of controversy. I have tried to give s6me 
 account of the means by which the French 
 temperament was brought to my knowledge — of 
 the universities, society, and family life. I have 
 tried to analyze this temperament — if analysis 
 be not too pretentious a term for my attempt to 
 point out how the intense love of system preva- 
 lent in France combines with the intellectual 
 candor of the French to excite incessant, honest, 
 passionate mutual misunderstanding among them. 
 And I have done my best to explain why the 
 \ • impression of modern France which any stranger 
 would derive from French literature is different! 
 from that which he would derive from personal 
 contact with the French life of today. It would 
 be inconceivable that my comments should com- 
 mand everybody's agreement. They have in- 
 volved too intricate a combination of opinion 
 with fact to avoid vagary and perhaps serious 
 error. But they have not brought us to dangerous 
 
 V 
 
240 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ground. At worst, they have been efforts to 
 make ourselves sympathetically understand the 
 nature of an intensely interesting foreign people, 
 strange yet friendly, instantly and incessantly 
 attractive. In such case, errors of observation 
 or blunders of opinion, even if not quite negli- 
 gible, should lead to nothing more disturbing 
 than friendly critical correction. 
 
 With the matters to which we now come, the 
 case is different. Religious questions and politi- 
 cal, even when they chance not to seem burning, 
 are never free from a smouldering fire, which at 
 any moment may burst into flame. This is 
 particularly the case among a people so intense 
 as the French in devotion to system. And there 
 has rarely been a period in their history when 
 discussion of religion or politics has stirred them 
 more deeply than is the case now. There are far- 
 reaching questions at issue, serious principles at 
 stake. To earnest men engaged in such contro- 
 versy, the lines seem sharply drawn, as was the 
 case among ourselves, forty years ago, during the 
 terrible national trial of our Civil War. Who- 
 ever believes himself right in his conclusions must 
 inevitably believe himself morally right, ready to 
 sacrifice all things else to some absolute higher 
 law. Whoever is thus inspired must need more 
 self-control than most of us can exert if he would 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 241 
 
 conceive opponents to be anything but wicked 
 — perhaps perversely, more probably with a de- 
 liberate blindness which enhances their deserts 
 of indignation. It is hard, accordingly, to ap- 
 proach such questions at all without seeming 
 to take sides. The more impartial one tries to 
 be, the greater one's danger. For when you take 
 neither side, in any passionate controversy, each 
 side will generally hold that you are taking the 
 other. 
 
 Yet nothing could be further from my pur- 
 pose, or indeed from my just pretensions. It was 
 as a friendly visitor that I knew the French dur- 
 ing the year I passed among them. Throughout 
 that year questions of religion and of politics, 
 deeply intermingled, were obviously burning. 
 They were confused, too, and complicated. 
 Friends who were equally cordial, and who 
 equally commanded my respect, took opposite 
 sides. To have believed either side wholly in 
 the right would have been to fail in sympathy 
 with the other. That would have demanded far 
 greater knowledge, far more experience than 
 mine. The one experience I found unavoidable, 
 incessant, stimulating, was that of perceiving 
 how the French temperament was affected by 
 questions which stirred it to the depths. Cer- 
 tain considerations, broadly general, thus came 
 
 16 
 
242 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 to form themselves in my mind ; and they have 
 since tended to grow somewhat more definite. 
 It is these, and nothing more final, which I shall 
 try to set forth. 
 
 To begin with, one can hardly come to know 
 
 the French as friends without acknowledging 
 
 ^ , them to be, as a people, genuinely and deeply 
 
 I ^^ religious. This term itself may be misleading. 
 
 1^^ ^ It is apt, anywhere, to associate itself so closely 
 ^ with the formulas of some precise creed that, 
 with any of us, it may half unconsciously begin 
 to imply them. To a native Yankee, who can 
 still remember old times, for example, the word 
 " religious " can hardly fail to suggest a more or 
 less willing habit of listening to two long ser- 
 mons every Sunday, and of saying your prayers 
 before you get into bed. Such associations, rev- 
 erend and helpful though they may often be, 
 somewhat distract us from the fundamental fact 
 which the word, in its wider sense, must every- 
 where stand for. 
 
 We human beings pass our little years of 
 mortal consciousness in a sunny, shadowy world 
 of which we know not either the beginning or the 
 end. We waken, as we grow, to knowledge of 
 the facts about us — our fellow men and the con- 
 ditions which surround us all. We come, per- 
 haps, to understand something more than our own 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 243 
 
 experience could tell us. History, for example, 
 and science bring us face to face with men and 
 with affairs, with strange aspects of life, of mat- 
 ter, of force, i5uch as could never have revealed 
 themselves to us in the flesh. V But, far as these 
 enlightening perceptions may go, they can never 
 take us beyond the state we may best understand 
 by recalling our crescently conscious childhood. 
 A child finds himself in a world where he can 
 seem to control a little of the immensity surging 
 all about him — his toys, perhaps, and his little 
 brother. More of this immensity must control 
 him — his parents, their means, the horse which 
 he can drive if harnessed, but which proves too 
 big for him to bridle. Beyond the little circum- 
 stances of his daily life, there lies for him infini- 
 tude. It lies beyond us all — everywhere, no 
 matter how far any of us may fancy that he has 
 forced his way toward it. And death is about 
 us everywhere, indefinite, inexorable ; they tell us 
 that it awaits the planet, as surely as it awaits 
 any fly whose buzzing may worry us. Earth itself 
 has only a little while of conscious and separate 
 existence, comparable to such existence as we 
 know, each for himself. But mortality does not 
 comprise everything. In mortal space there are 
 stars beyond stars, moving together in obedience 
 to some vast immensity of force. Beyond 
 
244 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 them, as beyond the little child, surges some- 
 thing else, forever inaccessible to merely human 
 ken. What it is we may never know ; but we 
 may always believe. The beliefs of humanity, 
 as they have phrased themselves in creeds and 
 systems, have been numberless. They have 
 ranged from adoration of brute beasts to the 
 most ethereal concepts of mystical philosophy. 
 The truth which inspires them all reveals itself 
 in the simplest, the most inevitable of human 
 perceptions. There is beyond us all an influence 
 more vast, more potent than we can ever be. 
 Recognize this, and you will know what religion 
 means. 
 
 The terms in which you express your religion 
 may well seem terribly mistaken to other men, 
 just as theirs may seem to you. Throughout 
 history, the devotees of one creed bow down to 
 the devils of the next. What the passing fashion 
 of our time calls the course of religious evolution 
 is everywhere marked by the fragments of de- 
 throned idols, be they stocks and stones, or mere 
 formulas of language, dead and dying. But re- 
 ligions, even though outworn and abominated, are 
 religions still. They leave their traces, too ; which 
 shall guide you everywhere to the gates of eter- 
 nity. In moods like this, forgetting all else, you 
 find yourself on the same threshold whether you 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 245 
 
 be penetrating the dim halls of some deserted 
 temple on the Nile, or watching the sunset glow 
 on the ruin of the Parthenon, or reading the Eng- 
 lish Bible, or marvelling at the vital exuberance 
 of some soaring French cathedral. 
 
 A deep intensity of vitality makes the religious 
 architecture of old France more memorable than 
 any other in Europe. I You may well forget the 
 details of structure and of ornament, dear to 
 lovers of historical monuments. You may find 
 the images even of the masterpieces fused or 
 fusing in your fancy, till they grow flickering, 
 phantasmagoric. They will never fade into life- 
 lessness. Rather, you grow always more wonder- 
 ingly aware of how measureless was the aspiration 
 of mediaeval France. Even the ponderous arches 
 of the oldest time do not bend under the weight 
 they were made to bear. Instead, they lift 
 themselves upward, bursting into crescent efflo- 
 rescence of rude, splendid sculpture. They 
 thrust their points skyward, soon ; letting the 
 light of heaven stream through the lancets and 
 the wheels which open, like flowers, in the thin- 
 ning walls. The spaces fill themselves with 
 glories of color, enriching the very sunshine with 
 austere images of patriarchs, of saints, of angels, 
 of the Blessed Virgin, of Our Lord himself. The 
 aspiration ranges higher and higher still, unweary- 
 
246 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ing, superhuman. The groins and the arches, 
 the traceries and the carven flowers, writhe hke 
 leaves or tendrils, until they begin to lose the 
 strength they once drew from roots deep in the 
 heart of solid earth. You feel them trembling, 
 quivering, vanishing at last. Yet all this luxuri- 
 ance of growth has still surged upward. It is as 
 if you had watched the life of some forest tree, 
 miraculously comprising within the scope of hu- 
 man sight the years and the ages of its increase 
 from sapling to giant, alive to the very tip of 
 each quivering leaf. The end of growth must 
 come, of course ; but when you have watched to 
 the end, your eyes are still turned more search- 
 ingly than ever towards the heavens above and 
 the eternities. The splendor of the exuberance 
 which has distracted them a thousand times only 
 reminds you of what exhaustless vital force was 
 needful to inspire growth so incessant, so deathless 
 even in ruin. 
 
 Fantastic enough, all this ; yet nowise untrue. 
 You may smile at the fancy if you will ; but you 
 cannot deny it. You may repine to find that it 
 is at once so commonplace and so far from final. 
 So is life itself, throughout nature, — repetitory, 
 aspiring, unending. There is only one condition 
 inevitable for its existence, a spark of the force 
 which irradiates and animates the visible universe. 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 247 
 
 This may glow in a fly or in a blade of gi'ass, in 
 a human being or a nation or a race. Everywhere 
 on earth it is environed with enemies sure at 
 last to quench the potency of its fire. None the 
 less its traces shall live. And when these linger 
 in such forms as have stirred us to this reverie, 
 we can never fail to recognize, even though 
 we may not penetrate, their wondrous quality. 
 There are ruined buildings as vital as the sea- 
 shells from which their denizens withered away 
 long ago, to leave us enduring record of beauty. 
 Other ruins seem more like broken fragments of 
 such carving as attempts throughout time to 
 mimic the primal mastery of nature. There is 
 life in both — each in its kind ; but the truest 
 life, the life most near to the core of that life 
 which embraces us all, is recorded only in such 
 fervors as animated the centuries of church build- 
 ing throughout France. No people, no race or 
 fusion of races, could have left us works like 
 these, unless — amid all the smothering and dis- 
 turbing earthiness of its environment — it had 
 been dominant with the power of religion. 
 
 But the days of church-building are long past, 
 you may say, and forever. No doubt that form 
 of expression is no longer living. We are fallen 
 on other times, and our fathers were fallen there 
 for generations before us. So they were; and 
 
248 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 some of them on the times when the French 
 Protestant Calvin — heretic or not, as you will 
 — honestly set forth the system of theology 
 which of all those opposed to ancestral Rome 
 has proved most pregnant, most nearly enduring. 
 You may lament his errors, denounce them with 
 His Holiness himself. You cannot deny their 
 religious vitality in times when the force of life 
 had subsided from the bodily masonry of the 
 churches. Calvinism lingers still, at the life- 
 roots of our own far-off America. There was 
 religion too, unrecognizable though its featured 
 semblance may seem, in that chilled recoil from 
 unreasoned dogma which throughout France pre- 
 ceded and precipitated the final convulsions of 
 the eighteenth century. And the better you 
 know the French, even to this day, the more 
 surely you grow to feel that, in their inner hearts, 
 they are wonderfully religious still. 
 
 A vivid memory of my childhood has never 
 faded. During the last years of the Second Em- 
 pire I was taken for the first time to Paris. 
 The brilliancy of that vanished epoch may have 
 been tinsel; but surely it gleamed in the full 
 sunshine, — which same sunshine illuminated a 
 world that looked bright and naughty. Even 
 a boy of ten or twelve could feel imperial Paris 
 alluringly earthy, could find the far from spiritual 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 249 
 
 airs of Offenbach fitly filling the atmosphere of 
 his fancy as he was driven along the still gay 
 boulevards. At the end of them stood the Made- 
 leine, just as it stands to-day. One morning I 
 was taken there, to hear the music of some reli- 
 gious ceremony. In the course of this, there was 
 a procession of the clergy, perhaps to or from the 
 sacristy. I remember of it only the marvellous 
 impression made on me by the face of a priest 
 who seemed the chief personage. To me the 
 rest had been mere pageantry ; this grave, gentle 
 countenance was like that of a saint, of a being 
 from some better world than I had ever quite 
 dreamed of. We were in a crowded church, of 
 course. A lady near us overheard some words 
 of mine, as this unforgotten figure passed us. 
 She turned, and spoke very kindly in English. 
 She was glad, she said, that we had seen him ; she 
 knew him ; he was as beautiful in spirit as he was 
 in aspect. More still, that beauty of spirit was 
 more truly French than the vanities which care- 
 less travellers might think the whole of France. 
 Anyone can see our frivolity, she said, but no 
 one can know us who does not know our piety. 
 
 It has taken me a good many years to feel the 
 full truth of those words. In certain aspects 
 I can guess it stiU only from hearsay. The cir- 
 cumstances of my official visit to France were 
 
250 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 unfavorable to intercourse with the French clergy. 
 During all the months of my university service 
 the policy of the government was so actively 
 antagonistic to the Church that anything radical 
 was an object of more than usual clerical suspi- 
 cion ; and my lectures, in English and concern- 
 ing America, were a radical departure even from 
 university tradition. There were a few priests, 
 here and there, among my hearers ; and I came 
 pleasantly to know a very few. In general, how- 
 ever, they were the sort of Frenchmen whom I 
 saw least, — those who seemed least disposed to 
 recognize my presence, unless politeness required 
 them to do so. 
 
 And yet, as the months passed, I grew more 
 and more to feel that, as much as any clergy who 
 have ever sanctified the world, the clergy of mod- 
 ern France deserve their title of Reverend. The 
 type of them is not such as we imagine from old 
 memoirs and from Protestant traditions. There 
 have been Richelieus and Mazarins, no doubt, 
 Rohans and Talleyrands, and perfumed abbes. 
 But, more and more, as I try to embody my 
 conception of a French ecclesiastic in some visi- 
 ble form, I find the image widely different from 
 these. It takes the shape rather of the devoted 
 minister who stood disguised in the public streets 
 when the kinswomen of Lafayette were on their 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 251 
 
 way to the scaffold, and made to them from amid 
 the Revolutionary rabble the mystic sign of the 
 last solemnity of the Church. It takes the shape 
 of the simple Cure of Les Saintes Maries, leading 
 us from his grim old fortified church on the Med- 
 iterranean sands to his own little study ; and 
 there, in his rusty black robe, showing us docu- 
 ments to prove his relics indisputable, from the 
 very days of King Rene. To be sure, a gap of a 
 few years had occurred, at the sad period of the 
 Revolution, when a devout man was supposed 
 to have kept them in reverent hiding. Except 
 for this, there could be no question that they had 
 been in their chests ever since the Provencjal king 
 found them concealed, five hundred years ago. 
 And if they had not been the true relics of the 
 saints whom an angel steered in a single night 
 fi:om the Holy Land to the delta of the Rhone, 
 why should they ever have been concealed in the 
 safe hiding-place where good King Rene discov- 
 ered them, as his seal attests ? And so on. The 
 gypsies flock thither still, to pray at the shrine 
 of black Saint Sara, the servant of the holy 
 Maries. There is a painted offering, too, at 
 the shrine, showing how, about 1590, a boy 
 fell from the roof of the church, and remem- 
 bering to confide himself to the Maries, came 
 to earth uninjured and in a standing posture. 
 
252 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Nothing but miracle could have saved him, the 
 priest opined. Such scattered evidence, incom- 
 plete though it were, he concluded, made it more 
 reasonable to believe the pious tale than to 
 doubt it. Just then and there, one could under- 
 stand what he meant ; could believe at least in 
 his simple-hearted sincerity ; could reverence the 
 faithfulness of his ministrations ; could fall to won- 
 dering whether his childish wisdom might not, 
 after all, be deeper than the wisdom of what we 
 fancy our maturities. He made the Abb^ Con- 
 stantin of Halevy seem no creature of fancy. 
 Both alike, in their simple goodness, their unques- 
 tioning acceptance of vocation group themselves 
 as lesser brothers of that saintly figure in the 
 Madeleine, when Napoleon III still ruled his 
 restive empire from the unruined palace of the 
 Tuileries. 
 
 Just who this clergyman was, whose counte- 
 nance has lingered in memory all my life, I can- 
 not be sure. I believe, however, that he was the 
 same Cure of the Madeleine who, a few years 
 later, was shot in Paris by the order of the Com- 
 mune, after some such form of trial as those 
 idealistic regenerators of their country invented 
 to dignify their summary proceedings. He was 
 not alone in his martjTdom, you will remember. 
 The Archbishop of Paris suffered at the same 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 253 
 
 time ; and this was not the only archbishop done 
 to death by Revolutionists during the nineteenth 
 century. Another fell before the barricades which 
 he had confronted, with full sense of his danger, 
 in pursuance of his peace-compelling charge — 
 descended to him apostolically from the very 
 moment when the Holy Spirit inspired the first 
 ministers of Our Lord. You shall find his relics, 
 and more as well, treasured in the sacristy of 
 Notre Dame. The splendors they show you at 
 the same time — the robes and the jewels, even 
 the sacred vessels admirable as works of art — 
 seem tawdry things and trivial ; but these plain 
 records of how great officials of the Church gave 
 up their lives must stir you deep. Share their 
 faith or not, you cannot resist the impulse to 
 believe that they have won their right to place 
 in the noble army of Martyrs. And you execrate 
 the wicked zealots who murdered them for their 
 conscience' sake. 
 
 But then, if you be of our elder American 
 tradition, and fall to pondering on the glories of 
 martyrdom, there will come to you some whiff 
 from the embers of Smithfield fires. You will 
 find yourself thinking of Foxe, and of good 
 John Rogers, burned in the presence of his wife 
 and eleven young children, one at the breast. 
 Rowland Taylor's memory will begin to kindle. 
 
254 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 and Hooper's ; Latimer's, too, and Ridley's, and 
 Cranmer's — whose better voice still sounds in the 
 deathless rhythm of the English Litany. They 
 were martyrs, if ever martyrs were ; and their 
 martyrdom was wrought by the devotees of 
 that very faith for which these French heroes, 
 of another epoch, gave up life in turn. That 
 faith, too, dragged the corpse of Coligny through 
 the streets of Charles IX's Paris, drenched with 
 the blood of Huguenots. It has been a wicked 
 thing itself, that faith of theirs ; so our fathers 
 have taught us, from generation to generation. 
 Were the Communists so utterly wicked, after 
 all, for taking the shortest way to suppress the 
 propagation of its damnable errors ? 
 
 Thus, hardly knowing whither your mood is 
 leading, you find yourself lost in the mazes of 
 the old wars of religion. What these were in 
 detail you have little conception, unless you be 
 more learned in history than most of us. All 
 you can feel sure of is that they were infinitely 
 complicated wars — so snarled with politics, ec- 
 clesiastical and temporal, so intermingled with 
 every base human passion and with every weak 
 human frailty, that, again and again, there seems 
 a case for those who should assert them reli- 
 gious only in accidental name. Tradition makes 
 them seem conflicts of heavenly light with devil- 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 255 
 
 ish darkness — simple as sunrise. Study shows 
 them murky — darkness clashing with darkness, 
 into darkness darker still. Yet here and there 
 gleams of light irradiate the darkness, until some- 
 times for a little while they seem to irradiate 
 it everywhere. War is everywhere infernal, not 
 least because the noblest of war lets loose the 
 dogs of passion, to work havoc of the spirit, 
 even where the spirit glowed awhile most potent. 
 But supremely noble phases of the spirit stay im- 
 mortal, strengthening as the years and the ages 
 purify their disembodied glories. Such immor- 
 tality is the crown of martyrdom. It is the 
 crown, as well, of those who honestly sent the 
 martyrs to their stakes, or did them to death 
 with powder and ball in nineteenth-century Paris. 
 The wars of religion were religious for both sides. 
 It was their faith — for all their human weakness 
 — which makes the memory of Huguenots and 
 English Protestants heroic still. It was their 
 other faith which makes us reverence the rehcs 
 of the dead churchmen of Catholic France. It 
 was a mode of faith, we can begin to feel at last, 
 which led the Commune itself to what have 
 seemed its acts of wanton wickedness. Negation 
 of faith is itself faith. The wars of religion are 
 upon us still, with all their horrors of the flesh 
 and all their glories of the spirit. The true con- 
 
256 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 flict is a conflict of religious ideals. They seem 
 irreconcilable. The adherents of each believe it 
 absolutely true ; if so, their opponents must be 
 absolutely in error. But this does not mean that 
 they must know themselves to be so. Honest 
 error is almost as venerable as truth itself. Both 
 have the spiritual grace of utmost devotion. 
 
 In one form or another, such devotion pervades 
 France — far more widely and more deeply than 
 one might at first suspect. The intellectual can- 
 dor of the French permits them to recognize hu- 
 man error with frankness. They do not pretend 
 that men, of any shade, will probably conduct 
 themselves like saints. But the fact that men 
 err in no wise implies them godless. Inextri- 
 cably good and evil, they are impelled to recog^ 
 nize the limits which environ humanity, and to 
 find therein the force which must control us all. 
 Thus comes faith, whether you will or no. The 
 precision with which French minds work makes 
 \ ^hem apt to formulate their faith in pretty def- 
 i ^nite terms, and then to cherish the formulas. 
 iThus, perhaps with excessive devotion to for- 
 nula, the French come to range themselves, in the 
 natter of religion, pretty clearly ; and thus arise 
 their tremendous religious difficulties. 
 
 To understand the question of religion, as it 
 now exists in France, we may best conceive it. 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 25? 
 
 I think, as a dispute between Catholics and dis- 
 senters from Catholicism. Among the French 
 Catholic Christianity has a triple strength — that 
 which is inherent in it everywhere, that which 
 comes from prolonged national tradition, and 
 that which results from the fact that, among the 
 better sort of people, it has never ceased to be 
 the fashion. For centuries, of course, there has 
 been dissent in France ; and two bodies of dis- 
 senters have a long and honorable history — the 
 Protestants and the Jews. What is more, con- 
 sidering their numbers, each of these bodies is 
 remarkable in quality. Members of each persua- 
 sion have described it to me as composed of the 
 elect of the intellect — " une elite de VintelUgence'* 
 In both cases the phrase is defensible. Jewish 
 intelligence lies at the root of that pervasive 
 prejudice now called anti-Semitic ; your Jew can 
 generally outwit your Christian ; that is why 
 your Christian, being thick-headed but strong of 
 arm, has been disposed to keep him under forcibly. 
 And French Protestants — like all Protestants 
 — began by claiming right to think for them- 
 selves, in defiance of authority, and have main- 
 tained themselves throughout their checkered 
 history by a pretty vigorous habit of reasoning, 
 which has made them, as a class, unusually robust 
 in mental process. Neither of these bodies, how- 
 
 17 
 
258 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ever, is considerable in numbers ; both together 
 would make a group of the elect hardly more 
 numerous than the elect of Calvinism in com- 
 parison with its lost myriads of mankind. For 
 our purposes, I think, they may fairly be grouped 
 with the other opponents of Catholicism, who 
 may more properly be termed free-thinkers. All 
 agree in denying the authoritative right of the 
 Catholic Church to control their religious belief 
 and conduct. 
 
 All alike, as we have reminded ourselves, desire 
 to exercise their various degrees of free thought 
 in a country where the conception of Christianity 
 as identical with Catholicism has never yet been 
 deeply shaken. Here, I think, is one chief reason 
 why Americans fail sympathetically to understand 
 them. The native tradition of America still re- 
 mains Protestant, at least to such degree that it 
 does not readily grasp the principles of people 
 who instinctively accept, as evident, the claims 
 of ecclesiastical authority. These claims, too, are 
 not easy to state, unless you happen to be among 
 those authoritatively charged with the duty of 
 stating them. So far as an outsider may venture 
 to set them forth, in simple terms, they appear to 
 be somewhat as follows. 
 
 The assertion of the Catholic Church, as I ap- 
 prehend it, is that the full spiritual authority 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 259 
 
 requisite for salvation is resident, by divine 
 commission, in itself. In the coasts of Cassarea 
 Philippi Christ uttered to Peter the prophetic 
 words, Tu es Petrus et in hanc petram cedijicaho 
 ecdesiam meam. And, when Christ was risen, the 
 Holy Ghost descended. And Peter became the 
 first Bishop of Rome. And he ordained priests 
 and made other bishops, transmitting to them 
 orders thus divinely holy. And such consecra- 
 tion, attending the transmission of holy orders 
 throughout the centuries, has carried with it, and 
 carries still, the sacred authority derived from 
 the lips of Our Lord. To put this matter less 
 solemnly, the Church believes that from the time 
 of its origin it has possessed, in matters spiritual, 
 powers which we may best understand by compar- 
 ing them with the temporal powers recognized as 
 inherent in duly established governments. These 
 are quite independent of the persons who, from 
 time to time, may be called on to administer 
 them. It is to be presumed, no doubt, — and 
 surely to be hoped at all times, — that sovereigns 
 and soldiers, judges and policemen, will be re- 
 spectable men, devoted to their duties. Whether 
 they are or not, the authority of government and 
 law remains unimpaired. If they can be proved 
 unworthy, they can generally be removed from 
 office by some duly recognized process. Until 
 
260 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 so removed, they enjoy, in temporal matters, as 
 much power as if their virtues were inestimable. 
 The fact that a policeman is inflamed with drink 
 does not prevent his right to arrest you ; a biga- 
 mous collector of customs may still prevent you 
 from smuggling. You may regret that a gov- 
 ernment is not better served ; but so long as it 
 persists, you are bound to admit its authority. 
 
 Something similar is the case with the Church, 
 in matters spiritual. Protestant temper has been 
 rather apt to dwell excessively on the fact that, 
 at least from a Protestant point of view, the per- 
 sonal character of Catholic ecclesiastics has often 
 left something to be desired. Historically, if 
 we may trust records, this has been the case. 
 What Protestant or free-thinking temper seems 
 never to realize, is that this might have been the 
 case ten times as often without in the least im- 
 pairing the validity of the Church. As men> 
 these ecclesiastiqs will be called to their final ac- 
 count as sternly as anybody else. From popes 
 to deacons, they are no more safe than you 
 or I. There was never an image of the Last 
 Judgment but showed you shaven crowns among 
 the damned. God will punish his imdeserving 
 officers as relentlessly as any earthly sovereign 
 ever did. So long as they hold their office, how- 
 ever, they still represent divine authority. 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 261 
 
 Unwelcome though such authoritative claim 
 may be to Protestant or free-thinking sentiment, 
 it is comprehensible, and, what is more, sensible. 
 The Church professes to be corporately possessed 
 of spiritual powers which shall solve the spirit- 
 ual problems of those who will acknowledge its 
 claim ; and no candid heretic can deny that, 
 throughout the centuries of its persistence, it 
 has proved to possess a wonderful spiritual effi- 
 cacy. There is something far deeper than jest in 
 the familiar old tale of the converted Jew. In his 
 own country he was unshaken by the arguments 
 of godly priests. But he went to Rome when 
 things there were at their most godless ; and he 
 came back a Christian. It stood to reason, he 
 concluded, that a religion which could maintain 
 itself in spite of such vagrancies must be authen- 
 tically divine. Conventionally, of course, this 
 story is received as it was intended ; it is thought 
 a ribald jest. From the point of view of heretics, 
 however, it becomes deeply instructive. Oppo- 
 nents of the Church, throughout its history, have 
 denounced the human infirmities of its officers, 
 every shade of whose misconduct they have em- 
 phasized and dragged to light. These same op- 
 ponents have rarely stopped to consider what 
 spiritual good the Church has wrought in spite of 
 all its short-comings. This inspired corporation 
 
262 THE FRANCE OP TODAY 
 
 professes to possess inalienably the divine power 
 not only of guiding immortal souls towards eter- 
 nity, but of so assuring them of salvation during 
 the passing years of their embodiment in the 
 flesh, that spiritual peace shall be almost attain- 
 able on earth. It has never for an instant denied 
 or dissimulated the errancy of human beings ; it 
 has asserted only that none can wander so far as 
 to stray beyond the p^le of mercy and reconcilia- 
 tion. And if spiritual efficacy immeasurable be 
 any argument in support of spiritual claim, the 
 Church might rest its case content on the peace 
 it has brought for ages to European human- 
 ity. It has not been the only source of spiritual 
 comfort ; but it has been incalculably the great- 
 est, the most sure, the most comprehensive, the 
 most general. Mere common sense would be at 
 pains to deny its potency, in all matters of the 
 spirit. 
 
 Mankind is something else than spiritual, how- 
 ever ; something more or less besides. We have, 
 the Church asserts, our immortal souls. Beyond 
 question we have our mortal bodies, as well, dis- 
 tractingly entangled in the meshes of this world. 
 The very Church itself has its human side, as 
 the personal errors of its clergy would alone 
 imply. This fact, indeed, may be held to make 
 it most completely symbolic, showing by ex- 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 263 
 
 ample through the ages how divine truth can 
 persist undimmed behind all the mists of human 
 perversity. Its actual organization, its visible 
 hierarchy, is as human as the Roman Empire 
 ever was temporally. And although the true 
 concern of the hierarchy is with the spirit, it has 
 never long refrained from concerning itself also 
 with matters of the flesh. Supreme in religion, 
 it has been apt to deem itself supreme too in 
 politics ; and, on the whole, it has not conducted^ 
 public business so happily as to command the 
 reverence of dissent or even of many adherents 
 to its doctrine who have disagreed with its poli- 
 cies. Heresy, baffled by the spiritual potency of 
 the Church, may return refreshed to the charge, 
 when it confines its attacks to what has happened, 
 in general, when priests have undertaken to man- 
 age secular matters uncontrolled. One need 
 not go to heretics for comments on this state of 
 affairs. Not long ago, a good French Catholic 
 professed in print that anyone must admit the 
 Church supreme in matters concerning the im- 
 mortal soul. At the same time, he pointed out, 
 the principles which should direct the infinite 
 course of an immortal organism should seem, 
 in their very nature, hardly identical with those 
 which should govern the brief course of anything 
 mortal. This reasoning, he opined, went far to 
 
264 THE FRANCE OP TODAY 
 
 explain why churchmen, as a class, are by no 
 means satisfactory politicians or trustees. 
 
 At the same time there can be no doubt that 
 the impulse of a spiritually supreme authority to 
 assert its supremacy in other matters than those 
 of doctrine or morals is humanly irresistible. It 
 is subject to the same infirmity as an individual, 
 growing aware of great power in some special 
 faculty, and not sure of just where his power 
 ends, — of where his inspiration ceases, we may 
 say, and where his human weakness begins. To 
 himself each of us, however complex, is a single 
 being. If he can think well and speak well, for 
 example, he feels as if he were consequently able 
 to act wisely too. So he would be, except for the 
 diabolical contradictoriness of the world. And 
 we are all of us human enough to wonder why 
 impeccable theoretical economists should not be 
 put to the task of legislating for railways or of di- 
 recting them — until, again and again, railways 
 come to grief under their honestly blundering 
 management. 
 
 To minds not deeply fond of system — to what 
 we carelessly call practical common sense — 
 such misfortune seems natural. To minds of 
 more alert intelligence, and therefore desirous 
 of reducing everything to order, it seems rather 
 paradoxical; and paradox is unwelcome to in- 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 265 
 
 telHgence. Though it cannot always be avoided, 
 this temper holds, the less of it the better. 
 Now the French, as we have reminded ourselves 
 again and again, are extremely disposed to in- 
 dulge themselves in the delights and the dangers 
 of systematic reasoning. The intelligence of that 
 distinction made by a French Catholic between 
 the principles which should direct immortal or- 
 ganisms and those which should control organ- 
 isms doomed to death is deeply French. The 
 paradox of his reasoning is less so, unless you 
 take it as a mere epigram. It is less so be- 
 cause it instantly sets up two divergent sys- 
 tems to control a situation where, on general 
 principles, you might expect one to serve the 
 purpose. The claim of the spiritually supreme 
 Church to manage secular matters — perhaps we 
 might rather say its impulse to meddle with them 
 — is certainly defensible on general principles. 
 A good man ought to be more trustworthy than 
 a bad; more still, an inspired hierarchy ought 
 to manage politics or education better than 
 every-day men or women should pretend to. 
 Whether they do so or not is hardly the ques- 
 tion; we stray for the moment into regions 
 of abstraction, where systems can flash them- 
 selves out of the nebulous confusion of unrea- 
 soning perception. These regions are particu- 
 
266 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 larly congenial to the French. For one French- 
 man, clerical or revolutionary, who should will- 
 ingly recognize a distinction between the spiritual 
 and the temporal activity of the Church, you 
 shall find a hundred who incline to agree that the 
 pretensions of the Church towards earthly om- 
 nipotence are reasonable. Your good Catholic 
 is accordingly disposed to admit them, at least in 
 principle; your Revolutionist, on the other hand, 
 denying the right of the Church to intermeddle 
 with secular aflFairs, is disposed not to split 
 hairs, but to denounce the Church as infamous 
 throughout. Among the French the unity of 
 the authoritative Church appeals almost equally 
 to its disciples and to its enemies. 
 
 To each other these groups appear much as 
 they appeared throughout the elder period, when 
 wars of religion worried Europe everywhere. 
 As was the case then, any actual dispute grows 
 so complicated with other matters and with other 
 passions than religious, that at any given moment 
 it may seem only another new broil of ignoble 
 human effort. At the heart of every truly re- 
 ligious conflict, the while, you may always find 
 an earnestness of conviction which shall ennoble 
 its memory. For on each side you shall always 
 find leaders — and followers too — unhesitatingly 
 devoted to their ideals of truth. 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 267 
 
 In the case of the religious dissensions which 
 have rent France during the past century or so, 
 this is particularly evident on both sides: both 
 have been heroically sincere in their loyalty to 
 their philosophies. And neglecting for the mo- 
 ment all ecclesiastical pretension, we may rec- 
 ognize a fundamental difference between the 
 philosophy of the Church and that of the Revo- 
 lution. The two schools start from precisely 
 opposite assumptions concerning human nature. 
 
 Both admit that if you scrutinize man, as he 
 reveals himself on earth, you will find him every- 
 where to embody intermingled good and evil. 
 From this point the reasoning of historical 
 Christianity has steadily maintained that the 
 evil forces of human nature are obviously the 
 dominant ones. Men are naturally wicked. 
 Wherever you look, in society or in history, you 
 shall find them so. No scheme of earthly ho- 
 liness was ever devised which could down the 
 Devil. If anywhere you fancy yourself worthy 
 of anything but spiritual contempt, search your 
 heart, and tell yourself the truth of what you 
 find there. We are all sinners, unless some 
 power beyond ourselves intervenes to purify 
 us. Like naughty children or strayed sheep^ 
 we can be guided toward good only by some 
 higher power. To control evil, there is need of 
 
268 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 authority. Throughout history this conception 
 of human nature and its deserts has commended 
 itself to myriads of honest and devout human 
 beings. 
 
 The view of human nature asserted by the 
 philosophy which found political expression in 
 the French Revolution, though equally dogmatic, 
 is less sinister. Why assume that the worse ele- 
 ment in human nature is fatally dominant ? It is 
 always intermingled with good. There was never 
 a state of society so corrupt that l)y seeking you 
 should not find within it traces of virtue; there 
 was never a man so abandoned that if he would 
 search his heart he should not discover there 
 something to help and even to impel him to- 
 ward improvement. Amid the distorting systems 
 which have confused and distracted the course 
 of human history, no doubt, human nature has 
 seemed evil to eyes not keen enough to search 
 its secrets deep. That amid all this tragedy the 
 impulse toward good has persisted unquenched 
 proves that the fire glowing within us is truly 
 divine. All we need for excellence, or at least 
 for an aspiration which shall forever bring us 
 nearer and nearer to excellence, is to perceive 
 that the source of evil lies not in human nature, 
 but in impediments to the free course of man- 
 kind. Seek the truth, and the truth shall make 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 269 
 
 you free. Once free, you shall never cease to 
 grow better and more beneficent. Diabolically 
 heretical though any such philosophy must sound 
 to orthodox ecclesiastical Christians, there can 
 be no question that it has seemed self-evident to 
 myriads of human beings as honest and as de- 
 vout as they themselves. 
 
 This deep divergence of philosophy has been 
 exceptionally marked among the French, for the 
 very reason that they are at once deeply re- 
 ligious and impulsively disposed to reduce to 
 philosophic system whatever comes within the 
 range of their knowledge. Starting from what he 
 deems absolute truth concerning human nature, 
 one kind of Frenchman, accepting the doctrine of 
 the Church, proceeds to construct a system of 
 which thfe merely logical conclusion, unattain- 
 able in perfection, would be the obedience of 
 all mankind to ecclesiastical authority — con- 
 tented acceptance of beneficent tyranny, not 
 needfully unprogressive, but always reverently 
 prudent. Starting from the opposite conception 
 of absolute truth concerning human nature, an- 
 other kind of Frenchman, rejecting orthodox 
 doctrine, proceeds with equal logic to construct 
 an equally unattainable system, of which the end 
 should be a heavenly sort of anarchy — freedom 
 from all control, made feasible by the strengthen- 
 
270 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ing harmonies of unimpeded individual aspira- 
 tion towards ever higher excellence. Each of 
 these systems rests on a dogmatic denial that 
 there is any truth in the fundamental assumption 
 of the other. Any toleration, any shade of com- 
 promise, would seem to both a crime of the spirit. 
 In temper they are passionately at one ; — whence 
 their conscientious discord. 
 
 At the time of the Revolution this conflict was 
 more simply evident than at any other epoch. 
 For centuries the power of the Church in France 
 had been great ; and incidentally this had brought 
 to the Church great wealth, particularly in lands. 
 It was not only that church buildings and re- 
 ligious houses everywhere existed in what seemed 
 needless profusion, keeping apart from lay use 
 innumerable sites which laymen coveted. A 
 considerable portion of the soil was in clerical 
 hands. The clergy, as well, enjoyed many feu- 
 dal rights. Quite apart from their religious 
 character, they were among the most obnoxious 
 of the privileged classes in the eyes of social re- 
 formers who ardently believed that men could 
 improve only under conditions of liberty. Revo- 
 lutionary sentiment made no very clear distinc- 
 tion between the spiritual character of the clergy 
 and the civil. Obviously, if revolutionary prin- 
 ciple were to prevail, the temporal privileges of 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 271 
 
 the Church must be suppressed. The simplest 
 way to do this was to suppress the Church alto- 
 gether, conJBiscating its property for the benefit of 
 the nation and mankind. Without entering into 
 any details of this confused history, we may agree, 
 I think, that something like such suppression and 
 confiscation occurred. In tradition, it seems 
 a relentless persecution. Plain traces of it re- 
 main in France to this day. If one would know 
 what lands used to be in clerical possession one 
 must search records ; but desecrated churches and 
 ecclesiastical buildings you may still find every- 
 where — some abandoned or falling into ruin, 
 others in crumbling use for secular purpose. I 
 remember the singular picturesqueness of an old 
 city church in Normandy, full years ago of stray 
 storage, and now, I believe, destroyed. I re- 
 member a busy town market near Paris, held in 
 a whitewashed nave — poultry cackling under the 
 Gothic arches, the haggling of peasants echoing 
 from the vaulted roofs designed to reverberate 
 with the mystic words of the Mass. I remem- 
 ber the empty dustiness of a great Provencal 
 monastery, with an afternoon sun streaming 
 through the vacant windows of a Romanesque 
 clerestory, and lighting the depths of broken 
 tombs, ransacked by some revolutionary mob 
 in that fierce old time when they would have 
 
272 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 no more of the religion of Christ, and were 
 all aglow for the worship of Reason. 
 
 Perhaps the most impressive monument of 
 this devastation, the while, is probably the most 
 familiar. During the eighteenth century, when 
 French architecture was least religious in its sen- 
 timent, they set to building a fine new church 
 for Saint Genevieve, the patron of Paris. Every 
 line of it, every detail, belongs to the period of 
 its erection. No structure, you would say, could 
 less suffer from technical desecration; for noth- 
 ing in it, from dome to foundation stone, would 
 stir you elsewhere to meditation on the Christian 
 ages. What is more, they did not rudely dese- 
 crate it. Its general aspect appealed to revolu- 
 tionary taste; and besides it stood for what had 
 been the most popular shrine of Paris. Why 
 not keep it so still ? One need only dedicate it 
 to truer gods; and its beauty might persist for 
 centuries, to show enfranchised humanity what 
 reasonable buildings ought to look like. So 
 presently, I believe after various debate, they 
 devoted it ^^ Aux Grands Hommes de la Patrie/' 
 — To the Great Men of our Country, — and they 
 called it the Pantheon, inasmuch as great men 
 were the highest embodiments of their divinity. 
 And sundry men whom we may freely acknowl- 
 edge to be great were buried in the vaults of it; 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 273 
 
 and, of late years, the walls of the Pantheon have 
 been covered with paintings as good as the most 
 skilful artists in the world can make them. And 
 whoever travels to Paris goes thither to look at 
 the paintings and to ponder on the greatness of 
 France. 
 
 If they had built the Pantheon for the purpose 
 to which it is now devoted, they would hardly 
 have made it much other than it is. What is 
 more, when you stand in its colossal nave, you 
 cannot deny that it has been honestly devoted to 
 its purpose. Yet of all such edifices anywhere 
 it stirs you least towards such emotion as they 
 expect you to experience. You recall the dim 
 sanctity of Westminster Abbey, or the spacious 
 dignity of Santa Croce where the great men of 
 other nations lie. You recall the equally pa- 
 gan splendors of Saint Peter's at Rome, or of 
 Saint Paul's with its begrimed dome surmount- 
 ing the city of London. In each and all of these 
 you have found something no longer here. Each 
 in its own way has moved you as you might have 
 been moved more tenderly by the human pathos 
 of some country church in England, lying quiet 
 behind its dark yew, where you may find a gaunt 
 cross-legged crusader on his brass, and painted 
 Elizabethan eflSgies with their marble ruffs, and 
 pompous epitaphs from the time of King George 
 
 18 
 
274 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the Second, almost resounding from the dusty tab- 
 lets above the pews. Each and all of these could 
 open for you immeasurable vistas of the past, 
 until you became marvellingly aware of the un- 
 fathomable identity, the unfailing brotherhood, of 
 humanity. Strangely different in outward sem- 
 blance, all were still animated by enduring life. 
 Here in the Pantheon of Paris you seek it in vain. 
 They have enriched it with fine art more intel- 
 ligent than you shall find, perhaps, in all the 
 rest together. But in some indefinable way it is 
 strangely, appallingly lifeless, like the mummied 
 sovereigns of old Egypt in their reopened coffins. 
 You are in a temple from whence the spirit has 
 fled. You are in the heart of emptiness. 
 
 Though such impressions may seem merely 
 individual, this one recurs, not only when you 
 yourself revisit this austere vacancy, but again 
 and again when you ask your friends what they 
 discover there. It implies at once the eflFort of 
 the revolutionary French to uproot the religion 
 of a thousand years and the hopeless futility of 
 their instant religious aspiration. The change 
 which the Reformation worked in the surviving 
 churches of England or of Holland was far less 
 radical than the change which the Revolution 
 attempted in those of France; in the steady 
 light of history it looks hardly more than 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 275 
 
 schismatic. Yet centuries had to pass before 
 you could feel the tradition of Protestantism 
 securely enshrined in the holy places of our elder 
 ancestral faith. You may persecute religion as 
 relentlessly as you will. Unless, without your 
 persecution, it be moribund, you cannot suppress 
 the spirit of truth burning at the heart of it. You 
 may drive it from its sanctuaries ; but if it be not 
 dying of itself, you can never make them seem 
 complete without it. 
 
 Among unending complications, I have grown 
 to feel, some recognition of this truth was what 
 brought about the re- establishment of the Church 
 in France. Christianity could not be suppressed 
 by any edict or legislation, any more than it could 
 be imposed. Neither could any other form of 
 vitally formulated religion. Religious bodies de- 
 manded such freedom as the philosophy of the 
 Revolution pretended to accord to all created 
 beings. Under compulsion, they surrendered 
 most of their old earthly privileges; but they 
 insisted on their human rights; and by and by 
 they had them. 
 
 The religious constitution of France under 
 the system inaugurated by Napoleon, which per- 
 sisted until a little while ago, seems in its broader 
 lines a pretty simple compromise. Three phases 
 of religion were oflScially recognized as consider- 
 
276 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 able enough to demand support — the Catholic 
 Church, Protestant Christianity, and Judaism. 
 So far as any of the three had possessed property 
 before the Revolution, this had been confiscated 
 by the revolutionary authorities. The govern- 
 ment was in full possession not only of the 
 churches and the lands, but of the revenues of 
 the religious bodies which had flourished before 
 the Revolution. For many reasons it was im- 
 practicable, as well as impolitic, to restore these; 
 but it was both practicable and politic to make 
 some manner of compensation for them, or at 
 least for the embarrassments involved in the loss 
 of them. The final arrangement was virtually 
 as follows: The government assumed the charge 
 of paying the salaries of the clergy, Protestant, 
 Jewish, and Catholic alike. It restored to re- 
 ligious bodies the right of acquiring and manag- 
 ing private property. It granted to them the 
 free use of such church buildings as they needed 
 for their ceremonies. But, at least in the case of 
 bishops, it reserved for itself a power of nomina- 
 tion analogous to that enjoyed in England by 
 owners of church livings. In its main outlines 
 the arrangement was simple and systematic; it 
 involved, however, the paradox that the highest 
 oflBces of the spiritually supreme Catholic Church 
 could be attained in France only through the 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 277 
 
 mediation of a government which a turn of poli- 
 tics might place at any moment — as indeed it 
 frequently did — in the hands of free-thinkers. 
 
 Under this system religion in France persisted 
 for rather more than a hundred years. As we 
 have seen, the Protestants and the Jews there 
 were numerically inconsiderable. For our pur- 
 poses, accordingly, these bodies may be neg- 
 lected. The important consideration is what 
 happened to the Catholic Church in its new rela- 
 tion with the state. On the whole, it prospered. 
 As has been the case all over the world during 
 the nineteenth century, to be sure, the decline of 
 ecclesiastical privilege made a clerical career less 
 attractive than of old to what had formerly been 
 the privileged classes. The great development of 
 science, meanwhile, which promised for a while to 
 unriddle the universe, distracted from a clerical 
 career a considerable amount of such intelligence 
 as would earlier have found it congenial. But this 
 was not peculiar to France. As a good Catholic 
 gentleman, lately returned from Rome, observed 
 to me with a sigh, "Les cardijiaux grands- 
 seigneurs sont tons morts*'; and the excellent 
 man who now sits in the chair of Saint Peter 
 was born a peasant — a combination of circum- 
 stances unprecedented, I believe, since before the 
 Reformation. The fact that the French clergy 
 
278 THE FRANCE OF TODAY ^ 
 
 of the nineteenth century have generally been 
 simple people, moreover, involves the fact that 
 they have generally been men of simple charac- 
 ter, honestly devoted to their spiritual duties; 
 and as they have remained French, they have 
 generally been men of higher intelligence than 
 their own compatriots always quite perceive. 
 
 This in itself would have won them, among 
 Catholics, a higher degree of respect than was 
 always commanded, in more prosperous times, 
 by their more worldly predecessors. Together 
 with this they enjoyed a kind of worldly advan- 
 tage which no legislative opposition could much 
 affect. Everywhere throughout all France, their 
 position was strengthened by the subtle force of 
 fashion. In America, even to the present time, 
 the Catholic Church usually presents itself as, 
 on the whole, foreign; and, except for a few 
 notable instances in the fashionable life of our 
 larger cities, it seems to old-fashioned Americans 
 the religion of the masses as distinguished from 
 the classes. Almost everywhere in America, the 
 while, some particular form of Protestantism is 
 sanctioned by local fashion; when self-made men 
 do well in the world, nothing is more frequent 
 than to find their children, as a matter of taste, 
 associating themselves with more distinguished 
 religious bodies than taught them their cate- 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 279 
 
 chisms. The very fact that this tendency is open 
 to spiritual criticism defines the strength of it. 
 Even though you may not be much attached 
 to the tenets of your minister, you do not quite 
 like, as a matter of decency, to be married or 
 buried without his intervention; and you gener- 
 ally prefer the intervention of the most dignified 
 divine accessible. What is thus familiar among 
 ourselves, mostly in connection with various sects 
 of Protestantism, has been the case with the 
 Catholic Church in France. Not to conform to 
 it has put a Frenchman in much the position 
 of Dissenters in England. Their conscientious 
 disregard of everything but conviction is highly 
 respectable; but as a matter of fashion it is not 
 quite the thing. 
 
 In France, meanwhile, the Catholic Church 
 is truly catholic, in the sense that it embraces all 
 classes of society. What I have in mind was 
 vividly brought to my notice during my visit to 
 one of the provincial universities. The city 
 where this is situated, I had been given to under- 
 stand, is rather disposed to freedom of thought 
 in matters religious. This was not apparent to 
 the eye; you would have supposed it a citadel 
 of orthodoxy. During the ten days I passed 
 there a great number of children were taking 
 their first communion. Wherever you went in 
 
280 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the streets you were sure to meet little girls, gen 
 tie and simple, dressed in white and decorated 
 with what looked like bridal veils, either on their 
 way to or from church, or later in the process of 
 presenting themselves, in their pretty finery, to 
 the principal friends of their families. Boys, in 
 similar circumstances, wore their best clothes, 
 and white hat-ribbons, and big white rosettes on 
 the breasts of their jackets. Not to have taken 
 part in these ceremonies would evidently have 
 made a child unwelcomely conspicuous — as queer 
 costume might at an American school, or insist- 
 ence on public use of Quaker dialect. So I was 
 not surprised to find that, in a great many cases, 
 the parents of these devout little people were by 
 no means clerical in sympathy. A good Catho- 
 lic colleague at this university gave me a hu- 
 morous account of a free- thinking friend of ours, 
 lately affected to sentimental effusion of parental 
 tears by the pretty spectacle of his eldest daughter 
 in her communion- veil; and he spoke with un- 
 feigned admiration of the only professor in the 
 university who, being himself a free-thinker, had 
 resolutely refused to have his children baptized. 
 
 With this conscientious radical as well, I had 
 a good deal of talk. There was never a more 
 honest man, nor, in the general sense of the word, 
 a more deeply religious. He recoiled, with spirit- 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 281 
 
 ual candor, from the thought of pretending by 
 any formal act to acknowledge the authority of 
 a religion which he believed false. Such an 
 act seemed to him too solemn to be influenced, 
 like dress or manners, by any accident of fashion. 
 Sincerely believing that Catholicism was false, 
 he made no secret of his hostility to it. This 
 he found warranted not only by such facts as we 
 have already touched on, threatening enough in 
 themselves. He was deeply alarmed by two 
 other phases of its growth. One was the pro- 
 gress it had made among the bourgeoisie. In 
 former times, he believed, the Church had taken 
 firm hold on the masses, and had evidently 
 been the traditional supporter of the privileged 
 classes. The great middle class meanwhile had 
 been the stronghold of robust free thought. 
 Now, as a matter of fashion, the bourgeoisie was 
 becoming orthodox. It was sending its children 
 to be educated in convents or by Jesuits. If this 
 went on, he cried, what was to become of the 
 Revolution? A reactionary bourgeoisie, which, 
 alas! appeared to be declaring itself, would 
 mean national reversion to the darkness of the 
 mediaeval past. 
 
 Again, what impressed him still more, was the 
 growing wealth of the Church. The Revolution 
 had taken half France, you might say, out of 
 
282 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 mortmain. The gifts of the faithful were rapidly 
 
 getting it back there. Your priests might be 
 
 good men, according to their lights; — he would 
 
 be the last to deny them the justice of this ac- 
 
 , knowledgment. But everybody knew that these 
 
 j very lights led them — as they had led them 
 
 I through the ages — to the practice of suggesting 
 
 to penitents and to the dying that gifts to the 
 
 i Church had always been regarded as a measure 
 
 I of prudence. And, good as some priests might 
 
 i be, everybody knew that plenty of them were 
 
 by no means respectable; at best they were 
 
 untrustworthy, intriguing. They wormed their 
 
 way everywhere; unopposed, they would riddle 
 
 the body of society, or at least of the Republic. 
 
 The melancholy necessity was evident. As a 
 
 matter of the most elementary care for national 
 
 safety, they must be pursued like what they were, 
 
 spiritual vermin. 
 
 This summary, I believe, in no wise overstates 
 the good man's opinion. What is more, not a 
 few enlightened Catholics recognized in more 
 measured terms that his opinions were not quite 
 groundless. I have already mentioned the or- 
 thodox Catholic professor who found food for 
 reflection in the religious history of Spain. I 
 have mentioned as well how a sincere Catholic 
 writer maintained that the priests whose profes- 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 283 
 
 sional concerns are with another world than ours, 
 may best leave the affairs of this world to mortal 
 experts. These good Catholics, the while, and 
 thousands like them, would tell you most assur- 
 edly, that, whatever indiscretions the Church may 
 have been tempted to commit, the opponents of 
 the Church could match them at every turn. 
 
 Take, for example, the intrigues attributed 
 to the Jesuits; everybody has heard enough of 
 them to know what free-thinkers suppose Jesuits 
 to be. Assume, if you like, without troubling 
 yourself to examine details, that the charges 
 against this eminent religious order rest on some 
 basis of truth. The worst of them is not a bit 
 worse than what French free-thinkers themselves 
 were proved to have done, a little while ago. 
 At the time the government was strongly anti- 
 clerical, A considerable number of oflScers in 
 the army were suspected of clerical sympathies. 
 The government was consequently disposed to 
 look at them with suspicion, and even privately 
 to doubt their loyalty. The preservation of the 
 Republic might at any moment require that the 
 army should be in the hands of trustworthy men. 
 It was accordingly of the highest importance to 
 discover who the untrustworthy might be. One 
 means taken for so doing was to hunt up any 
 indication that a military man was on person- 
 
284 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 ally friendly terms with orthodox Catholics. As 
 agents in this investigation, the authorities turned 
 to a Masonic fraternity. The French Freemasons, 
 it is believed, are strongly anti- Catholic; and they 
 are said to concern themselves with politics to a 
 degree which the Freemasons of other countries 
 deplore. At all events, certain Masonic brethren 
 sent secret reports to Paris — to the effect that 
 General A had gone to Mass, that Major B 
 had been present when his niece took her first 
 communion, that Captain C had spoken with 
 personal respect of His Holiness the Pope, that 
 Lieutenant D had taken a walk with a village 
 priest. This information was presumably in- 
 tended for the dossiers of the military men in 
 question, whose billets would probably keep 
 them in consequence a good way from Paris, un- 
 less the government turned clerical. By some 
 accident they fell into the hands of clerical 
 sympathizers and thus got into the newspapers. 
 And I am bound to say that my free- thinking 
 friend could find no better defence for them 
 than that they proved the danger of the Church 
 by demonstrating how the best opponents of 
 Catholicism could hardly escape the contagion 
 of clerical methods. For his own part, he con- 
 demned the intrigue, on general principles, with 
 the best Catholic of them all. 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 285 
 
 The precise religious question then in debate 
 was whether the Concordat — the instrument 
 of compromise by which the ecclesiastical con- 
 fusion of the Revolution had been adjusted with 
 Rome — should be brought to an end. As 
 everyone knows, this has since been done; and 
 the subsequent state of religious feeling and pol- 
 itics in France has been disturbed. Into any 
 details of the actual situation I do not feel com- 
 petent to go. One thing, however, seems sure: 
 the conduct of the free-thinkers now in power 
 has amounted to what, in historical tradition, 
 has been called persecution. It has not pro- 
 ceeded, of course, to the superannuated methods 
 of former times ; it has not killed anybody. But 
 it has virtually confiscated a great deal of prop- 
 erty; it has done what it could to prevent the 
 accumulation of more; and, although demand- 
 ing for itself complete freedom of conscience, it 
 has practically legislated against freedom of con- 
 science on the part of the orthodox. No clerical 
 intolerance was ever more sincere or more unre- 
 lenting than the anti- clerical intolerance of these 
 very times. 
 
 This was deeply impressed on me by a long 
 and intimate talk with a liberal French Protestant 
 — in New England he would have been a sincere 
 Unitarian, with all the individual purity of char- 
 
286 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 acter and generosity of human sympathy which 
 that term implies. He condemned, as indig- 
 nantly as any Catholic, the intriguing efforts of 
 the Freemasons to thwart the careers of Catholic 
 soldiers. And he told a vivid story of what he 
 himself felt to be the blind prejudice of the 
 older Protestants in France. For his own part, 
 he saw no reason why one should not take inno- 
 cent pleasure or seek spiritual edification any- 
 where. So he had often attended Catholic 
 ceremonies, deeply sensitive to their emotional 
 power and beauty. On one occasion, when ex- 
 ceptional music was promised, he had persuaded 
 a good old Protestant lady to go with him. He 
 had expected her to be delighted with the spec- 
 tacle. Instead, it filled her with horror. The 
 incense affected her like the smoke of Hell itself. 
 The consecration of the Host seemed to her the 
 incarnation of the Devil. She felt as a Catholic 
 might feel in the presence of some fabled Messe 
 Noire. She could hardly totter out into the air 
 of heaven from this place which seemed to her 
 accursed. 
 
 Her state of mind impressed my friend just as 
 it would impress any of us — as dramatic, as 
 pathetic, and yet as tinged with a touch of humor, 
 to lighten the drama and the pathos. It was 
 as unreasoningly intolerant as the mood of any 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 287 
 
 good Catholic might have been who should have 
 discerned in the good woman's experience visible 
 evidence of how the Devil must writhe in the 
 presence of immortal Truth. For his own part, 
 my Protestant friend seemed to feel more than 
 content that Catholic ceremonies should go on 
 as long as anyone cared for them. Beyond cavil, 
 they were beautiful pageants, incredibly adapted 
 by the experiments of a thousand years to the 
 aesthetic sensibilities of human beings. They 
 were even of spiritual eflScacy, ^now and again, 
 like some absorbing music. It was wiser to 
 thank God for them than to find fault. If Ca- 
 tholicism stopped there, he for one would be glad 
 to have it persist forever. But — his eye began 
 to flash — there was a truly devilish side to these 
 Catholics. No one could conceive what delib- 
 erate mischief they would wreak, if you let them 
 have their way. 
 
 Just what did he mean? I asked. He an- 
 swered by a supposed example, whether real or 
 imaginary I do not know. Imagine a free- 
 thinker whose wife is a Catholic. The husband 
 has of course consented that his children shall 
 have orthodox religious education. His eldest 
 daughter is a dear child, very fond of him. 
 The time comes for her to prepare for her first 
 communion. Instead of approaching it, as both 
 
288 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 father and mother had expected, with exalted 
 enthusiasm, she is observed to look ill. They 
 grow anxious. A little inquiry reveals the abom- 
 inable truth. Her spiritual adviser has taught 
 her that the Church is the only sure means 
 of salvation, and that unbelievers shall be lost. 
 She knows her father to be an unbeliever. Is it 
 possible, she has asked, that so good and gentle 
 a man is in spiritual danger.^ And instead of 
 evading the question, the priest has answered 
 that, alas, he is. The opportunity of salvation 
 can be declined only at the gravest peril; there 
 is such a thing, no doubt, as invincible ignorance, 
 but one cannot prudently rely on so slender a 
 chance. It is to be hoped that her dear father 
 may be brought to see the truth; if not, she 
 can never feel assured of his companionship in 
 a better world than this. Thus, exclaimed my 
 friend, these Catholics sow dissension and un- 
 happiness in any family which you sujBFer them 
 to invade. 
 
 But how could an honest priest answer other- 
 wise? I asked; if he believes this to be true, he 
 would be false to his God by disguising it for an 
 instant. That was not the question, my friend 
 felt. To sow discord in happy homes is the most 
 devilish thing that human perversity can do ; and 
 that is what you may expect from all your priests. 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 289 
 
 In other words, this most conscientious of 
 liberal Christians proved unable to tolerate, in 
 a fellow being, any degree of orthodoxy which 
 should not admit a scheme of salvation as uni- 
 versal as his own. For that matter, I am not 
 sure that he admitted the need of salvation for 
 anybody. Like good Yankee Unitarians, he 
 seemed to be of opinion that any of us, if he 
 choose, may save himself; that no one knows 
 what will become of us, but that, if we do our 
 best according to our lights, we may go to sleep 
 without fear. That a Protestant, warned that 
 Protestantism is the road to Hell, — a friend in 
 France quoted me that phrase from a French vil- 
 lage sermon, — remains a Protestant at his own 
 risk, he held to be a monstrous proposition, as in- 
 tolerable as that a Catholic, who has a chance of 
 Protestant truth, should be in spiritual danger. 
 
 So far as I could see, his state of mind was 
 precisely the counterpart of what he condemned. 
 He thought himself tolerant; and the same view 
 of themselves was taken by many sound French 
 Catholics of my acquaintance. Neither the one 
 party nor the other, however, seemed able to 
 understand the true secret of toleration, — an 
 efficacious faith that, if everybody is free to state 
 and to follow what he believes to be spiritual 
 truth, the truth may be trusted to prevail. One 
 
 19 
 
290 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 can perceive with deep sympathy why they all 
 feel so. They are of a race which loves system, 
 which believes in logic, which respects authority. 
 They are carried away by the very virtue which 
 is most surely theirs. The orthodox overrate the 
 potency of authority, and heretics overestimate 
 its dangers. Toleration — true liberty — is not 
 yet a part of the honest faith of either. 
 
 To correct this error — if error it be — there 
 is no means but to study the facts of spiritual 
 history. No one can be sure of reading them 
 aright. But there seems more than reason to 
 find in them a lesson which should reduce our 
 philosophic and religious certainties to humility. 
 In brief, however impregnable our systematic 
 conclusions may seem to us, however surely they 
 may seem to involve our duty to control, as best 
 we may, the errors of our f ellowmen, one fact re- 
 mains persistently true to human experience. So 
 far as religious authority has attempted to exert 
 itself over matters other than spiritual, it has 
 come to grief. So far as temporal authority has 
 meddled with spiritual matters, beyond the scope 
 of earthly politics, it has come to grief as well. 
 Spiritual authority has doubtless had the full jus- 
 tification of logic and system; and so has tem- 
 poral. Each, we may freely admit, has been 
 devotedly honest. Each has failed. We know 
 
THE QUESTION OF RELIGION 291 
 
 not what may be the course of things in Heaven. 
 The lesson of human experience must teach us 
 that, for all the protests of systematic reason, 
 the wisest course on earth is the course of tolera- 
 tion and of mutual forbearance. 
 
 As yet there is little sign that the French are 
 willing to learn this lesson. Until they do, the 
 question of religion in France must remain one 
 of action and reaction — of recurrent intoler- 
 ance, as one side or another chances for a while 
 to possess national power. On both sides there 
 will long be what we may find on both today — 
 noble impulse, devoted consecration to duty, and 
 passionate misunderstanding of the other. If 
 the free-thinkers had their way now, there would 
 be some such persecution of the Catholics as the 
 Catholics inflicted on the Protestants when they 
 revoked the Edict of Nantes. Let the Catholics 
 come back into power, as they pretty surely will, 
 and the story would be retold again in its elder 
 terms. And so to the end — unless, by and by, 
 the wonderful intelligence of France awaken to 
 the true wisdom of a toleration as yet beyond its 
 grasp. They believe that they believe in freedom. 
 They cannot seem to understand that freedom 
 in the affairs of the spirit means that we must 
 render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's 
 and unto God the things which are God's. 
 
VII 
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND ITS EFFECTS 
 
 OUR consideration of religion in France 
 has inevitably touched on the most sali- 
 ent fact of modern French history — the 
 Revolution. The immediate social and political 
 results of this catastrophe have probably been 
 much less radical than is generally supposed; 
 but memory of it and the tradition recur every- 
 where. Everywhere, too, this memory and these 
 traditions remain so vital that few can regard 
 them dispassionately. They still excite either 
 enthusiasm or resentment, they are still viewed 
 with honest and intense partisan spirit. The 
 better you know France, the more clearly you 
 see that, as yet, no study of the Revolution has 
 seemed fair to any Frenchman who has not 
 been disposed to accept its conclusions before- 
 hand. 
 
 This was brought concretely to my notice dur- 
 ing a hasty visit to France a few years ago. The 
 admirers of Taine had proposed to erect some 
 monument in his memory. To me this plan 
 
THE REVOLUTION 293 
 
 seemed obviously proper; for I had been dis- 
 posed to think that of all the writers of nineteenth- 
 century France none had been more admirable 
 than Taine, both in conscience and in influence. 
 The fact that I had not always been persuaded to 
 accept his conclusions — particularly in the mat- 
 ter of English literature — in no wise impaired 
 my respect for him. He seemed always pre- 
 cise, always intelligent, and above all incessantly 
 suggestive. The vigor of his thought and the 
 animation of his style compelled you to more 
 alert thinking than you could have done without 
 him. Even when this cogitation led to results 
 widely different from his own, accordingly, you 
 gratefully acknowledged him as the master whose 
 stimulating power had most truly helped you. 
 There was never monument projected, I fancied, 
 for which more general approval might have been 
 assured. Yet, to my surprise, the plan aroused 
 bitter opposition. 
 
 At that time I had already the pleasure of 
 knowing the sincere French free-thinker con- 
 cerning whose religious opinions I have had 
 something to say. When I ventured to express 
 to him my wonder why anyone in France should 
 hesitate to pay honor to the memory of Taine, I 
 found that I had waked the wrong passenger. 
 The disciples of Taine are accustomed to believe 
 
294 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 that his work in French history pricked the 
 bubble of revolutionary legend. To my radical 
 friend Taine seemed rather to have blasphemed 
 the spirit of the Revolution. Publicly to honor 
 his memory would therefore be to range yourself 
 against the Rights of Man. So to range your- 
 self would be to undo the work of a century of 
 humanitarian effort — nothing less than to dis- 
 grace France. It was as if I had suggested to 
 an old-time Boston Abolitionist that some na- 
 tional Walhalla at Washington would be incom- 
 plete without the figure of General Lee. 
 
 Neither on this occasion nor on any other could 
 I enter intelligently into the confused details of 
 revolutionary history. To do so would require 
 the work of years, doomed to results which 
 many would still hold partisan. On the other 
 hand, convinced of the sincerity both of Taine 
 and of my friend, and convinced that they were 
 equally devoted in their loyalty to the France 
 which bred the one as truly as the other, I 
 found this little talk full of suggestion as to 
 how the Revolution affected French tempera- 
 ment. This temperamental aspect of it, and of 
 the ensuing course of French history, is all I 
 shall discuss. This, at least, — apart from his- 
 torical fact, — has its place in our effort to un- 
 derstand the French of today. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 295 
 
 On some chief features of their national tem- 
 per we have touched already. Intellectually this 
 temperament is remarkable for two contradictory 
 phases — the more intolerantly opposed because 
 of the exquisite precision with which the French 
 intellect works in detail. The French are in- 
 tensely fond of logical system — a fact evident 
 in every aspect of their lives; and at the same 
 time their passion for intellectual candor compels 
 them to admit unwelcome fact far more readily 
 than we do. Now, as we have clearly reminded 
 ourselves, no system ever devised by human be- 
 ings could generalize all fact. Every political 
 and social rule must always have its exceptions. 
 When these appear, logical minds are confronted 
 with the question of what shall be done with 
 them. The possible courses seem three: either 
 the unwelcome fact must be suppressed; or it 
 must be ignored — treated as negligible; or else 
 you must alter your system. And which of these 
 courses a Frenchman will take, in any given case, 
 he himself would be at pains to predict. The 
 only sure thing is that he can hardly help taking 
 one of the three. 
 
 Emotionally, meanwhile, the national temper 
 of France is not only impulsively generous; it 
 is extremely sensitive to generalized, as distin- 
 guished from individual, appeals to human sym- 
 
296 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 pathy. In every phase of life the social con- 
 science, the social sensibility, the social enthusi- 
 asm of the French is more highly developed than 
 any to which Americans or Englishmen are ac- 
 customed. Even in their private relations the 
 jFrench lay less stress, on^personal rectitude than 
 on the performance of social duty. The para- 
 dox results that while they may sometimes seem 
 callously indifferent to the hardships of individ- 
 uals, — of divorced women, for example, — they 
 are capable of such devotion to social ideals — 
 like that of the foyer — as with us would de- 
 mand, for full development of its exaltation, 
 the stimulus of romantic personal passion. To 
 understand with any true sympathy the tempera- 
 mental history of the Revolution, we must keep 
 this emotional trait in mind. 
 
 Confused, still confusing, as that political con- 
 vulsion remains, certain general facts about it are 
 growing fairly clear. The course of history had 
 long tended to make the formal systems of both 
 government and society inflexible. This had re- 
 sulted in a remarkably obvious development of 
 facts — political, religious, moral, social — un- 
 deniably incompatible with the systems. The 
 temper of the eighteenth century — which in its 
 higher phase was genuinely rational and philan- 
 thropic — compelled intellectual candor to admit 
 
THE REVOLUTION 297 
 
 these facts without reserve. The precise ques- 
 tion became, what should be done with them? 
 On the whole, there was no great effort to sup- 
 press them, — a process unwelcome to the taste 
 of a period sensitive to the delights of specula- 
 tive reasoning. The tendencies were rather, on 
 the one hand, to ignore them, with the graceful 
 recognition of epigram, or on the other hand, 
 if you took the matter more deeply to heart, to 
 see what could be done towards altering your 
 system to fit them. These tendencies were clearly 
 irreconcilable. As they came to clash, they deeply 
 stirred on both sides a kind of ideal emotion, 
 best understood if we will conceive the spiritual 
 conflict as one between men who believed tradi- 
 tional system in duty bound to ignore inconsistent 
 fact and men who believed, on the contrary, that 
 in view of such fact the interests of all human- 
 ity demanded a reconstruction of traditional 
 system. 
 
 Generalizations like this require specific ex- 
 amples. I remember none more vivid than you 
 may find to this day in a picturesque Burgun- 
 dian chateau which escaped revolutionary pil- 
 lage. It lies in the heart of the country, so that 
 to get there you must drive a good way over un- 
 frequented roads. It stands on a slope, over- 
 looking the little village which its master used to 
 
298 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 own. It is still surrounded by its gardens and its 
 park; and, both inside and out, it is very little 
 altered since the time when Louis XIV sent its 
 owner, Bussy Rabutin, to pass a good many years 
 there, in exile from court for misbehavior. Pre- 
 cisely to understand how this gentleman had mis- 
 behaved would carry one farther into the scandals 
 and the intrigues of his time than I have ever had 
 patience to go. Among other things he had writ- 
 ten stories of which the acceptable lubricity had 
 failed to atone for the fact that under trans- 
 parent pseudonyms they set forth the frailties 
 of his friends and his enemies with a precision 
 beyond the range of discretion. The amuse- 
 ment he devised for his exile accordingly seems 
 characteristic. 
 
 In general, this was to decorate the panelled 
 walls of his rooms with portraits of everybody 
 whom he conceived to deserve such honor. 
 There is a gallery of the French kings, from Hugh 
 Capet to Louis the Great; there is another con- 
 secrated to the great soldiers of history and of 
 France, from Hector, and Alexander, and Caesar, 
 and Bertrand du Guesclin, and Bayard, to his 
 bewigged and complacent self; and there are 
 other manifestations of his taste in its innocent 
 phases. The more remarkable aspect of his col- 
 lection, however, is the coolness with which he 
 
THE REVOLUTION / 299 
 
 inscribed under the portraits of his contempo- 
 raries his opinions of their conduct and charac- 
 ter. One of these comments runs somewhat as 
 follows: ''Isabelle d'Z., Marquise d^ * * * a 
 laquelle personne ne pouvait refuser ni son coeur 
 ni sa bourse^ et qui faisait peu de chose de la 
 bagatelle.^* And a whole room is devoted to 
 emblematic designs, conceived and they say exe- 
 cuted too by his own unaided ingenuity, all re- 
 iterating his displeasure with a lady, the wife of 
 somebody else, who had not seen fit to carry her 
 devotion to him so far as voluntarily to share his 
 rural exile. 
 
 Now, whether these statements are as true as 
 those in which he records what beauty was mis- 
 tress of which king I did not trouble myself to 
 inquire. The incontrovertible fact is that they 
 were written, to solace his virtual imprisonment, 
 by a great gentleman, whose windows, like his gar- 
 dens and his park and his preserves, commanded 
 a view of his little village, still clustering about 
 its venerable church. Here generations of labo- 
 rious peasants were succeeding one another with 
 no chance of sharing his complicated privileges, 
 and furthermore under the burden of increasing 
 taxation, which they were beginning to believe 
 devoted to the support of such virtues as they 
 could hardly help knowing to be inscribed on the 
 
300 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 walls of his panelled apartments. System and 
 fact have rarely appeared in sharper contrast. 
 The best defence for the system under which 
 Bussy Rabutin and his friends enjoyed privilege 
 was that they were really the betters of common 
 folk. And here was one of themselves, devoting 
 laborious years to the assertion that they were 
 about as worthless as humanity can be. He 
 may have done it on purpose. I have never 
 taken the pains to find out whether he meant to 
 make trouble, perhaps as a resentful reformer. 
 The fact that he did what he did is enough for us ; 
 whatever his intention, he proclaimed system and 
 fact to be menacingly at odds. 
 
 This was a full century before the Revolution. 
 During the last days of the old regime the same 
 sort of thing was even more salient. The two 
 great personages of the French Church whose 
 names are now most familiar were probably the 
 Cardinal de Rohan and Talleyrand, Bishop of 
 Autun, — the one remembered as the hero of a 
 famous intrigue in which he was led by impostors 
 to believe his personal charms irresistible to the 
 Queen; the other, pliantly disfrocked by the 
 Revolution, popularly supposed to have devel- 
 oped into the most mendacious public man of 
 his uncandid epoch. They had their merits, 
 both of them; but these merits were hardly of 
 
THE REVOLUTION 301 
 
 the kind on which a privileged clergy, in cure of 
 the souls of a nation, could prudently rest its 
 case in a debate between fact and system. At 
 that time the Queen, not yet tested by martyr- 
 dom, was held light-headed even by her friends, 
 and otherwise light by the cynical scandal of 
 the many courtiers who hated her. Monsieur de 
 Nolhac tells us that not one of the monstrous 
 accusations brought against her by the revolu- 
 tionary tribunal was invented by the public 
 prosecutor or the rabble. You can find them 
 all in court lampoons and songs, current at Ver- 
 sailles when they still fancied that system was 
 strong enough to ignore fact forever, and never 
 troubled themselves about what they might pre- 
 tend to be fact, so long as it amused them. The 
 crucial fact is that these songs and these lam- 
 poons existed, not whether there was a grain of 
 truth in them. A royal prince of those times 
 played Figaro in court theatricals, and the whole 
 company was highly entertained. 
 
 The very mention of Figaro brings us to the 
 other aspect of the situation. To go no farther, 
 the popularity of Beaumarchais as a dramatist 
 is in itself an extraordinary fact. No one else 
 had pointed out with equal wit and precision the 
 weakness of those who to enjoy the privileges of 
 systematically established rank need only give 
 
302 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 themselves the trouble to be born. That his 
 comedies were not suppressed implies a freedom 
 of speech and thought hardly equalled at any 
 later period of French history. And this free- 
 dom of thought and speech was devoting itself, 
 as a matter both of fashion and of conscience, to 
 refreshing speculations concerning the Rights of 
 Man. These rights, as we have seen, are based 
 on an assumption about human nature inconsist- 
 ent with authoritative privilege. The old system 
 could be reasonably defended only so long as 
 you maintained that men are naturally so de- 
 praved that, badly as they behave under restraint, 
 they would behave worse if uncontrolled. If, 
 on the other hand, men are not born in sin, it 
 seems reasonable to suppose that they might 
 probably behave better if left free to do so. So 
 the temperamental conflict slowly defined itself. 
 ^^^JEyerybody admitted that system and fact could 
 * not be reconciled. One side held that we should 
 ignore fact, except so far as we can temper des- 
 potism by epigram; the other held, with in- 
 creasing enthusiasm, that the time was come to 
 readjust system. This more modern spirit did 
 not intentionally demand anarchy; but it eagerly 
 advocated a new system to supplant the old, rec- 
 ognizing the newly demonstrated truths that hu- 
 man nature is not sinful and that society need 
 
THE REVOLUTION 803 
 
 V . 
 
 not repress it, and embracing them with full 
 
 logical consistency. 
 
 There can be little question, I think, that the 
 high hopes of French revolutionists were both 
 encouraged and confirmed by the course of 
 American history after 1775. The story of La- 
 fayette is the classical example of this influence. 
 Himself of the privileged class, but an eager and 
 disinterested partisan of the Rights of Man, he 
 was in early youth an oflScer attached to some 
 garrison in eastern France. Here, at table, he met 
 an English prince, not minutely informed about 
 the revolutionary disturbances in the American 
 colonies, who led him to believe that these re- 
 mote provinces had risen in arms to assert their 
 right to establish society on the new model. The 
 ardent young Frenchman's imagination was kin- 
 dled. He did not rest until, after a voyage dur- 
 ing which, in his own words, the Atlantic and 
 himself affected each other with sentiments of 
 mutual sadness, he had placed his services at the 
 disposal of America. He fought for us bravely 
 and well, winning for himself a place among 
 our national heroes second in popular memory 
 only to that of Washington ; and to the very 
 end of his life, some fifty years later, he was 
 the Frenchman who knew and who loved us 
 best. 
 
304 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Yet, all the while, he seems never to have un- 
 derstood — hardly to have suspected — the fun- 
 damental nature of the American Revolution and 
 of the enduring government thereby brought 
 into being. Our American forefathers used the 
 terms of French philanthropic philosophy, just 
 as we use them to this day and as our children 
 will probably continue to use them so long as 
 our republic exists. None of us have ever 
 stopped to define them, even for ourselves; in 
 all likelihood we never shall ; to Lafayette and 
 to America alike it always seemed that we spoke 
 a common language of the mind and of the heart. 
 So, in many emotional moods, we did. But, on 
 the other hand, the liberty for which the Ameri- 
 can Revolution was fought had a character 
 different from that of the liberty proclaimed by 
 the revolutionary spirits of France. To them 
 liberty meant, on the whole, a new phUosopIite 
 system of government, resting in final analysis 
 on dogmatic denial of the old Christian assertion 
 that human nature is evil; it was therefore deeply 
 subversive both of traditional beliefs and of the 
 traditional constitutiqii^JB- the kingdom where 
 they desired it to have sway. ^ To us liberty 
 meant the preservation of our own remote soci- 
 ety and government from all foreign interference. 
 During the one hundred and fifty years which 
 
THE REVOLUTION 305 
 
 had elapsed since the foundation of colonies in 
 Virginia and in New England, America had unwit- 
 tingly developed something like a common law — 
 an unwritten constitution, political and social — 
 of its own; and this had been confirmed by an- 
 cestral experience, virtually immemorial. When, 
 in any country, a political system has descended 
 from a generation no longer on earth, it has just 
 such sanction of tradition as would strengthen 
 institutions a thousand years old. Anyone who 
 has watched the life of American colleges can 
 observe this truth in a fantastic little form, the 
 more instructive for its very comicalities. At 
 most, a student remains in college four years ; 
 with each four years, accordingly, the under- 
 graduate population is completely changed. Let 
 some legal innovation occur, or some new social 
 custom arise. There will be a great bother for 
 the moment; but with each new year there will 
 come to college a body of men who have never 
 known anything else there; in four years the 
 change of population will be complete; in five, 
 every one will assure you that this state of things 
 — not yet six years old — has existed from be- 
 fore human memory, and that to meddle with 
 it would be a daringly radical violation of sacred 
 tradition. Wherefore shrewd governors of Amer- 
 ican colleges nip unwelcome novelties in the bud, 
 
306 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 and graft welcome ones in their stead, assured 
 that before long they will flourish with all the 
 mysterious strength of immemorial sanction. 
 
 Their own independence, their own common 
 law, — free from interference even on the part of 
 sovereign England, — was what American Revo- 
 lutionists really fought for. What they opposed 
 was not exasperating or obsolete tyranny; it 
 was reactionary innovation — the reassertion of 
 a power so long disused that it had lost the sup- 
 port of tradition. Except for the suppression 
 of the crown, the constitution of every state in 
 America remained virtually unchanged. What 
 is more, the substitution of republican govern- 
 ment for the previous form, nominally monarchi- 
 cal, was not much of a change. It amounted to 
 little more than extending to the chief executive 
 office the same principle of popular election on 
 which almost all other offices were already based 
 by immemorial custom ; and in more than one of 
 the colonies even the governors had been elected 
 by the people. Radical as the terms of our Rev- 
 olution may have sounded, accordingly, and radi- 
 cal as the new forms of American government 
 may have appeared, they were really conserva- 
 tive. Wh at they actually maintained was not a 
 new system of human rights and policy; it was 
 th g system which had grown strong among our^ 
 
THE REVOLUTION 307 
 
 selves in the regular course of nature. Herein 
 lay our true vitality. 
 
 To Lafayette, the while, generously enthusi- 
 astic throughout his life, liberty seems always to 
 have signified a philanthropic philosophical doc- 
 trine. The fact that he had himself seen it vic- 
 torious in America, and able there to lay the foun- 
 dations of enduring government, indicated that 
 it could do so anywhere. That it could develop 
 otherwise under other conditions. — where in- 
 stead of maintaining established traditions and 
 institutions, it must begin and persist by means 
 of destruction and innovation — does not seem 
 to have occurred to him. So far as one can 
 now perceive, he was never able to understand 
 why what worked so well in the American colo- 
 nies should come to grief in his beloved France. 
 
 Something similar seems true of the remark- 
 able impression made in France by the personal- 
 ity and the character of Franklin. During the 
 celebration of his two-hundredth birthday I hap- 
 pened to hear the suggestive remark that he 
 was an extraordinary example of how the en- 
 vironment of America, during the uncrowded 
 years of his youth and his manhood, could 
 affect the development of a man of genius whose 
 native characteristics were not the rather ideal 
 ones of American tradition, but the purely prac- 
 
308 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 tical ones of the old English yeomanry. He 
 was not, you will remember, sprung from the 
 earlier emigration to New England. To the 
 French of his later years, on the other hand, 
 Franklin appeared to be not an Englishman, nor 
 yet a man who had grown to his maturity among 
 economic and social conditions impossible in any 
 old and densely settled part of the world. He 
 appeared rather to be a demonstration of what 
 human nature in general might grow to be, if 
 society and government were once established 
 on the principles of the Revolution. 
 
 Though the sympathy of the French with rev- 
 olutionary America was undoubtedly compli- 
 cated with political animosity toward England, 
 we may easily over-emphasize this aspect of the 
 situation. There can be no reasonable question 
 that it was sincerely generous as well, ardently 
 philanthropic, and fired by such enthusiasm as 
 is always characteristic of France when French 
 emotion is stirred. There can be no reasonable 
 question, either, that the revolutionary impulse 
 of the French received great encouragement 
 from the successful result of revolution in Amer- 
 ica. The speculative conclusions of philan- 
 thropic philosophy seemed thereby vindi'cated. 
 The difference between a conservative revolu- 
 tion and a destructive, between one based on 
 
THE REVOLUTION 309 
 
 rights already enjoyed and one demanding rights 
 untesledT)y experience, no one noticed. 
 
 When we thus conceive the Revolution in 
 France, it looks simpler. Amid all the distrac- 
 tions of its details, we can feel honestly sure, 
 whatever our sympathies, that a great part of 
 its vital power lay in the genuine enthusiasm of 
 its philanthropic impulse. Humanity was suffer- 
 ing needlessly. It was belied by the system 
 which at once oppressed it, and defended the 
 oppression by declaring human nature depraved. 
 Franklin, and the course of America, showed 
 the falsehood of this relic of mediaeval delusion. 
 Left to himself, man would grow good ; left to 
 their own collective wisdom, men would govern 
 themselves better than priests or kings had ever 
 governed them. Outworn system, benumbing 
 tradition, must be cast aside. Superstition must 
 yield to intelligence. Some new system, neg- 
 lecting tradition and established in the full light 
 of reason, must recognize the facts — philosophic, 
 social, political — which elder time had stupidly 
 or cynically ignored. Once set up this new 
 system, logical, consistent, complete, comprehen- 
 sive, philanthropic ; and humanity, no longer 
 belied, need no longer suffer. In its nobler 
 phase, at least, — and even those who most 
 deplore the Revolution must acknowledge that 
 
310 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 it had a temperamentally noble phase, — this 
 movement believed that it could inaugurate a 
 new and a better dispensation for the whole hu- 
 man race. With equal candor even those who 
 love it best must admit that, in the perspective 
 of a century, it has revealed aspects which might 
 give color to the contrary opinion that it was the 
 first plunge of civilization into a still rising tide 
 of barbarism. 
 
 There is no piece of literature in which 
 the temper of its origin and its course is more 
 vividly recorded than we may find them in the 
 " Prelude " of Wordsworth. The passages which 
 describe his first journey to France are aglow with 
 the inspiration of those hopeful days. It was as 
 if the whole nation had awakened from some 
 nightmare to the cool sunrise of a happy morn- 
 ing; and the poet himself, full of dreams for 
 the future of humanity, found this widespread 
 rejoicing replete with philanthropic augury. 
 What he says of it is vague, unsystematic, 
 scattered; but the spirit of his poem sinks deep 
 in memory, like the breath of flowers in some 
 springtime atmosphere. The passages where he 
 later sets down his grief at the subsequent course 
 of the Revolution are longer and more poignant. 
 That awakening of humanity swiftly revealed 
 itself as only another dream, more evanescent 
 
THE REVOLUTION / 311 
 
 than the nightmares of the past. Philanthropy 
 found itself inevitably confronted with the sys- 
 tems and the beliefs of a thousand years. It was 
 kindled to consciously destructive fervor. „ What 
 would not yield, and what would not suffer itself 
 to be ignored, must be suppressed. The old 
 system must give way to the new, which swiftly 
 revealed itself the more tyrannical of the two. 
 Meanwhile the old system proved sadly stubborn. 
 The lopping of its branches in no wise uprooted 
 it; rather the process served, like pruning, to 
 strengthen the remaining fibres of its stock. 
 People of the elder temper, the ^migr^Sy the no- 
 bility in general, and whoever loved established 
 tradition, insisted on trying to ignore the Revo- 
 lution throughout. Indeed, they have hardly 
 yet given up their hopeless effort. Philanthropy, 
 enthusiasm, the Rights of Man, ran to murderous 
 excess. The watchwords of the Revolution — 
 Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity — remained 
 full of generous sound and of inspiringly pure 
 philosophic meaning; but the sentiments for 
 which they came to stand curdled fast into 
 fierce hatred of whoever opposed or questioned 
 their arbitrary course. At least, this is the 
 mood which possesses you as you read the disen- 
 chanted lines of the later books in Wordsworth's 
 "Prelude." 
 
312 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Incomplete though this view of the situation 
 be; it is at once simple and true to the relics 
 of the period. Anyone who travels in modern 
 France must everywhere perceive an amazing 
 accumulation of tragic evidence that, in one tre- 
 mendous aspect, the period of the Revolution 
 was appalling. Philanthropy and philosophy 
 attempted to ignore historic tradition as blindly 
 as historic tradition had ever attempted to ignore 
 other things than itself. They strove abruptly 
 to end one period of historic life, to establish 
 a complete and systematic new one; and this 
 they attempted with uncompromising enthusiasm 
 among the people which still remains, in pri- 
 vate temper, the most frugally prudent, the most 
 instinctively conservative of the modern world. 
 They not only assailed political institutions and 
 legal privileges, eager to clear such obstacles from 
 their way ; as we have already seen, they sup- 
 pressed the religion of the country, turning into 
 a crime, by legislative decree, what had previ- 
 ously been accepted as a duty. If some pas- 
 sionate reformers of today should send to jail, 
 without notice, any couple whom they could 
 prove to have been legally married, they would 
 hardly disturb society more. We have touched 
 already on the colossal emptiness of the Pan- 
 theon — the shrine from whence its God has 
 
THE REVOLUTION 313 
 
 been east out. You can find more instantly 
 palpable evidences of revolutionary destruction 
 everywhere — in the secularized churches, in the 
 ruined houses of the country nobles, and in the 
 strange names of the present possessors of castles 
 and parks which chanced to escape destruction. 
 Or go to the Municipal Museum of Paris, now 
 installed in the Hotel Carnavalet, which used to 
 be the town house of Madame de Sevigne, and 
 which happens to be remarkably well preserved. 
 The contents are arrayed in chronological order, 
 from prehistoric times to the present day. There 
 are relics of Roman Paris, of the mediaeval city, 
 of the Paris of the Renaissance, and of the long 
 persistence of the old regime, from Henry IV's 
 time to that of Louis XVI. Then comes an 
 abrupt change. The rooms devoted to the 
 period of the Revolution seem full of objects 
 from a different race, a different epoch. The 
 older work, fallen into triviality though it finally 
 were, preserves that exquisite something which 
 we recognize as instinctive style. It seems a part 
 of nature, — made as it is because for the mo- 
 ment everybody feels that things ought to be 
 made so. In comparison the newer work seems 
 crude, deliberate, intentional, impotent. It has 
 rude vigor, it has plenty of misdirected energy; 
 it incarnates, if you will, incalculable force. But 
 
814 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 it has a certain blatant futility, as of youth pre- 
 tending to the wisdom of maturity, or of rudeness 
 declaring itself the better of manners, just be- 
 cause, in a free fight, it can strike more knock- 
 iown blows. It stands, beyond question, for 
 power that must be recognized, that shall per- 
 sist, that shall endure. But in itself this first 
 manifestation of new power is more transitory 
 than the things it asserts outworn. 
 
 A conspicuous monument at Lyons will illus- 
 trate what I mean. That city suffered more 
 from the Revolution than any other in the coun- 
 try. At one time, I believe, they tried to raze it, 
 and so nearly did so that you must search there 
 long for anything to suggest that the ancient 
 capital of the Caesars was inhabited by human 
 beings before the nineteenth century. Accord- 
 ingly, it is with a sense of pleasant surprise that 
 you recognize, in the equestrian statue which 
 dominates the Place Bellecour, its chief public 
 place, the royal figure of King Louis XIV. 
 Here at last, you feel, is a genuine relic of the 
 older time, spared the Lord knows why, to re- 
 mind us that modernity does not comprise the 
 whole scope of history. You approach it in 
 this mood, until you are near enough to read 
 the inscription on the pedestal. Then you dis- 
 cover why the Grand Monarch still keeps his 
 
THE REVOLUTION 815 
 
 seat; for here are the words which explain his 
 presence: ^^ Chef d'CEuvre de Lemoty Sculpteur 
 Lyonnais " — " The Masterpiece of Lemot, a 
 Sculptor of Lyons." Not a syllable about whom 
 it represents. It is left there just to show how 
 skilfully a citizen of the town was once able to 
 direct the casting of bronze in monumental form. 
 It is a lasting monument to his glory. This shall 
 endure, long after tyrants and tyranny shall be 
 forgotten. Nobody seems to have foreseen that 
 a stray traveller from across the seas would ever 
 remember, in its presence, the magnificence of 
 Louis the Great, and would be compelled, even 
 after long contemplation of the masterpiece, to 
 remind himself at home of the sculptor's name by 
 hunting it up in his guide-book. 
 
 If there be one trait more salient than another 
 j n the mood which should thus strive to deny the 
 past a nd to dic tate the future, that trait is juve- 
 nility. As you ponder on the spirit of the Revolu- 
 tion, you come to feel in it not a few qualities best 
 understood if you liken them to such as make 
 you at once love children and find them exas- 
 perating. It had an almost inspired precision / 
 of superficial perception; it saw what was the 
 matter, and it believed that it saw exactly what 
 ought to be done. It was angelically generous 
 in spirit — or at least it meant to be. It was 
 
316 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 diabolically, callously cruel to any obstacle in 
 the way of its righteous purposes. It had, to 
 all appearances, no idea that sucbL ,a-tliing as 
 experience had ever proved dreams Utopian^ or 
 had sadly assured us that we can build solid 
 structures only on the foundations of the past. 
 It seemed unaware, indeed, that structures of 
 law and government, of conduct and morals, 
 need any foundation at all. Why not build 
 at once on the quicksands and the morasses 
 which, in a state of nature, entangle our feet ? 
 One would be at pains to say whether such 
 characteristics as these are more obvious in the 
 winning futility of childhood, with its purities 
 and its naughtiness, or in the devoted efforts of 
 the French Revolution to change the course of 
 national and of human history. 
 
 The attempt was sure to fail; yet that is not 
 the whole story. Even unrealized ideals have a 
 vitality of their own, sometimes the more potent 
 when they are no longer shown to be futile by 
 the inexorable test of persistence. As a matter 
 of fact, the Revolution did much destructive work, 
 particularly on the surface of this world. It strove, 
 meanwhile, to construct. Itjancied that its de- 
 crees would suffice to sweep old system away. 
 It fancied that it had recognized and proclaimed 
 the truths on which new system could be based. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 317 
 
 Just what this new system should be, except 
 that it should not be the old, it failed to agree. 
 Power in the hands of the people, actual sov- 
 ereignty wielded by a populace, means anarchy. 
 To this end, of course, the Revolution never 
 came. In the name of the people party after 
 party, man after man, issued their decrees as 
 autocratically as any sovereign of former days 
 had ever done in his own. More than a little 
 philanthropic purpose was accomplished, they 
 say. Perhaps it was. But there was no possi- 
 bility of establishing it by means of a new sys- 
 tem based merely on philosophic dogmatism. 
 Phantasmagoric the spectacle seems now, with 
 its ever- changing figures, all surging somewhither 
 in the vast ebullition of national and world spirit 
 let loose about them. Volcanic, you may call it 
 all, — geyser-like. It could not last, yet it could 
 not be forgotten. Its destructiveness was a fact 
 — enthusiastic effort can cast off what seem like 
 adamantine chains. Its futility was a fact — only 
 time can cool new chains into adamant. Its gen- 
 erosity was a fact — philanthropy can kindle al- 
 most divine enthusiasm. Its existence, however 
 passing, was a fact — that you have not accom- 
 plished what you strive for can never undo the 
 fact that you have made the effort. Reaction was 
 sure to ensue. A people like the French, who love 
 
818 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 system to the core, can never long pursue the road 
 toward anarchy. Yet when reactionary system 
 came upon them, it found not the old France, but 
 a new one. In elder France there had been only 
 one historically sanctioned tradition — the time- 
 honored tradition of authority, in church and 
 state alike. In the new France there was this 
 second tradition of philanthropic revolutionary 
 aspiration. Neither the one France nor the other 
 could ever be all France again. The decrepitude 
 of the older time and the juvenility of the new, 
 each unable to control, must each be reckoned 
 with in any durable system of the future. For 
 each was a fact beyond controversial denial, just 
 as it was a fact that the Revolution had violently 
 overthrown the traditional monarchy, and that a 
 new despotism came, with renewed vigor of now 
 concentrated physical force, to repress the vaga- 
 ries of the Revolution. 
 
 Thus the true problem before the France of the 
 , Empire was to devise and to maintain a system 
 4 comprehending and reconciling the discordant 
 traditions of the past, — the elder and the younger, 
 the royalist and the revolutionary.. In both 
 there had been useless, miscJtiievous features. 
 Let them be flung away and forgotten. In both 
 there had been elements of enduring strength, 
 — still flushed with wholesome vitality. Let 
 
THE REVOLUTION 319 
 
 these be brought together and combined into a 
 strength such as neither could ever secure with- 
 out the support of the other. There was some- 
 thing not to be gainsaid in the purposes of those 
 who would base all system on order established 
 by divine right; there was something not to be 
 gainsaid, as well, in the purposes of those who 
 would base all system on some other order neg- 
 lecting divinity and recognizing only the rights 
 of man. The reactionary system of the Empire 
 was less transcendental than either, but at once 
 more potent and of colossal good sense. For it 
 based itself rather on the obviously earthy prin- 
 ciple that society could be best served and best 
 advanced by a system which should keep careers 
 open to talent. 
 
 Like the Revolution, the career and the char- 
 acter of Napoleon are matters too vast and com- 
 plicated for valid summary. As was the case 
 with the Revolution, meanwhile, it is possible 
 to simplify the aspect of him most potent in 
 the moulding of modern France. The likeness 
 of him to Caesar is true, impressive, startling. 
 Alone in the history of Europe, these two men 
 successfully confronted political and civic chaos 
 with the assurance of confident genius. In both 
 this genius was not only military but adminis- 
 trative as well; in both it was, in the widest sense. 
 
320 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the incarnate genius of sovereignty. The imagi- 
 nation of posterity remembers both most vividly 
 as victorious soldiers; and neither could have 
 done his work without the basis of his miHtary 
 achievement to build on. Yet in the case of 
 both what is truly enduring is the civic structure 
 founded thereon. The genius of Caesar gave to 
 the world the term empire. He found the word 
 imperium used to signify the power of a mili- 
 tary commander; he left it signifying throughout 
 the ages the power of a dominant sovereignty, 
 personal or national, imposing the arts of peace 
 upon mankind, merciful to the conquered, piti- 
 less to rebellious spirits. And those immortal 
 verses in which Anchises foretells the grandeur 
 of Rome might have been written as truly of 
 the imperial purposes of Napoleon. 
 
 His civic work has endured. Partly based on 
 the strong survivals of elder system, partly aided 
 by the usefully destructive work of the Revolu- 
 tion, partly devised with the infinite perspicacity 
 of practical genius, it not only gave France a re- 
 newed system now deeply rooted in the core of 
 French custom, but it altered the political and 
 the material aspect of the whole European world. 
 From the Code Napoleon to the broad roadways 
 of Alpine passes, you shall find enduring traces 
 of him everywhere, outlasting marble or bronze 
 
THE REVOLUTION 821 
 
 as they have outlasted the echoes of his cannon. 
 On the other hand, all the power of his unrivalled 
 genius for government did not achieve the end^ 
 of reuniting the dissentient traditions of France. 
 Rather it created, to rival them, a third tradition, 
 at one with neither of those which it attempted 
 to reconcile, to comprehend, to fuse. The 
 effort of the empire may be compared to that 
 which psychic physicians make nowadays to 
 flash into renewed harmony the fragments of 
 some dissociated human personality. They are 
 not beyond the range of hope; but there must 
 always hover about them a confused element of 
 bewildering chance, divine if it smile, diabolical 
 if it frown. In the case of French nationality 
 one can begin to see, mistily but not for that the 
 less confidently, some reason why the colossal 
 effort of Napoleon was doomed to failure. This 
 nationality, disputative and quarrelsome within 
 itself throughout the course of its recorded 
 history, had split into two distinct phases, each 
 animated by intense ideal devotion to a system 
 completely at variance with that of the other. 
 In common these phases had the virtue of 
 appealing to the deepest and most admirable 
 phases of human nature. Both were surrounded 
 by all manner of cynical and ignoble moral per- 
 versities; you could never be sure of finding 
 
 21 
 
JS 
 
 322 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 either pure; but wherever either gleamed pure 
 you would surely find it purified by trial into 
 such inspiring idealism as gives you pause when 
 you would hold human beings in contempt. 
 The nobler spirit of disunited France was broken 
 in two; on the one side it was devoted to the 
 divinely sanctioned system of royalist tradition, 
 on the other to the philosophically sanctioned 
 system of revolutionary philanthropy. If any 
 note could resolve these jarring chords into har- 
 mony, it must be a note spiritually as pure as 
 either. And just this dominant tone of moral 
 supremacy seems to have been fatally beyond 
 the range of the Empire, jy 
 
 Its power, its intelligence, its perception of what 
 could be accomplished and of what should be, 
 seem superhuman. To make its accomplish- 
 ment secure it needed the support not only of 
 hard heads and of enthusiastic hearts, but of such 
 righteous enthusiasm as should sanction these 
 with the ineffable force of the spirit. It must 
 reconcile to itself until they should eagerly work 
 for its beneficence the nobly divergent idealists 
 who found themselves in common checked by 
 the colossal material progress of its development. 
 This proved beyond its power. It was com- 
 pelled, in great degree, to rely on the service of 
 time-servers, while the servants of eternity stood 
 
THE REVOLUTION 323 
 
 resolutely apart from it, just as they stood apart 
 from one another. It gave rise to its own new 
 tradition, of an earthly system stimulating every 
 man to win for himself whatever should prove 
 within his power; but it soon proved unable to 
 resist the combined forces arrayed against it. 
 Force brought jt into political being, and kept it 
 thereTbrough some dozen years, altering the face 
 and the history of all Europe; in the end it 
 succumbed to force, just as the Revolution had 
 succumbed to its own, and the elder monarchy 
 to the force of the Revolution. Traditional sys- 
 tem cannot ignore fact; but neither can any 
 system devised by human ingenuity ignore the 
 power of devotedly cherished ancestral tradition. 
 So came the Restoration, to a France variously 
 changed from that over which Louis XVI had 
 reigned five- and- twenty years before. It was 
 not only that the Revolution and the Empire had 
 altered the face of the country, and the system 
 of its administration, and the details of its law. 
 More deeply still, each had left double traces 
 of its own. Each had established, in fleeting 
 power, a spiritual tradition distinct from that 
 of former times, yet brought from the region 
 of fancy and speculation into that of historical 
 memory by the fact of its temporary political 
 dominance; each had its traditions and its 
 
324 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 heroes; this of itself would have been enough 
 to alter the whole situation. But above and be- 
 yond this soared the fact that both the Revolu- 
 tion and the Empire had come into being by 
 force, and had been put down by force, in turn. 
 In the year 1815 there was not in the world a 
 single Frenchman of mature years who could not 
 vividly remember at least two violent alterations 
 in the form of sovereignty demanding his alle- 
 giance. Here already was a third. Whatever 
 the abstract sanction of the new sovereignty, at 
 least a generation must elapse before its renewed 
 power could find itself secured by the sanction 
 of persistence. 
 
 It is never safe to put too much trust in epi- 
 gram. A familiar epigram concerning the tem- 
 per of the Restoration, nevertheless, contains 
 truth enough to be worth recalling. When the 
 men who had been exiled under the Republic and 
 the Empire came back to France and to power, 
 and when the turncoats and the trimmers — the 
 time-servers and the honest seekers for prac- 
 tical expediency — renewed their professions of 
 loyalty to the hereditary crown, some one said 
 of the reinstated possessors of sovereignty that 
 during their twenty years of misfortune they had 
 neither learned nor forgotten anything: — "/ci 
 n^ont rien appris^ ni rien oubliey To some de- 
 
THE REVOLUTION 325 
 
 gree, this pleasantry seems just. In the nature of 
 things, the desire of restored royalty was to re- 
 vive, so far as might be, the state of affairs which 
 had existed before royalty had been dethroned. 
 As we have seen already, the fatal fault of the old 
 '^gime^ at least in temperament, had been a blind 
 confidence that its system was strong enough 
 to admit and to ignore the accumulating force 
 of hostile or inconsistent fact. The restored> 
 monarcnists had not found experience destruc- 
 tive to their prejudices; ratfier, the maintenance 
 of prejudice, in the presence of misfortune, had 
 been with them a point of honor. They re- 
 mained disposed to ignore unwelcome fact; ^SSS 
 among the unwelcome facts which they tried to 
 ignore, or to suppress, were the three new his- 
 torical traditions of the nation over which they 
 were recalled to rule : the tradition of the Repub- 
 lic, the tradition of the Empire, and the tradition 
 that the actual government of the country was 
 a comparative novelty, resting, in final analysis, 
 on the successful exercise of physical force. In 
 spite of their reactionary conservatism, they 
 retained power for fifteen years, in the course 
 of which the legitimate heir of Henry IV and 
 Louis XIV succeeded to the crown as regularly 
 as had any of his predecessors, crowned at 
 Rheims in undisturbed elder time. But the 
 
826 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 combined historic forces which were gathering 
 against them finally proved irresistible. The 
 Revolution of 1830 closed the history of legitimate 
 monarchy in France. 
 
 ^ It was succeeded by a new attempt to found a 
 system untested by historical experience. For 
 
 ■^eighteen years there was a constitutional mon- 
 archy, resting on the will of the people, and tra- 
 
 ""ditionally remembered as a period when the 
 bourgeoisie was called upon to play the part of 
 aristocracy. It did so, with eagerly conscientious 
 effort and somewhat imperfect grace. Mean- 
 while the elder tradition of the Revolution, 
 suppressed since the establishment of the Em- 
 pire, was gathering renewed force. At the end 
 of eighteen years it once more became irresisti- 
 ble; constitutional monarchy came to a violent 
 end, just as legitimacy had come before it, and 
 empire, and the republic, and the old regime — all 
 in less than sixty years. 
 
 Thereupon history recapitulated itself, with 
 enough variation to save it from the charge of 
 imitative monotony. First came four years of 
 
 ^republican government, which soon passed into 
 the presidency of Louis Napoleon, much as the 
 first Republic had passed into the consulship of 
 the first and the greatest of the Bonapartes. The 
 Cowp d'Eiat and 1852 revived the name, the tra- 
 
THE REVOLUTION 327 
 
 ditions, and the purposes of the Empire. For 
 eighteen years Napoleon III remained on the 
 throne, striving in his own way and his own time 
 to accomplish what his uncle had failed to accom- 
 plish half a century before. It is pathetically 
 characteristic of him that those who knew him 
 personally, while frank in acknowledging his 
 errors and weaknesses, are almost at one in their 
 testimony that he was at heart an honest phil- 
 anthropic idealist, intent on being the regen- 
 erator and the savior of society. How little he 
 succeeded men not yet beyond middle life can 
 still remember for themselves. The royalist 
 Jradition and the republican refused to nestle 
 into reconciliation beneath the wings of the im- 
 perial eagle ; so did the somewhat less venerable 
 tradition of the Orleanists, loyal to their consti- 
 tutional monarchy. And, even more than the first 
 French emperor, the second proved lacking in 
 such moral power as should blend the rising 
 discords in new and grander harmony than had 
 been sounded before. The course of history 
 pursued its way till the fatal year of 1870. The 
 Second Empire succumbed to such force as had 
 originated it, but under circumstances more ap- 
 palling than any within the memory of living 
 Frenchmen. For when it fell the country was 
 overwhelmed by armed foreign invasion, such as 
 
328 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 imperial tradition had led France to fancy that 
 only French power could inflict on the territory 
 of a neighbor. 
 
 Almost as a makeshift, a new republic came 
 into being, — itself, like all the governments since 
 the fall of Louis XVI, the offspring of an armed 
 revolution; it was forced to reconquer its own 
 capital city of Paris by the brute force of civil 
 conflict. And after a while peace was made 
 with invading Prussia, strengthened by its vic- 
 torious warfare into the new dignity of imperial 
 Germany. And the last monarch of the French 
 was suffered to pass his few remaining days in 
 England, where Charles X and Louis Philippe 
 had gone before him. It is said at the British 
 Museum that, as long as he had the strength 
 left, he used to come, alone and unrecognized 
 by the public, to a table reserved for him in the 
 old reading-room, and there turn page after page 
 of the newspapers recording the story of his fall; 
 and they remember that he was apt to wear a 
 rusty hat. And so the sovereignty of the French 
 came once more into the hands of the people. 
 The Third Republic has escaped revolution. 
 
 Now, to remind ourselves of what this his- 
 torical experience must inevitably have meant to 
 the national temperament of France, we may best 
 consider a concrete case. By chance, the life- 
 
THE REVOLUTION 329 
 
 time of an eminent American man of letters 
 affords us this opportunity. On August 1st, 
 1791, there was born in Boston, under the presi- 
 dency of George Washington, the distinguished 
 historian of Spanish Literature, Mr. George 
 Ticknor. His birthday came within less than a 
 month of the time when the Revolutionary As- 
 sembly of France, after devising a constitution, 
 passed that suicidal ordinance of self-denial 
 which prevented every human being who had 
 helped make the constitution from having any- 
 thing to do with the practical management of it 
 once in operation. Mr. Ticknor remained a citi- 
 zen of Boston all his life, and died there, on 
 the 26th of January, 1871, two days before the 
 armistice between France and Germany was 
 signed under the walls of Paris. Through all 
 his eighty years he had lived a citizen of our 
 American republic, founded, as we have seen, 
 on conservative and not on destructive revolu- 
 tion. He had seen the tradition of national union 
 strengthen until it had proved powerful enough 
 to survive the most threatening civil war in 
 modern history. During his lifetime seventeen 
 presidents of the United States had regularly 
 succeeded to the chair of Washington; he died 
 during the first administration of General Grant. 
 And there was not a moment in all his lifetime 
 
330 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 when, however disturbed the conditions of Amer- 
 ican politics might have seemed, he had lived 
 under any other system of government than that 
 under which he came into the world. 
 
 Had he been a Frenchman, on the other hand, 
 he would have lived under six distinct systems 
 of sovereignty — the Republic, the Empire, the 
 Restoration, the Constitutional Monarchy of 
 Louis Philippe, the Second Republic, and the 
 Second Empire — each founded on destructive 
 revolution, and each determined to impose on his 
 country a new system forcibly reducingjuaaon- 
 venient fact to practicable order. Each in turn 
 would have succumbed to armed revolutionary 
 force. And none of the six would have sur- 
 vived so long that its actual beginning and 
 something of what came before could help be- 
 ing within the personal memory of every man 
 under its sway who had reached the age of 
 twenty-five years. 
 
 Temperamentally, the while, each of these 
 sovereignties must have had deep significance in 
 the history of his country and lasting effect on it 
 as well. The French, as we have seen, cannot 
 be understood until we sympathetically acknowl- 
 edge both their love for order and system and 
 the intellectual candor with which they recognize 
 unwelcome fact. Every one of these six systems 
 
THE REVOLUTION 331 
 
 of government may be regarded as an effort to 
 invent a new system which should comprehend 
 fact as fully as might be, and then should impose 
 itself by force on the life and the intelligence of 
 the country. Every one of them appealed to the 
 honest convictions of a considerable body of 
 Frenchmen, so sincere that they remained faith- 
 ful to it even in defeat and in despair. Every 
 one of them consequently gave rise to traditions 
 of its own, devoutly cherished, and — like all 
 fervent convictions — deserving of respect. As 
 has been the case with religious disputes in 
 France, the very ardor and sincerity of these 
 political convictions made them seem to their 
 devotees completely, divinely true; and, very 
 clearly, to compromise matters of truth or con- 
 science is unworthy of honest men. The in- 
 evitable result of the Revolution follows: in 
 politics, as in religion, the French of the nine- 
 teenth century have been more than intolerant 
 of one another, and to all appearances incapa- 
 ble of doing one another the justice of mutual 
 understanding. The very fact that in spirit 
 they have been so nearly at one is what has kept 
 them in the flesh discordantly apart. 
 
 Among the gathering political traditions of 
 France, the three on which we have chiefly 
 touched emerge distinct. The first is that of 
 
\ 
 
 832 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the Royalists, honest believers in the divine 
 right of ancestral kings strong in authority 
 derived from God himself. According to this 
 creed, the personal vagaries of the sovereign 
 can no more impair his hereditary rights and 
 privileges than the errors of a clergyman can im- 
 pair the virtues of his sacred office. That is a 
 matter to settle not with men, but with God. 
 With the wisdom or with the historical basis for 
 this extreme of idealism we have for the moment 
 nothing to do. Our business is to pay it the 
 due of sympathetic respect. The second vital 
 political tradition of France is the philanthropic 
 creed of the Revolution, proclaiming the Rights 
 of Man, and insisting on the untested, imprac- 
 ticable ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Frater- 
 nity. Until we understand these ideals as the 
 nobler revolutionary spirit conceived them, and 
 not as the baser revolutionary spirit essayed to 
 exhibit them in practice, we cannot understand 
 the secret of their undeniable vitality. The 
 third political tradition persistent in France is 
 that of the Empire, best conceived as a colossal 
 effort to establish an authoritative system for 
 keeping careers generously open to talent. The 
 conception at the root of Royalist tradition is 
 that human nature is so evil as to demand con- 
 ^ trol; that at the root of Revolutionary tradition 
 
THE REVOLUTION 333 
 
 is that human nature is so good as to merit 
 freedom; that at the root of Imperial tradition 
 [is that, good or evil, human nature should have 
 !its deserts. 
 
 It is hardly excessive, I think, to indicate these 
 ideals thus simply. It would be the height of 
 folly, however, to pretend that any such state- 
 ment is comprehensive. If we went no farther, 
 indeed, the men most conscientiously devoted to 
 any one of them might willingly give no small 
 degree of assent to the others. And nothing is 
 more clear, as a matter of plain fact, than that 
 Royalists, Revolutionists, and Imperialists in 
 France have not only been in mortal opposition 
 to one another, but that, with the enthusiastic 
 fervor of French character, they have honestly 
 held one another in deep spiritual abhorrence. 
 Men who believe themselves possessors of light 
 cannot help believing those who differ from 
 them to be ministers of darkness. Whoever 
 would understand the effect of the Revolution 
 on French temperament must grasp the truth 
 that all three of these discordant ideals have 
 inspired, and to some degree inspire still, enthu- 
 siastic and conscientious devotees. And this 
 complexity of ideals is not the only historical 
 result of the Revolution. An equally profound 
 one springs from the fact that every government 
 
334 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 which living Frenchmen have been able to re- 
 member — or any Frenchman who came into the 
 world after 1790 — has been a government based 
 on armed force. The form of sovereignty at any 
 given time has accordingly presented itself to the 
 candid minds of the French not so much in the 
 character of a national establishment as in that of 
 a partisan tyranny. The devoted effort of the 
 Revolution to supplant an old system by a newer 
 and a truer has led to incessant imitation, until 
 any system, as formulated on the surface of the 
 state, has come to seem experimental, doctri- 
 narian, transitory, insecure. 
 
 And yet, all the while, the moments when any- 
 one who has known France has believed it in 
 danger of anarchical paralysis, have been few 
 and far between. At least since the renewal of 
 systematic order under the supreme guidance of 
 the first Napoleon, the legal and the social sys- 
 tem of the country — itiie true life of the nation 
 — has been far less disturbed than people dis- 
 tracted by the superficial instability of ruling 
 systems have been apt to suppose. Under the 
 Reign of Terror itself, they say, the theatres and 
 the museums were regularly open ; and you could 
 get as good things to eat and drink as ever, in 
 the familiar places where they served you better 
 than anywhere else in the world. The only dif- 
 
THE REVOLUTION 335 
 
 ference was that the old faces which used to make 
 those places gay were no longer gladdening them ; 
 and a few of the faces were no longer gladdening 
 the sunshine anywhere. So it has been through- 
 out. Not many years ago, some character in a 
 novel or a play lamented the havoc wrought in 
 French society by the Revolution. He was an- 
 swered in an epigram which has lingered in my 
 memory. "La Revolution nexiste que pour les 
 sotSy^ it ran — "Anyone who is not a fool can 
 see that there is no such thing as the Revolu- 
 tion." Far from comprehensively true, this 
 flippant piece of trivial wit. The scars of the 
 Revolution are still seamed over the whole face 
 of France; and the memories of it, and of what 
 ensued, rend France asunder to this day. But 
 all the while men and women have lived and 
 died, and loved and lost and won, just as they 
 lived and died and loved before, and as they shall 
 live and love and die so long as humanity stays 
 human. No system ever devised can make men 
 other than men ; nor can any ever make their as- 
 pirations, however noble, completely consonant. 
 A vivid example of what every-day existence 
 has remained in France came to my notice a 
 little while ago. In the summer of 1906 the 
 newspapers announced that a man had just died 
 in Paris at the age of almost a hundred years. 
 
336 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 This of itself might have deserved passing notice; 
 the peculiarity of his case deserves more. At some 
 time before 1830, it appears, this worthy person, 
 who had held some small position in the domestic 
 service of King Charles X, had been granted by 
 that sovereign a modest pension, befitting his 
 station in life. The Revolution of 1830 had oc- 
 curred, and that of 1848; the Cowp d'JI^tat, too, 
 and the fall of the Second Empire. Through 
 all these disturbances the pensioner of the last 
 Legitimist king had regularly presented himself 
 on the days when his pension was due and had 
 regularly received it, for more than seventy-five 
 years. The nominal government of France had 
 changed over and over again; but not its methods 
 of conducting business, or its habit of meeting 
 even its smallest obligations. For this anec- 
 dote, to be sure, I have no better authority than 
 newspapers. It may be mistaken, or even a 
 mere invention. In spirit, nevertheless, it is 
 deeply true. No changes in government or in 
 ■^avowed ideals and aspirations have affected the 
 unbroken national persistency of France. 
 
 If they had, France could not be at this mo- 
 ment what any observer, however casual, must 
 recognize it to be. The disaster of 1870 might 
 well have been thought crushing; yet, in a very 
 few years, it was only a matter of history, like the 
 
THE REVOLUTION 337 
 
 Revolution of July, or the Reign of Terror, or 
 the Republican Calendar. The facts of French 
 life, as we have touched on them together — re- 
 vealing everywhere such persistent, serious, and 
 cheerful devotion to system in private affairs — 
 would testify to a state of existence as far from 
 anarchical as any in the world. Yet, all the 
 while, this France of to-day, this France of the 
 Third Republic, is perforce a France animated 
 not by a single great national tradition, but by 
 three discordant ones, each with its heroes and 
 its devotees. It has learned from its century of 
 recurrent revolutions the mischievous lesson that 
 no form of government may prudently believe 
 itself permanently stable. What now concerns 
 us is the question of how contemporary France 
 confronts its problems and its duties. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE REPUBLIC AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 WHEN we compare the present system 
 of government in France with the 
 various others which have flourished 
 and fallen since the Revolution overthrew the tra- 
 ditional monarchy, at least two circumstances 
 ^ distinguish it from all the rest. The first is that 
 in origin it was not deliberate. Foreign invasion 
 had resulted in the fall of the Empire; a pro- 
 sional government was a matter of necessity; 
 and from this provisional government the repub- 
 lican system still in existence was presently de- 
 veloped, by methods of debate rather than of 
 violence. Though, beyond dispute, the repub- 
 lic had intense partisans, theirjco^nyi^ctions would 
 hardly have established it but for the solid fact 
 that no other proposed plan of government, roy- 
 alist or imperial, proved for the moment prac- 
 ticable; something had to be done, and this 
 seemed, on the whole, the only thing to do. Ex- 
 ceptional though the tragic conditions of its be- 
 ginning were, there is, accordingly, a case for 
 
THE REPUBLIC 339 
 
 those who should maintain, with what seems 
 
 paradox, that the present Republic is the most 
 
 1 normal form of French government since the old 
 
 j regime. For it is the only one forced upon the 
 
 ' country by the hard logic of necessity. All the 
 
 /^ 
 
 others were Teased on the revolutionary precedent 
 of supplanting the regularly constituted authori- 
 ties by armed force — a process which, of course, 
 resulted in making the suppressed parties rev- 
 olutionists themselves, duly waiting their turn. 
 The republic, no doubt, has as much doctrine 
 of its own as either empire or royalty — whether 
 Orleanist or Legitimist; but this doctrine is rather 
 the defence of its power than the basis. 
 
 Even if this were the only circumstance to dis- 
 tinguish it from the forms of government to 
 whose authority it has succeeded, it would stand 
 conspicuously alone. A second circumstance 
 makes its position doubly clear. Whether the 
 unrecognized normality of its origin has had 
 anything to do with its endurance or not — the 
 question might well prove debatable — the fact 
 of its endurance is now settled. Between the 
 outbreak of the Revolution and the fall of the 
 Second Empire no French sovereignty had main- 
 tained itself for more than eighteen consecutive 
 years. There had consequently never been a 
 period when everyone in the country who had 
 
340 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 t 
 
 attained the age of twenty-five could not person- 
 ally remember both a widely different political 
 system from that of the moment and also the 
 revolutionary disturbances by means of which 
 the government actually in power had come into 
 existence. During the first years of the Third 
 Republic it must have seemed as palpable a po- 
 litical novelty as almost any other sovereignty 
 within living memory. By the year 1888, how- 
 ever, it had already survived as long as either the 
 reign of Louis Philippe or the Second Empire, 
 its two most durable predecessors; and by 1906 
 the interval since 1888 had become as long as 
 that between 1888 and 1870. For thirty- six years 
 the actual form of government in France had 
 already remained unbroken by revolution; and 
 there was not a living Frenchman under the 
 age of forty, whatever his political convictions, 
 who could personally remember any other system 
 than that under which the French are contentedly 
 or restlessly living at this moment. .^AlmQst^ in- 
 sensibly the present Republic of France is grow- 
 ling to have such sanction as must come to any 
 institutions from time wherein the memory of man 
 j runneth not to the contrary. 
 
 This of itself would give the Third Republic 
 ( a chance of stability not enjoyed by any other 
 I French system of the nineteenth century. When 
 
THE REPUBLIC 341 
 
 governments, as when children, survive the dan- 
 gers of infantile disease, their prospects of sur- 
 vival to a hale old age are indefinitely strength- 
 ened. The important question becomes whether 
 anything seems to be organically the matter with 
 them. In the case of a government such ques- 
 tions are extremely complicated. They involve 
 all manner of statistics, for one thing; for an- 
 other, they are always confused by the methods 
 of practice common among political experts and 
 political quacks alike. Politicians, particularly 
 when they have brewed panaceas of their own, 
 are everywhere eager to prove that the state needs 
 their medicine. Their habitual eloquence, ac- 
 cordingly, resembles that of the travelling vender 
 of pills who declared that the great art of his pro- 
 fession was not the selling of his remedies, but 
 knowing how you could talk so as to make a 
 crowd feel sick. In such quandary, an unpro- 
 fessional listener, affected with qualms, has no 
 resource but to look at the crowd for himself. 
 Whatever its momentary misgivings, there is a 
 strong probability that, if it appears healthy, it 
 is really in sound condition. 
 
 If any traveller in France thus considers the 
 aspect of the country in the thirty- seventh year 
 of the Third Republic, he can hardly avoid the 
 impression that nothing could appear more pros« 
 
342 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 perous. 'Other countries, to be sure, may look 
 more aggressively enterprising; you will per- 
 haps see elsewhere more obtrusive novelties of 
 trade and manufacture, or notice more bustle; 
 but you will nowhere discover more constant 
 evidence of solid and substantial welfare., From 
 Flanders and Normandy to Provence, wherever 
 you go, — from the Atlantic to the Alps, too, — 
 you will find less evidence of poverty, of idle-^ 
 ness, of misery, than will force itself on your 
 attention almost anywhere else in the world. 
 To rely too strongly on such an impression as 
 this may be imprudent; yet one cannot ration- 
 ally neglect it. Travellers' tales have their value 
 as well as their limitations; and a pervasive na- 
 tional prosperity, a sound national virtue, is a 
 fact as incontrovertible as any assertion of sta- 
 tistics or philosophy. What is more, there are 
 moods in which you are disposed to think it 
 more significant than the best of them. No gov- 
 ernment, to be sure, could produce such prosper- 
 ity as must impress travellers throughout France, 
 unless the people under its control were vigorous, 
 intelligent, and thrifty; but no vigor or intelli- 
 gence or thrift on the part of a people could 
 produce it unless the government were, on the 
 whole, salutary. Whatever statistics or philoso- 
 phy may tell you, the general condition of France 
 
THE REPUBLIC 343 
 
 at the present day is evidence enough for any 
 traveller that throughout the memory of all men 
 under forty years of age the government has 
 been not only unbroken, but efficient — that it 
 has really worked for the public good. 
 
 Whether it has worked any better than some 
 other political system might have done, or even 
 so well as might have been the case with some 
 other, is evidently another question. In other 
 countries, or at other epochs, this question 
 might have been merely academic. In France, 
 throughout the existence of the Third Republic, 
 it has often seemed one of practical politics. As 
 we have already reminded ourselves, the present 
 constitution of France, though it has had the good 
 fortune to survive beyond the limit of average 
 human memory, began almost as a makeshift 
 during a period of unprecedented national dis- 
 aster, threatening anarchical revolution. At the 
 moment, almost all Frenchmen were willing to 
 submit themselves to it provisionally. For many 
 of them, however, it was, at best, only a prudent 
 temporary alternative for some other form of gov- 
 ernment in their opinion superior. The Em- 
 pire had fallen, for the moment; but the spirit of 
 the imperialists was not yet extinct. And, as 
 everyone knows, the whole force of the Empire, 
 even when it seemed most dominant, had in no 
 
S44 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 wise impaired the spirit of devoted royalists — 
 Legitimist or Orleanist — any more than it 
 had smothered that of enthusiastic repubhcans. 
 What is more, everybody in the whole world 
 could vividly remember the reign of Napoleon 
 III; men still in the full vigor of middle life 
 could remember that of Louis Philippe; and it 
 was only forty years since Louis Philippe had 
 dethroned Charles X — little longer than it is 
 now since Napoleon III surrendered at Sedan. 
 Evidently, the present Republic began its career 
 under great disadvantages. Throughout France 
 there were admirably honest Frenchmen who 
 ardently believed that the country could not 
 fully prosper until it returned to one or another 
 of the three rival systems. 
 
 Each of the three, too, had a personally respec- 
 table pretender to the throne. Had any of these 
 aspirants to hereditary sovereignty possessed a 
 dominantly commanding personality, the course 
 of history might have taken another turn than 
 we have been considering together. In this re- 
 spect fortune favored the Republic. Without 
 venturing to criticise the character of any of the 
 three, we can hardly fail to agree that none of 
 them was graced with such power as excites 
 popular enthusiasm. Even from the beginning, 
 accordingly, the Republic was in less danger than 
 
THE REPUBLIC 345 
 
 might otherwise have been the case of succumb- 
 ing to some freshly revolutionary assertion of 
 royalist or imperialist tradition. And the course 
 of events during the past thirty- six years has gone 
 far to avert what danger of such fate may have 
 originally existed. The direct line of Napo- 
 leon III is extinct ; so is that of Charles X. The 
 Orleanist prince who has succeeded to the Legiti- 
 mist claim is not even descended, in male line, 
 from Louis XIV; and the present heir of the 
 Bonapartes must go back to the Corsican lawyer 
 of the eighteenth century to show his kinship to 
 either of the French emperors. Neither of these 
 gentlemen, furthermore, is any more fortunate 
 than the pretender whose claims he inherits, 
 in the matter of personal qualities irresistible to 
 public imagination. It may seem needless to 
 repeat that nothing is further from my purpose 
 than to make any comment whatever on their 
 private characters, which I am led to believe de- 
 serving of universal esteem. The plain truth is 
 that neither of them, for all his honorable virtues, 
 has the gift of such distinction as should make 
 people in general quite sure of just who he is. A 
 pretender whom you have to verify in the "Al- 
 manach de Gotha " is no longer a serious menace 
 — unless, in time to come, he remove himself 
 from those impressive pages into the sunshine 
 
346 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 and shadow of open air. At this moment, ac- 
 cordingly, the claims of rival traditions to the 
 sovereignty of France seem less threatening to 
 established order than at any previous time since 
 1815. 
 
 For all this, these rival traditions persist to the 
 present day; and they have sometimes been real 
 dangers to the Republic. Even though they no 
 longer present themselves in so serious a light, 
 the effect of them is evident throughout France. 
 For years they were well within the range of 
 practical politics. So long as they remained 
 there, they could not help emphasizing the fact 
 that, as a form of government, the Republic is 
 based on only one aspect of French tradition — 
 
 .-^-on the tradition of the Revolution, so passion-^ 
 ately contradictory of royalist and of imperial 
 tradition alike. In many ways the Republic has 
 
 ' done nothing to mitigate this emphasis; rather 
 it has gloried in the tradition peculiar to itself. 
 Had it done otherwise, it might have been more 
 prudent, but it certainly would have been less 
 French. There is something pleasantly typical 
 in the device on the reverse of its gold coinage. 
 Instead of the imperial eagle, we have the Gallic 
 cock. To all appearance, this spirited bird is 
 in the act of crowing — for the purpose, one 
 opines, of reminding us that he is on top of the 
 
THE REPUBLIC 347 
 
 heap; which is very delightful for the cock, but 
 not conciliatory to the temper of less fortunate 
 fowls. The same spirit shows itself more se- 
 dately in republican inscriptions now so pro- 
 fusely decorating the public buildings of France. 
 Wherever you go, the words ** Liberty, Equality, 
 Fraternity,'' stare you in the face, never suffer- 
 ing yoii to forget that the watchwords of the 
 Revolution are once more those of the govern- 
 ment in full possession of power. Another vivid 
 example of the spirit in question happens to rise 
 straight to the surface of my memory. Among 
 the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture in 
 France is the Chateau of St. Germain, a great 
 part of which was erected in the reign of King 
 Francis I. It was accordingly decorated, like 
 many other of his buildings, with his personal 
 device, the salamander, and with the initial "F" 
 of his royal name. In the course of time it fell 
 out of repair, and furthermore was disfigured by 
 various additions and surrounded by other build- 
 ings, of neither dignity nor importance. Within 
 a few years the government has undertaken to 
 restore it, as an historical monument. The res- 
 toration, executed with intelligence and skill, is 
 now so, far advanced that in certain places it 
 has reached the stage of finishing touches, of 
 ornamental detail. Here the salamander writhes 
 
348 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 as splendidly as ever; and here, as in the elder 
 time, admirably designed initials alternate with 
 him. But the new initials of the restored palace 
 are not those of King Francis. Instead of "F" 
 you perceive "R. F." everywhere. The Repub- 
 lic does not show itself quite confident enough 
 to admit the past. Thus, by its own act, it re- 
 veals what still seems true. Even to this day 
 it presents itself, both to its partisans and to 
 its opponents, not so much in the light of an 
 established national government as in that of 
 a temporarily dominant political pariv. 
 
 In spite of this, we should be much mistaken 
 if we supposed its career exactly like that of some 
 party which should have proved able to maintain 
 itself indefinitely in power under a system like 
 our own. In the course of its career, it has come, 
 at different times, under the control of very dif- 
 ferent kinds of people. There have been mo- 
 1 ments in its existence when it has so nearly 
 K4)assed into the hands of sympathizers with royal- 
 I ist tradition that the advent of a king seemed close 
 at hand ; radical though its revolutionary devices 
 must always have appeared, it has occasionally 
 found itself under the management of people 
 whose impulses were certainly conservative, if 
 not reactionary. In other words, if we are dis- 
 posed to liken the Republic to a dominant party. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 349 
 
 as distinguished from a system of government 
 established by full consent of the governed, we 
 must never suffer ourselves to forget that it re- 
 sembles a party composed of discordant factions 
 rather than one vigorously united by general 
 devotion to a common purpose. 
 
 Viewing the matter in this light, one would nat- 
 urally suppose that when any faction found itself 
 dominant it would behave, as a matter of obvious 
 policy, in a conciliatory manner. Precisely this 
 form of amenity seems one of the few which the 
 French are impulsively unable to practise. Wher- 
 ever you go in France you find aggressive asser- 
 tions on the part of every faction or party ever in 
 control of affairs that it has had its way, if only for 
 a while. The Gallic cock of the Republic struts 
 crowing on coins which are still popularly de- 
 scribed as napoleons ; the cockerels which France 
 has hatched for him show themselves of the pure 
 breed. 
 
 An obvious example of this tendency must in- 
 stantly attract the notice of any visitor to Paris 
 at the present day. The capital city of the Re- 
 public is, in most respects, very like the capital 
 of the Second Empire. Viewed from any dis- 
 tance or from any height, however, it proves to 
 be dominated by two lofty structures erected 
 under the present system of government. And 
 
850 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 these rise so conspicuously above all the rest of 
 Paris that they inevitably catch the eye, and 
 linger in memory as the most salient features of 
 the view. One is the Eiffel Tower, a most re- 
 markable achievement of construction in riveted 
 steel. Its loftiness and the structural accuracy of 
 its lines give it something more like dignity and 
 beauty than you would have supposed possible. 
 At the same time this network of metal pushed 
 skyward has no aspect of permanence. It seems 
 only a colossal piece of eccentric ingenuity, de- 
 vised for the purpose of amusing the crowds who 
 flocked from everywhere to one of the interna- 
 tional expositions. It has outlasted its advertis- 
 ing purpose; and, as it still attracts and amuses 
 a good many travellers every year, it stands there 
 still, a huge plaything. But it does not look as 
 if it need stand there very long. When people 
 grow tired of playing with it, you fancy, it will 
 be taken down and sold for old metal. And 
 everybody will be happy — including those sen- 
 sitive persons whose artistic susceptibilities are 
 wounded whenever they look at the monster. It 
 has never done any harm to anybody else; it is 
 said to have proved a lucrative investment. 
 
 The other structure which now surmounts 
 Paris is in all respects dissimilar — except that 
 there might be a case for those who should 
 
THE REPUBLIC 351 
 
 maintain it no more beautiful. The highest hill 
 within the limits of the city — Montmartre — is 
 at present crowned not with the houses and the 
 windmill which distinguished it in former times, 
 but with a huge domed edifice, unmistakable in its 
 ecclesiastical character, yet so obviously modern 
 in its lines that you can perceive it instantly to be 
 a brand-new monument of the wealth and the 
 power resident in the Church a few years ago. 
 This sumptuous sanctuary, you presently dis- 
 cover, is the new Church of the Sacred Heart; 
 specially consecrated to an extremely French 
 species of mystic devotion. ^' It symbolizes that 
 aspBCt of the Church which is most intensely 
 enthusiastic, and least concerned with the affairs 
 of this world. It stands not for the inexhaustible 
 charity of Christianity, forever bringing aid and 
 comfort to the poor and unfortunate, earnestly 
 endeavoring to mitigate the ills of life. It stands 
 rather for such holy ecstasies as those who doubt 
 or dislike the Church conceive to be little better 
 than drunkenness of the spirit. It is immensely 
 expensive; millions on millions of devout francs 
 have been consecrated to it by the faithful. Every 
 centime of them has gone into its masonry and its 
 decorations, to remain fixed there forever. For 
 its foundation and its walls are as solid as human 
 skill can make them. The church has been built 
 
352 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 on Montmartre to dominate Paris as long as 
 Paris shall stay on earth to be dominated. 
 And, for fear that it might sometimes escape the 
 notice of Parisians, the country-folk of Savoy 
 have given their savings to buy for it the biggest 
 bell to be bought for money. They promise 
 you, I believe, that when the "Savoyard" is 
 sounded, you shall hear the note of it in every 
 cranny of the capital city of the French Republic. 
 All of which is admirable in its way. One 
 cannot too deeply respect the self-sacrificing de- 
 votion with which the Catholics of France have 
 thus testified to the living persistency of their 
 faith. If any splendor of enshrinement shall 
 really contribute ''ad majorem JDei gloriam/' no 
 man who can sympathize with the longings of the 
 I human soul would ever grudge the Church a bit 
 of it. i^lBut you cannot be long in Paris without 
 learning that this colossal new place of worship 
 Jhas another aspect than this primary one of tes- 
 itifying to the depth of orthodox devotion still 
 persistent among the French. As is well known, 
 a great number of honest republicans have be- 
 lieved, throughout the nineteenth century, that 
 the Christian religion, particularly in its purely 
 devotional aspects, is a relentless obstacle to 
 human progress. To men of this disposition the 
 most unwelcome of a,ll French cults is the ado- 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
THE REPUBLIC 353 
 
 ration of the Sacred Heart — for the reason that 
 it carries people farthest in sympathy from the 
 things of this world, directing their attention 
 rather to mystical ecstasy in regions which they 
 believe heavenly. To unbelievers, in short, this 
 worship stands for the acme of superstition. It 
 is therefore the form of devotion most certain 
 to excite their antagonism. 
 
 When the Republic was for a while in reac- 
 tionary hands, and the men temporarily in 
 power were disposed rather to sympathize with 
 the Church than to oppose it, you might ac- 
 cordingly have expected them, as prudent states- 
 men, to have taken this phase of opposition into 
 consideration. You might have expected the 
 Church itself to have displayed a similar spirit. 
 There are aspects enough and to spare in which 
 Catholic Christianity is obviously beneficent. 
 These, you might have thought, would be chosen 
 for emphasis by both its clergy and its laity. 
 The last thing which you could have supposed 
 astute men to favor would have been mani- 
 festations of their more exasperating points of 
 difference from fellow citizens who had the mis- 
 fortune to hold them in distrust. Yet with 
 free choice of conduct, they preferred the most 
 extreme imaginable manifestation of such dif- 
 ference. Churchmen eagerly proposed this co- 
 
 23 
 
354 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 lossal monument of the Sacred Heart; the 
 government of the moment consented to it. 
 And there it stands to-day, a monument of 
 several other facts as well. It reminds every- 
 body that for a while the clerical spirit was 
 dominant in the Third Republic; it reminds 
 everybody that the moment it became so, it 
 proceeded to celebrate its dominance in the 
 most obtrusive and self-glorifying way — and 
 also in the hardest to obliterate when politics 
 should take another turn. It reminds everybody 
 that this other turn of politics has ensued. It 
 reminds all who enthusiastically delight in the 
 doctrines it stands for that these are no longer in 
 power. It reminds everybody who distrusts or 
 hates them that, if they once get into power 
 again, their enemies need look for little mercy 
 at their hands. At best, no matter what may 
 have been the actual motives of its builders, it 
 reminds the whole world that they were willing 
 to set up, the moment they could do so, a con- 
 stant and aggressive cause of provocation to 
 any compatriots not in sympathy with the phase 
 of national temper which it so sumptuously 
 represents. 
 
 Even as yet, I believe, the Church of the Sacred 
 Heart is nowhere near finished. Meanwhile, as 
 we have already reminded ourselves, the govern- 
 
THE REPUBLIC 355 
 
 ment of the Republic has fallen into far from 
 clerical hands. These more intense republicans 
 have not as yet set on foot a Temple of Reason, 
 or whatever else, to dwarf the Sacred Heart. 
 On the other hand, they have lost few oppor- 
 tunities of asserting their own opinions in fash- 
 ions quite as aggressive as that practised by 
 clerical sympathizers a few years ago. All over 
 France you will find monuments to the worthies 
 of the Republic and the heroes of the Revolu- 
 tion. In the Louvre itself, the two monuments 
 which vie with the Arch of the Carrousel are a 
 most restless one In memory of Gambetta, and a 
 sketch for an equestrian statue not yet cast of 
 that hero of two republics, Lafayette. One of 
 the avenues which radiate from the Arc de 
 Triomphe has been deprived of its name of im- 
 perial victory and given instead that of Victor 
 Hugo ; and this not because he was an eminent 
 poet, but because he was a staunch republican 
 opponent of the Empire. There is hardly a 
 French town of any considerable size anywhere, 
 indeed, which has not given his name to a prin- 
 cipal street. And just such violent, instantly 
 aggressive changes of nomenclature are still 
 occurring everywhere. 
 
 Now the use of a name, either for an individual 
 or for a locality, is obviously to serve as a means 
 
356 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 of identification. Any alteration of a name, ac- 
 cordingly, is inconvenient and confusing. This 
 reasonable consideration seems rarely to present 
 itself to the minds of enthusiastic French repub- 
 licans. They are at present disposed rather to 
 regard the names of public places as instruments 
 of doctrinal propagation. At Dijon, for exam- 
 ple, one of the most memorable local worthies is 
 Saint Bernard, who was born in a little village 
 overlooking the old Burgundian capital. A 
 bronze statue in his honor was very properly 
 erected there some years ago; and the square 
 which surrounded it — in a new part of the town 
 — was duly named the Place Saint- Bernard. 
 How long it retained the name I do not know. 
 At present it has been renamed the Place Etienne 
 Dolet. So far as I am informed, Etienne Dolet 
 had little if anything to do with Dijon; but be- 
 yond question the conduct of this skilful printer, 
 who flourished at the period of the Reformation, 
 was such as to get him into trouble, and he was 
 ultimately burned at the stake. The reason why 
 his name has replaced that of Saint Bernard is 
 not that he was a more memorable personage, or 
 that he had anything like so much reason for com- 
 memoration on the spot in question. It is sim- 
 ply that Saint Bernard was a canonized worthy 
 of the Catholics, and that Etienne Dolet was a 
 
THE REPUBLIC 357 
 
 heretic, whose memory must remain obnoxious to 
 Catholic tradition. They have left the saint on his 
 pedestal ; but no one who believes in the faith he 
 preached can see him there without reminder that 
 this faith no longer has the best of it. 
 
 Again, in the city of Lyons there existed, a few 
 years ago, three distinct streets, which very con- 
 veniently had three distinct names. What these 
 names were I do not remember. The fact per- 
 manently impressed on my mind is that at pres- 
 ent all three bear the same name — that of Emile 
 Zola. They are distinguished, I believe, as Rue, 
 Avenue, and Boulevard ; or perhaps one of them 
 is a Place, and not a street. All I feel quite sure 
 of is that the confusion is annoying to travellers 
 and to cabmen. It is more than annoying — it 
 is persistently exasperating — to residents in any 
 of the three who do not chance unreservedly to 
 admire the work of the eminent novelist in ques- 
 tion. Even his most eager admirers can hardly 
 deny his tendency to pornographic excess, which 
 goes far to counteract the impression of his in- 
 disputable power. Few would pretend him, as 
 a man of letters, a model for the young. But 
 this is not the question. During the progress 
 of the Dreyfus affair he devoted himself, with 
 immense enthusiasm, to the cause of what he 
 believed to be justice. In so doing he was 
 
858 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 probably encouraged by the fact that he found 
 arrayed against him the general consent of the 
 Church — an institution of which he had been 
 a violent opponent throughout his literary life. 
 The certain fact is that, as a most conspicuous 
 advocate for Dreyfus, he made himself particu> 
 larly objectionable to conservative and clerical 
 people who believed, on general principles, that a 
 case, once decided, had better not be reopened. 
 Meanwhile, this same line of conduct had made 
 him a partisan hero of the anticlericals. Anti- 
 clerical people came into power at Lyons. 
 Among the first things they proceeded to do in 
 the heat of their victory was to name for ZolsLXlQt 
 one public placed l)Ut three separate ones. The 
 conciliatory wisdom of this proceeding seems 
 rivalled only by its practical good sense. 
 
 In some towns this process has been carried 
 further still. I remember one where a number 
 of small streets bore extremely local names. 
 These I did not take the precaution to copy; but 
 they run somewhat as follows: "Rue Jean Duval 
 (Maire 1882)." Without the parenthesis even 
 the oldest inhabitant might now be at pains to 
 remember who Jean Duval was. His name, 
 however, has supplanted that of the saint for 
 whom the street had been named ever since the 
 Middle Ages; and if you should take the pains 
 
THE REPUBLIC 359 
 
 to look into his municipal history, you might very 
 likely discover that he had fallen out with the 
 priest in charge of the neighboring church. Now, 
 whatever the personal merits or faults of Jean 
 Duval, there can be little question that his name 
 is not so easy to remember as that of Saint Peter, 
 we will say; and consequently that it is intrinsi- 
 cally less adapted to the purpose of naming a 
 street. I ventured to make this observation to 
 a republican inhabitant of the town in question. 
 He admitted the justice of my view, except, he 
 went on to say, that it showed a foreigner's igno- 
 rance of the local situation. My argument, it 
 seems, had actually been presented to the author- 
 ities of the town; the householders of the street 
 had preferred its old name, as a matter of obvi- 
 ous convenience; the authorities had been dis- 
 posed to take their view of the case; the matter 
 had been laid over till the next meeting of the 
 local council. But then, what happened? M. 
 le Cure had preached a jubilant sermon to the 
 effect that an impious attempt to dislodge Saint 
 Peter had been frustrated by the faithful; the 
 clerical newspaper of the town had flapped its 
 wings and crowed like the cock of Saint Peter 
 himself. And at the next meeting of the town 
 authorities down went Saint Peter and up went 
 Jean Duval. The unhappy saint, it appeared. 
 
860 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 had ceased to be a topographical fact, and had 
 become a political. 
 
 A more familiar manifestation of this spirit 
 was widely published a few years ago. The law 
 courts of the Republic, continuing the tradition 
 of the Empire, and I believe of all French gov- 
 ernments since the Concordat, had been orna- 
 mented with crucifixes, which meant, in point 
 of fact, just about as much as the Bibles used 
 for the administration of oaths in English or 
 American courts of justice. The anticlerical 
 authorities of the Republic came to the conclu- 
 sion that these had best be removed. In this 
 they showed good sense. There was no actual 
 relation between the administration of French 
 law and the doctrines of Catholic Christianity. 
 There was no reason for pretending that any ex- 
 isted. The crucifix was evidently exasperating 
 to anticlerical prejudice. The absence of it, 
 when people once got used to the new state of 
 things, need not excite any prejudice whatever. If 
 the crucifixes had been quietly taken away from 
 the court-rooms, accordingly, the process might 
 have been salutary, as distracting from public 
 notice an evident matter of rancorous dispute. 
 Instead of seizing this opportunity, the Republi- 
 can authorities preferred to emphasize their anti- 
 clerical sentiments in the strongest way they could 
 
THE REPUBLIC 361 
 
 think of. So, of all days in the year, they selected 
 Good Friday for publicly removing from their 
 courts of justice the traditional image of Christ. 
 One's mind recurs, in contrast, to the old story 
 of the high- church parson who converted his 
 communion-table into an altar by moving it an 
 inch every week, until — quite undetected by his 
 evangelical congregation — he got it safe against 
 the wall. 
 
 In fact, as we have reminded ourselves enough 
 and to spare, whenever the extreme partisans of 
 the Republic in France have got the government 
 into their hands, they have conducted themselves 
 with no more reserve, with no more attempt to 
 conciliate doubtful or hostile sympathy, than was 
 shown by reactionary people when for a while 
 these had the best of it in Republican politics. 
 Rather they have been disposed to dwell trium- 
 phantly on every detail of the differences between 
 themselves and their conscientious opponents. 
 They have insisted on the full extent of their 
 radical doctrines. They have exulted in every 
 triumph. They have often behaved, in fact, as 
 if they were complete advocates of a partisan 
 tyranny, differing chiefly from the conventional 
 tyrannies of history in the fact that it pretends 
 to be the tyranny not of an individual, but of a 
 special class describing itself as the people. 
 
362 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 Had the Republic, however, really been so 
 radical and so tyrannical as its utterances and 
 its petty acts might lead us to infer, the present 
 state of France could hardly be so healthy and so 
 prosperous as it appears. The Republic seems 
 French to the core, in the fact that it lays down a 
 system as near logical consistency as it can devise. 
 That system has the advffitage of being compara- 
 tively new; it is consequently contradicted by 
 fewer incompatible facts than would be the case 
 with an old system, like that of the ancien regime 
 or that of the Church. Being human, nevertheless, 
 it cannot help being confronted with some facts 
 — among others, with persistent contrary preju- 
 dices — not to be reconciled with its doctrines, 
 p.-.33iese, accordingly, it attempts either to ignore^ 
 or to suppress after the good old human fashion. 
 It does not try to reconcile opposition; it tries 
 rather to impose its own principles, by force of 
 assertion, or, if need be, by civil force. It seems 
 still affected by the youthfuT dream that men on 
 earth can somehow manage to have their own 
 way. 
 
 The principles which it holds and promulgates 
 appear, on the whole, to be those of extreme the- 
 oretical democracy. There is no reason to doubt 
 that it holds and promulgates them with si;a- 
 cerity. At the same time, so far as a foreisnr* 
 
THE REPUBLIC 363 
 
 can understand what these principles signify to 
 the French mind, they are by no means identical 
 with the principles of democracy cherished by 
 Americans, who have always lived under a dem- 
 ocratic system of government. With us, as with 
 other peoples, the commonplaces of democracy 
 have been popularly set forth during the nine- 
 teenth century almost without reserve. In prac- 
 tice, however, American democracy has hitherto 
 confined itself to insistence on the principle that 
 government should derive its just powers from 
 the consent of the governed. It has rather main- 
 tained than weakened the traditions of its own 
 constitutional system. It has not attempted class 
 tyranny. We have talked very valiantly about the 
 people and their rights. We have never clearly de- 
 fined what that term '* the people " ought in truth 
 to signify. In conduct, the while, we have acted 
 on the tacit assumption that a complete people 
 consists of no one class or kind of men — high or 
 low, learned or ignorant, few or many; but rather 
 of the inevitable variety of human beings who 
 must exist, each In his own sphere, in any healthy 
 society. Democracy with us seems to mean gov- 
 ernment by common consent for the common 
 good. Practically, so far as democracy has 
 prospered in France, it has signified even there 
 government for the common good, but with the 
 
364 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 element of common consent decidedly subordi- 
 nated. In theory, however, and it utters its 
 theories with intense effusiveness, it seems to 
 mean among the French a system of govern- 
 ment conducted in the interests of the masses, 
 as distinguished from those of the better classes. 
 It fiercely condemned the privileges of the better 
 classes in former times. In their place, it now 
 seems determined to do all in its power to establish 
 something like privilege for the common people. 
 How far it remains from anything like such an 
 achievement is proved by the persistence of the 
 better classes throughout France. It is proved 
 by the stability of the general social structure 
 there. It is proved by the beautiful solidarity 
 of French domestic life. It is proved, among 
 people of all classes, by the steady conscientious- 
 ness with which they maintain, and transmit to 
 their children, their ancestral traditions. The 
 extreme result of democratic doctrine — the ar- 
 bitrary supremacy of the lower classes — how- 
 ever generous in impulse and agreeable to fervid 
 faith, is something from which France still seems 
 far as ever. For the practical consequences of 
 theoretical democracy, insisting that the ideal 
 of equality shall supplant that of excellence, 
 would be either Utopian or barbarous, or both. 
 And no one who knows contemporary France 
 
THE REPUBLIC 365 
 
 could possibly mistake it for either Barbary or 
 Utopia. 
 
 How eagerly, on the other hand, the advocates 
 of an equality sanctioned by neither divine law, 
 scientific observation, nor human experience, oc- 
 casionally try to make their principles dominant, 
 was lately brought to my notice by an anecdote 
 I heard from a professor in a provincial second- 
 ary school. He happened to be called on to ex- 
 amine candidates for free instruction — for state 
 scholarships. His subject was French history; 
 the candidates were children from twelve to 
 fifteen years of age who had honorably com- 
 pleted the course of instruction in the primary 
 schools of the region. In general, as I under- 
 stand the case, they were of the respectable 
 middle class — the smaller bourgeoisie^ or the 
 more well-to-do peasantry. Their examiner be- 
 gan by asking them various questions concerning 
 the older history of France. Their confusion 
 of mind was appalling. They hopelessly mixed 
 up kings and queens, cardinals and poets, wars 
 and rebellions ; the only fixed idea in their minds 
 seemed to be that France had formerly been 
 in a state of deplorable turbulence, much like 
 that which was said once to have been taught 
 concerning ancient Rome in the common schools 
 of Russia: — "The last of the kings was Tar- 
 
866 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 quinius Superbus, who was dethroned by an un- 
 principled demagogue named Brutus. A period 
 of hideous disturbance followed, which was 
 brought to an end by the imperial genius of 
 Julius Csesar." Startled by the extraordinary ig- 
 norance displayed by these young French candi- 
 dates for honorable distinction in the history of 
 their country, their examiner happened to think 
 that he had put them no questions concerning 
 the Revolution. The moment he touched on 
 that, the clouds rolled away. There was no 
 Revolutionary incident so trivial that they did 
 not know both the circumstances of it and the 
 precise date; some of them could transpose the 
 Revolutionary calendar into the terms of common 
 civilization at a moment's notice; they knew by 
 heart not only the great men of the Revolution, 
 but the smaller ones, too. They had been taught 
 and had learned the history of France, in short 
 — and France, we must remember, was their own 
 dear native land — as if until 1789 the whole 
 country had been plunged in depths of mediae- 
 val darkness, too dense to deserve the pains of 
 intelligent exploration. 
 
 This case is solitary and perhaps unique. 
 But even if it indicate how apostles of democ- 
 racy now and then insist that nothing be taught 
 ignorant children except the doctrine and the 
 
THE REPUBLIC 367 
 
 legends and the pious tales of the Rights of Man, 
 there is no reason why we should blame their 
 purpose. In its philanthropic sincerity it is as 
 worthy of respect as is the contrary purpose of 
 so many religious teachers, who suppress or dis- 
 tort the facts of heresy everywhere. Whether 
 doctrine, legend, and pious tale be devout or 
 philanthropic, they are honestly meant; they rep- 
 resent conscientious effort to direct the course 
 of children toward righteousness. On, the other 
 hand, there can be no question that any teaching 
 of French history which neglects what happened 
 in France throughout its thousand years of pre- 
 Revolutionary existence, deliberately discards a 
 priceless treasure of national tradition. The 
 mood which would dictate such a policy, too — 
 however aspiring and devoted in purpose — in- 
 volves further injury than this to the full welfare 
 of the nation. It would evidently exclude from 
 public responsibility anyone who holds this elder 
 treasure of national tradition comparable with 
 the newer tradition of Revolutionary philan- 
 thropy. Thus it deprives the form of govern- 
 ment which it advocates of what, in happier 
 case, might be its most confident hope for 
 endurance. 
 
 For no one who comes to know the France of 
 today can question that the men in actual power, 
 
368 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 however doctrinarian they may seem, and how- 
 ever tyrannical may seem the acts which they oc- 
 casionally commit, are men of serious purpose, 
 of alert intelligence, and of moral dignity. But 
 neither can any such visitor doubt that there is 
 equally serious purpose, equally alert intelligence, 
 equal moral dignity, in many of their opponents. 
 Were the republic as a system of government now 
 in open danger, distrust of all sentiment not in- 
 tensely republican might be a sad necessity of 
 republican polity. As the Republic stands today, 
 one can perceive no reason why a policy of more 
 hearty mutual confidence, of more magnanimous 
 sympathy, should not prove as compatible with 
 astuteness as it would surely be with generosity. 
 France still seems a country of irreconcilable 
 antagonisms; yet France, I believe, has reached 
 a point where such reconciliation is no longer 
 inconceivable. 
 
 Born of necessity, as we have seen, the Republic 
 has had the unique fortune of persistence through- 
 out the range of average human memory. It 
 has happily proved favorable to material welfare ; 
 and meanwhile chance has greatly weakened 
 the hold on imagination of either of the sys- 
 tems — royalist or imperialist — which during 
 the earlier years of its existence were threatening 
 rivals in their claim to power and to loyalty. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 369 
 
 Another fact about it is surely true. All men 
 now living in France, whatever their personal 
 convictions, are men who have lived for more 
 than thirty-five years under no other form of 
 government than this. They have inherited 
 from the traditions of former times the habit of 
 mutual intolerance and suspicion. Each side 
 will honestly tell you, in all solemnity, that the 
 advocates of other principles than theirs are 
 either densely stupid or deliberately wicked. 
 Yet when you meet those other men, who will 
 tell you just the same things about their critics, 
 you cannot feel that in truth they are either 
 unintelligent or evil. In any party, anywhere, 
 there are unworthy people. What is most 
 salient to a traveller among divergent kinds of 
 Frenchmen is not this fact that some of them 
 fail to command his complete esteem. It is 
 rather that wherever he goes, among radicals or 
 reactionaries, devout Catholics or philanthropic 
 philosophers, he will find honest gentlemen, in 
 the best sense of the term. There is less discord 
 of the spirit in France than Frenchmen seem 
 to dream. 
 
 There are symptoms, meantime, that the 
 French themselves may at last be approaching 
 a point where they can do more justice to one 
 another than has been quite possible through 
 
 24 
 
370 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the revolutionary nineteenth century. A happy 
 suggestion of this came to me most unexpectedly 
 in the course of an excursion to some interest- 
 ing old towns in central France. A month or 
 two before, I had written for a French review 
 an article on contemporary politics in America. 
 In the course of this, I had mentioned, as a 
 commonplace, the view of American democracy 
 which I have long entertained: namely, that 
 it is not the tyranny of any one class over any 
 other, but the consent of all classes — none 
 secured by inflexible privilege — to exist to- 
 gether under a system trusted by all to act as 
 guardian and agent of their common welfare. 
 My pleasant provincial vacation had distracted 
 my mind from this little essay in political phi- 
 losophy. I had passed a delightful day in 
 travelling through beautiful and interesting 
 country; and came hungry to my dinner in the 
 chief hotel of a small town locally famous for 
 romantic mediaeval buildings and an excellent 
 secondary school. Some of my neighbors at 
 table presently proved to be teachers in this 
 establishment; they were highly intelligent young 
 men, evidently of extremely republican sympa- 
 thies; and they were animatedly discussing a 
 phase of democratic doctrine new to them. 
 To my rather amused surprise, this turned out 
 
THE REPUBLIC 371 
 
 to have been suggested by my own article. They 
 had no idea who I was, and, I fancy, not much 
 that I was attending to what they said. In point 
 of fact, however, they were eagerly wondering 
 whether my own published opinion — that a 
 truly healthy democracy could never coexist with 
 a persistent misunderstanding between social 
 classes — might not throw light on the present 
 troubles of France. The democracy of America 
 they freely admitted to display a quality of tradi- 
 tional endurance not yet evident in the newer 
 democracy of their own country. The democ- 
 racy of France, they went on to say, had always 
 been intolerantly distrustful of the old privileged 
 class, the nobility. They admitted that they had 
 been so themselves ; no other course had occurred 
 to them as possible. Was it conceivable that they / 
 had been mistaken — that the French people 
 could never be complete unless it grew willing 
 to count as an essential part of itself that very 
 nobility, which, after all, was as French as any 
 of them.? 
 
 In other words, it appeared, these young 
 Frenchmen had been at least momentarily im- 
 pressed by two or three of the political sugges- 
 tions set forth in my article. Any stable national 
 government, for one thing, must take into account 
 the full range of rooted national tradition. This 
 
372 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 is obviously the case in England to-day, where the 
 nation, as a whole, cherishes with equal respect 
 and affection the memory of men who took the 
 side of the king in the civil wars of the seventeenth 
 century and of those who took the side of Parlia- 
 ment. In London there are statues of both 
 Charles I and Cromwell; and England could 
 not be the England of our own time if any con- 
 siderable body of Englishmen now desired to 
 overthrow either of them. Something similar 
 is true already of our own Republic, the United 
 States. Little more than forty years ago, we 
 were engaged in the most portentous civil war of 
 modern history; to-day the survivors of that con- 
 flict are fellow-countrymen whose mortal enmities 
 are beginning to be fused in precious historical 
 memories. Our American Republic has had no 
 more loyal services in all its career than it has 
 received already from honest men who fought 
 hard against it through four dreadful years. 
 Monuments to Union soldiers in the North and 
 to Confederate soldiers in the South have already 
 been consecrated by the friendly presence of men 
 who fought against the dead they commemorate. 
 It will not be long, one grows confident, be- 
 fore the descendants of both sides shall find 
 themselves ready to join in equal tribute to the 
 heroes of both. When that time comes, our true 
 
THE REPUBLIC 373 
 
 national tradition will come once more to be that 
 of a united country. 
 
 Again, it is beyond peradventure that an en- 
 during democracy can never exist when only a 
 portion of a people — a single social class — is 
 dominant, to the exclusion of the rest. Such a 
 state of affairs is a democracy only in name. In 
 fact, it is at best an oligarchy — and oligarchy 
 is oligarchy, whether the ruling class be large 
 or small, high or low. What is more, good 
 sense should seem to remind us that the oli- 
 garchical tyranny of the masses must be more 
 dangerous than an oligarchical tyranny of the 
 better sort. For, to put the case at its mildest, 
 the masses must be animated by less intelligence 
 and by more fickle instability of emotion. To 
 us of America, immemorially habituated to the 
 practice of democracy, the notion of submitting 
 ourselves to the direction of a small privileged 
 class is abhorrent. Hardly less so, in reality, 
 would be the notion of submitting ourselves 
 to the absolute sovereignty of a lower class, 
 privileged in point of mere numbers by the very 
 fact of its lack of individual privilege. We are 
 restive at this moment under the suspicion that 
 too much power among ourselves is gathering 
 in the hands of rich men. We are little less 
 restive when we scent the danger of finding our 
 
374 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 country at the mercy of trades- unions. It is not 
 that either form of oligarchy might not conceiv- 
 ably work well. It is rather that both alike are 
 oligarchy, and not democracy. 
 
 For a true democracy, I cannot too earnestly 
 repeat, must tolerantly include all manner of 
 men. It must give each his due, and demand 
 only its own due from each. It must preserve the 
 structure of society so firmly that the opportunity 
 of a career shall always be open to talent. It 
 must preserve such liberty of the individual that 
 no inherited privilege shall keep weakness long 
 secure, nor stand in the way of ability born in a 
 station too narrow for its power. But it may 
 never safely meddle with the elemental truths 
 of human nature — pretending things excellent 
 which in reality are commonplace. It may never 
 safely deny the fatal fact that most men, in what- 
 ever range of human effort, are bound to have 
 their superiors in power, and that civic insecurity 
 is the surest means to offer the semblance of a 
 career not to talent but to mischief. It must 
 recognize in itself not an immortal and inspired 
 system, but only one of the means by which hu- 
 man beings attempt so to govern society that 
 society may advance in prosperity and in right- 
 eousness. It must humbly admit itself as subject 
 as any polity which it opposes to the insidious 
 
THE REPUBLIC 375 
 
 temptation of tyranny. If democracy can truly 
 rise to such full sense as this of its duties and its 
 limitations, it may grow, by such happy historical 
 chance as has been our own in America, into the 
 venerable sanction of historical tradition. Then, 
 and only then, it can confidently hold high hopes 
 for the future. And these hopes shall be the 
 higher and the more confident, when the nation 
 which submits itself to democracy is such a nation 
 as the France of today, rich with many noble 
 memories instead of with only one. In outv 
 ward semblance the vital traditions of France 
 seem fatally divergent, but at least they have 
 the deep community of enthusiastic devotion to 
 ideals. 
 
 Though the dream that these several ideals 
 can ever be reconciled may well seem Utopian, 
 it already has the sanction of a memorable 
 phrase. Again and again, amid surroundings 
 which seemed hopelessly at odds with each other, 
 this same little story was told me, and always with 
 the same admiring acknowledgment of its truth. 
 For it goes straight to the heart, not of one party 
 0!»- another, not of one or another system of doc- 
 trinal tradition, but of all alike. It touches the 
 common imagination of the whole people — not 
 in the mere democratic sense of the word, but 
 in that broader and truer sense which makes 
 
376 THE FRANCE OF TODAY 
 
 the French people comprehend everyone in whose 
 veins French blood is flowing. 
 
 The greatest military calamity of the war of 
 1870 was the surrender of Metz with its intact 
 army, by Marshal Bazaine. What his motive 
 may have been remains debatable. Whatever 
 the case, there can be no doubt that he gave up, 
 without a blow, a force with which the invaders 
 of his country would otherwise have had to 
 reckon. Wherefore, in due time, when the war 
 was finished, he was brought to military trial. 
 There, in his own defence, he maintained that at 
 the moment of his surrender the Empire had 
 fallen. His duty had been to defend the govern- 
 ment. With the disappearance of constituted 
 authority it came to an end. The citadel was 
 in the hands of the enemy. The Empire was a 
 thing of the past. What was left to fight for? 
 Nothing — "7Z rCy avail rien'^ 
 
 To which instant answer was made by the 
 member of his court of judges who could make 
 it best. From the time when the kingdom of 
 Louis Philippe had fallen the princes of the 
 house of Orleans had been mostly in exile f^?'^ 
 their native land. Their presence there in any 
 position would have seemed to menace either the 
 Republic which for a little while ensued on the 
 constitutional monarchy or the revived Empire 
 
THE REPUBIC 377 
 
 before which the Second Republic fell. But the 
 moment that France was in national danger, 
 struggling with the terrific force of foreign inva- 
 sion, the Orleanist princes came back to their 
 country, not as royal personages, but only as 
 Frenchmen. As such they were welcomed with 
 every other loyal exile ; and the royal prince who 
 of all his kind has perhaps done most to re- 
 establish the dignity of royal character in the es- 
 teem of a radical century was among the officers 
 to sit in judgment on the accused marshal of the 
 Second Empire. It was he — the Due d' Aumale, 
 the son of Louis Philippe — who made the answer 
 so eloquent to every French heart. There was 
 nothing to defend, said Bazaine — "// ny avait 
 rien,'' ^'Monsieur le Marechaly^ said the royal 
 prince, " il restait la France " — " There was 
 
 France." 
 
 So there was, and so there is, and so there 
 shall be. France has been the France of the 
 Empire; France to-day is the France of the Re- 
 public; and no Frenchman who would treasure 
 the full richness of his national memories may 
 wisely forget the glories of either. But neither 
 comprehends France, any more than France 
 was completely comprehended in that consti- 
 tutional monarchy which made the house of 
 Orleans for a while sovereign by the will of the 
 
378 THE FRANCE OP TODAY 
 
 people. The true France embraces all three, 
 md more and more besides. It is the France 
 'of the song of Roland, the France of Saint Louis, 
 ^e France of Jeanne d'Arc. It is the France 
 of the Renaissance, and the France of Henry IV; 
 the France of Richelieu, and the France which 
 imposed an imperial standard on European civ- 
 ilization during the great century of Louis XIV. 
 It is the France of the old regijne^sis well, th^ 
 France of the Revolution, and the France of 
 the Empire. It is the France of that bewil- 
 dering, aspiring nineteenth century over whose 
 history we have been lingering together. No 
 single one of these memories, nor yet of the 
 myriad others which they awaken has created 
 the France of today. All of them together 
 combine to make France heroic — none alone, 
 none apart or neglected. Without every glory 
 of its glorious past, France would be the poorer, 
 the lesser. All of them, blended and shining 
 together, make France that inexhaustibly noble 
 fact which those who come to know it, and thus 
 grow to love it, must always feel it to be. 
 
 So when, now and again, good friends were 
 apt to speak of their country as the Republic, 
 I found myself, as I find myself still, disposed 
 in answer to speak not of the Republic, but of 
 France. This implied no lack of eager response 
 
THE REPUBLIC 879 
 
 to the kindness with which French Republicans 
 welcomed me to their friendly country. It im- 
 plied, indeed, no shadow of doubt that the sys- 
 tem of the present Republic, strengthening as it is 
 into an immemorial tradition, is the system under 
 which that friendly country may most confidently 
 hope for a future as admirable as its past. What 
 I felt was only that the word "Republic" still 
 might seem to mean not the whole nation, but 
 only the accident of its present sovereignty. To 
 the French themselves the Republic still appears 
 not so much national as partisan. I long, with 
 the best of them, for the time when it shall have 
 grown to be no longer partisan, but national; and 
 I believe that the time will come. But even then 
 we shall be truer to the full splendor of the past 
 if we salute the Republic as France, and not 
 France as the Republic. Nothing less than the 
 utmost can comprehend it all. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abb€ Constantin, 252. 
 
 Academic Frangaise, membership 
 in, 88-90; ceremony of receiv- 
 ing members, 90-93; equality 
 among, 94. 
 
 AgrSgS, degree of, 19, 30. 
 
 American, books, 204; candor, 
 149-151; colleges, 305; democ- 
 racy, 363, 370, 371; education, 
 201-203; fashion in religion, 
 278; impressions of French soci- 
 ety, 57-59; national feeling, 372; 
 Protestant tradition, 258; Revo- 
 lution, 303-308; social classes, 
 60,61; social prejudices, 55, 56. 
 
 Anecdotes, 69-71; 74; 105-109; 
 113, 114; 128-130; 133, 134; 
 142, 143; 157-159; 160; 165- 
 167; 183; 194; 199; 225; 226; 
 227; 249; 261; 283, 284; 286; 
 297-300; 335, 336; 365, 366; 
 370, 371. 
 
 Archbishops, martyrdom of, 252, 
 253. 
 
 Architecture, religious, 245-247. 
 
 Aristocrats, 73-77. 
 
 Army, anticlerical investigations of, 
 283, 284. 
 
 Artists, 73, 77^ characteristics, 78, 
 80; social position, 79-82; 229- 
 231. 
 
 Aumale, Due d', 90, 377. 
 
 Bachelier, degree of, 12-14, 30. 
 Bazaine, Marshal, 376. 
 Beaumarchais, 301. 
 Beljam^, Professor, 15. 
 Bishops, appointed by govern- 
 ment, 276. 277. 
 
 Boissier, Gaston, 90. 
 
 Bourgeois, the, 55 et seq.; signifi- 
 cance of the term, 59-61; char- 
 acteristics of, 62-67; social 
 phases among, 67-71; heredi- 
 tary traditions, 72, 73; feeling 
 toward aristocrats and artists, 
 73, 74; social relations with 
 aristocrats and artists, 73-77; 
 family feeling among, 109, 123; 
 progress of Catholicism among, 
 281. 
 
 Brazil, 194, 195. 
 
 British Museum, 328. 
 
 Cffisar, 319. 320. 
 
 Calvinism, 248, 258. 
 
 Candor, English and French ideals 
 of, 149-151, 219-221. 
 
 Cards, visiting, 83-85. 
 
 Catholic Christianity, triple 
 strength of, 257; opposition to, 
 352-361 ; Church, see the Church. 
 
 Character, French national. 82; 
 misconceptions of, 149 et seq.; 
 explanation of paradox of, 174- 
 182; intellectual candor, 63, 64, 
 151, 169, 182, 219-223, 239; 
 intensity of conviction, 181, 
 182; devotion to duty, 192; 
 emotional nature, 46, 145; good- 
 breeding, 66, 69; industry, 64, 
 65; intolerance of opinions of 
 others, 182-188; loyalty, 189; 
 modesty of spirit, 146-149; per- 
 sonal honor, 162; devotion to 
 philosophy, 171-175; precision 
 of perception, 170; precision of 
 conduct, 207, 208; deeply re- 
 
 383 
 
384 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ligious, 242, 248; personal reti- 
 cence, 146, 173; self-control, 
 157; seriousness, 156, 157, 192; 
 simplicity, 62; impulsive sym- 
 pathy, 189, 190; insistence on 
 system, 162-164, 170, 173, 212- 
 214, 218, 240; high temper. 160. 
 161. 
 
 Charles X, 344, 345. 
 
 Ch&teau of St. Germain, restora- 
 tion of, 347, 348. 
 
 Children, 41, 42; interest in, 101- 
 104; affection for parents, 109- 
 111, 120, 127; education of, 201, 
 202. 
 
 Church, the Catholic, ceremonies 
 of, 287; force of fashion in, 278, 
 279; intolerance toward, 285- 
 291; philosophy of, 267-270; 
 power of, 270; property. 270, 
 276; re-establishment of, 275; 
 claims of spiritual authority, 
 258-260; spiritual eflScacy of, 
 261, 262; authority in temporal 
 affairs, 263-266; suppression of, 
 and confiscation of property, 
 271, 272; wealth of, 281, 282. 
 
 Church-building, 245-247. 
 
 Church of the Sacred Heart, 351- 
 354. 
 
 Civil War, American, 240, 372. 
 
 Clergy, the, 249-252; character of, 
 278; influence of fashion on, 278, 
 279; feudal rights of, 270; 
 schools controlled by, 10, 11; 
 spiritual authority of, 85. 
 
 Cock, the Gallic, 346, 349. 
 
 Coins, device on, 346, 349. 
 
 Coligny, 254. 
 
 College de France, 10, 23, 31. 
 
 Colleges, 6, 12. 
 
 Colleges, American, tradition in, 
 305. 
 
 Comic papers, 195-197. 
 
 Communists, the, 254. 
 
 Concierge, the. 48, 49. 
 
 Concordat, the, 285. 
 
 Constitutional monarchy, the, 326. 
 
 Conversation, 50, 51. 
 
 Coup d'Etat, the, 326. 
 
 Cours Jermis and cours publics, 
 
 20. 
 Crucifixes, removed from law 
 
 courts, 360, 361. 
 Cure of the Madeleine, 249, 252. 
 Cur6 of Les Saintes Maries, 251. 
 
 Degrees, university, 10-19. 
 
 Democracy, American, 363, 370, 
 371, 373; French, 363-365, 371; 
 principles of a true, 373-375. 
 
 Dhaleine, M., 15. 
 
 Dijon, 356. 
 
 Dinner-parties, 50. 
 
 Directors of education, 4-6, 8, 34. 
 
 Dissensions, 188. 
 
 Divorce, 165-168. 
 
 Doctor, degree of, 15-19, 30. 
 
 Dolet, Etienne, 356. 
 
 Dossier, the, 9, 34. 
 
 Dowry, the, reasons for, 115-117, 
 120; inheritance rights in, 118, 
 119. 
 
 Dramatists, 58. 
 
 Dreyfus affair, the, 176-180; Zo- 
 la's part in, 358, 359. 
 
 Duels, 162, 163. 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, 231. 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, the younger, 
 169, 232-234. 
 
 Duty, conjugal and domestic, 136- 
 142; French ideal of, 144; so- 
 cial, 296. 
 
 Duval, Jean, 358, 359. 
 
 Ecclesiastical authority, claims of, 
 ^ 258-260. 
 
 Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, 
 ^ 10, 23. 
 
 Ecole Normale, 10, 18, 27. 
 Education, primary, secondary, 
 and higher, 4, 6, 12; religious. 
 
INDEX 
 
 385 
 
 39; French and American con- 
 ceptions of, 201-203. 
 
 Educational system, centralized, 
 3 et seq.; difiFerences between 
 French and American, 5, 13. 
 
 Eiflfel Tower, 350. 
 
 Empire, the, reactionary system 
 of, 319; 323, 324, 332; fall of 
 the Second, 327, 339, 340. 
 
 England, national tradition of, 372. 
 
 English, books, 204; ideal of can- 
 dor, 150; literatm^, 198, 199; 
 scholarship, 45. 
 
 Environment and individual varia- 
 tion, 212-219. 
 
 Fact and system, 174-182. 
 
 Faculties of higher instruction, 
 four, 6, 7. 
 
 Faith, 256. 
 
 Family, the, interest in, 101-104; 
 unity of, 105-109; structure of, 
 111, 112; conception of as prime 
 social fact, 111-114; domestic 
 hierarchy in, 113, 114; affection 
 for, 120; the foyer, 122-126; a 
 private social organism, 126; 
 love of parents and children, 127; 
 interest in affairs of relations, 
 128-130; a partnership, 144. 
 
 Family life, charm of, 126-128. 
 
 Figaro, 301. 
 
 Folk-tales, 222. 
 
 Force in the Revolution and the 
 Empu-e, 323, 324. 
 
 Foyer, the word, 121; foreign idea 
 of, 122; true meaning of, 122- 
 124; differences distinguishing it 
 from English home, 125, 126. 
 
 Prance, composite nature of, 152, 
 153. 
 
 Francis I, 347. 
 
 Franklin, 307-309. 
 
 Freemasons, the, 284, 286. 
 
 Free-thinkers, 258, 283; intoler- 
 ance of, 285, 291. 
 
 French, the, foreigners' impressions 
 of, 192 et seq.; national char- 
 acter, 62-67, 82, 149 et seq., 
 155-190; personal appearance, 
 154, 155; effect of historical ex- 
 perience on temperament, 328- 
 331 ; temperament intellectually 
 considered, 295. 
 
 Friendship, 101-109. 
 
 Fimeral customs, 104. 
 
 Gambetta, 355. 
 
 German scholarship, 44, 45. 
 
 Girl, normal position of French, 
 
 131, 132. 
 Government, six systems of, 330, 
 
 331; national persistency under 
 
 changes in, 334-337; see Third 
 
 Republic. 
 
 Halevy, 252. 
 
 Harvard University, 1, 19. 
 
 Hawthorne, thesis on, 15. 
 
 Henry IV, 325. 
 
 History, teaching of French, 366, 
 367. 
 
 Home, French equivalents for the 
 word, 121; distinguished from 
 the foyer, 125, 126. 
 
 Hotel Cama valet, museum in, 313. 
 
 Houses, Parisian, 48. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 355. 
 
 Human nature, philosophies con- 
 cerning, 267-270. 
 
 Inheritance, rights of, 117-119. 
 Inscriptions, republican, 347. 
 Inspectors, university, 8, 34. 
 Institute, the, 88, 91. 
 Intellect, the French, 295. 
 
 Jeanne d'Arc, 183-186. 
 Jesuits, the, 283. 
 Jews, the, 257, 261. 
 
 Kings, divine right of, 332. 
 
386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Laborers, imskilled« 95; skilled, 
 96-98. 
 
 Lafayette, 303, 304, 307, 355. 
 
 Lauvri^rc, M., 15. 
 
 Lectures, public, 20, 21; method 
 of conducting, 23, 24. 
 
 Leech, John, 154. 
 
 Legion of Honor, the, 86-88. 
 
 Lemot, sculptor, 315. 
 
 Liberty, American and French 
 ideas of, 304; 307. 
 
 Libraries, 23. 
 
 LicenciS, degree of, 14, 30. 
 
 Lille, clerical prejudices of, 38, 39. 
 
 Literature, French, addressed to 
 mature public, 200, 203; char- 
 acters in, 215; discussions of, 
 216-218; impressions derived 
 from, 197, 198, 239; problem of 
 individual impulse and social 
 surroundings, 212-219; purpose 
 recreation and amusement, 224- 
 226; not representative of 
 French life. 192 et aeq., 222, 
 234, 236-238; finished style in, 
 203, 204; conventions of style, 
 205-207. 
 
 Louis XIV, 298, 314, 315. 325. 
 
 Louis XVI, 328. 
 
 Louis Napoleon, 326. 
 
 Louis PhiUppe, 75, 340. 376, 377. 
 
 Louvre, the, 355. 
 
 LycSes, 6, 12. 
 
 Lyons, statue of Louis XIV at, 
 814; 357, 358. 
 
 Madeleine, the, 249, 252. 
 
 Maitre de conferences, 17, 30. 
 
 Manners, conventions of, 205-208. 
 
 Maps, educational, 5. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 300, 301. 
 
 Marriage, between classes, 76; 
 difference in French and Ameri- 
 tan ideals of, 130 et seq.; duties, 
 186-142; French law concern- 
 ing, 132, 133. 
 
 Martjrrs, Christian, 253, 254. 
 Maupassant, Guy de, 209, 210. 
 Memoirs, writers of, 58. 
 Men, French, 140, 141; duties of, 
 
 223, 224; conversation of. 148, 
 
 227. 
 Metz, surrender of, 376. 
 Middle class, the, see Bourgeois. 
 Minister of Public Instruction, 3, 
 
 4, 6. 
 Ministry of Public Instruction, 8, 
 
 4, 7-9, 34. 
 Moli^re, 66. 
 
 Montmartre, church on, 851, 852. 
 Monuments to Republicans and 
 
 heroes of Revolution, 355. 
 Museum, Municipal, 313. 
 
 Names of streets and places, 
 changes in, 356-359. 
 
 Napoleon I, 75; religious system 
 under, 275-277; compared with 
 Caesar, 319, 320; his civic work, 
 320; reason for failure, 321, 822; 
 334. 
 
 Napoleon III, 327. 344, 345. 
 
 Newspapers. American. 235-237. 
 
 Nolhac, Monsieur de. 301. 
 
 Notre Dame, 253. 
 
 Novelists, 58. 
 
 Novels, 197. 
 
 Orleanist princes, 827, 345, 876, 
 377. 
 
 Pailleron, 214. 
 
 Pantheon, the, 272-274. 
 
 Parents and children, love of, 109- 
 111, 120, 127. 
 
 Paris, 17, 18, 30-32, 36, 37, 67; 
 dominance of, 154; most attrac- 
 tive capital, 193, 194; under 
 Second Empire, 248; 828, 829, 
 349-352. 
 
 Payne, John Howard, 121. 
 
 Philosophy, 171-175. 
 
INDEX 
 
 387 
 
 Plays, 197; criticism of, 216-218. 
 
 Poe, thesis on, 15. 
 
 Poetic license, 219. 
 
 Political, controversy, 240; tradi- 
 tions, 331-334. 
 
 Politicians, 341. 
 
 Politics, the Church in, 263 et seq. 
 
 "Prelude," Wordsworth's, 310, 
 311. 
 
 Professors, 28-33; normal career 
 of, 30, 31; politeness among, 
 29; promotions of, 31-34. 
 
 Property, right of disposal of, by 
 wUl, 117-120. 
 
 Prosperity, national, 341, 342. 
 
 Protestants, 257, 260, 261; preju- 
 dices of, 286. 
 
 Prussia, 328. 
 
 Rabutin, Bussy, 297-300. 
 
 Rectors, University, 4-8, 34. 
 
 Reign of Terror, the, 334. 
 
 Relics of saints, 251. 
 
 Religion, meaning of, 242-244; 
 expressed in architecture, 245- 
 247; wars of, 254-256; consti- 
 tution of, under Napoleonic sys- 
 tem, 275-277; suppressed by 
 Revolution, 312, 313. 
 
 Religious, controversy, 240; origin 
 of diflBculties, 256; education, 
 39; evolution, 244; intolerance, 
 285-291; significance of the 
 word, 242-244. 
 
 Rene, King, 251. 
 
 RepubUc, see Third Republic. 
 
 Restoration, the, 323-326; epi- 
 gram concerning temper of, 324, 
 325. 
 
 Revolution, the, American influ- 
 ence on, 303-308; temper of its 
 origin and its course, 310, 311; 
 destruction of, 312-314; effect 
 of, on French temperament, 294, 
 333; ideals of, 332, 333; intol- 
 erance, result, 331, 333; juvenile 
 
 spirit of, 315, 316; true life of 
 nation undisturbed by, 334-337; 
 memory and traditions of, 292, 
 323, 346; phantasmagoric char- 
 acter of, 317; philanthropic im- 
 pulse of, 309-311; philosophy of, 
 267-270; reconciliation of royal- 
 ist and revolutionary, 318, 319, 
 321-324; suppression of religion, 
 312; results social and political, 
 292; traditional systems of gov- 
 ernment and society irreconcila- 
 ble yath fact, 296-302, 323. 
 
 Revolution of 1830, 325. 
 
 RighU of Man, 294, 302, 303, 
 311, 
 
 Rohan, Cardinal de, 300. 
 
 Royalists, traditions of, 332, 333; 
 344, 345. 
 
 Samt Bernard, 356. 
 
 St. Germain, Chateau of, 347, 348. 
 
 Saintes Maries, Les, 251. 
 
 Savoy, 352. 
 
 Scholarship, most important cen- 
 tre of French, 4; influence of 
 German and English, 44, 45; 
 influence of French, 45. 
 
 School-children, French, 41; com- 
 pared with American, 42. 
 
 Schools, primary and secondary, 
 4, 6, 12, 40, 41; private, 10; 
 Catholic, 38, 39. 
 
 Second Republic, 377. 
 
 Sevigne, Madame de, 313. ^ 
 
 Social conventions, American and 
 French, 210. 
 
 Social customs: making acquain- 
 tances, 52; conversation, 50, 51; 
 dinner-parties, 50; dress, 70; 
 paying visits, 47-49; reception 
 of Americans, 52, 53. 
 
 Social ideals, 99, 296. 
 
 Social life, habits governing, 212- 
 215. 
 
388 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Social precision of conduct, 49, 
 207. 208. 
 
 Social regularity, strength of, 237. 
 
 Society, three phases of, 82. 
 
 Sorbonne, the, 1, 15, 18, 22, 31, 36. 
 
 Sovereignty, 332, 334. 
 
 Street names, 35^-359. 
 
 Students, French, 24-28; com- 
 pared with American, 27, 35; 
 high standards of, 43, 44. 
 
 Style, precision and finish of liter- 
 ary, 203-207. 
 
 System and fact, 174-182. 
 
 Taine, monument to, opposed, 
 292-294. 
 
 Talleyrand, 300. 
 
 Teaching, thoroughness of, 40, 41. 
 
 Theses, 15; defence of, 16, 17. 
 
 Third Republic, the, origin of, 328, 
 338, 339, 343, 344; stability of, 
 339-341, 345; efficiency of, 341- 
 343; based on tradition of Revo- 
 lution, 346-348; a dominant 
 political party, 348, 349; three 
 rival factions in, 344-349; in 
 reactionary hands, 353; clerical 
 spirit in, 353, 354; anticlerical 
 spirit in, under extreme parti- 
 sanship, 355-361; system new 
 and consistent, 362; principles 
 those of theoretical democracy, 
 362-365; antagonisms in, 368, 
 369; hope of broader democ- 
 racy in, 369-379. 
 
 Ticknor, George, 329. 
 
 Titles, 75, 76. 
 
 Traditions, political, 331-334. 
 Travellers, tales of, 192-195, 197. 
 Truth, 187, 188. 
 
 Universities, anticlerical, 7, 34, 
 37-39; courses of instruction, 
 
 20, 21; degrees conferred by, 10- 
 19; points of difference from 
 American and English, 5, 13; 
 control of education, 6; four 
 faculties in, 6, 7; independence 
 of, 5; inspection and record 
 system, 8, 9, 34; quality of in- 
 struction, 34, 35; professors of, 
 28-33; provincial, 34-39; rec- 
 tors of, 4-8, 34; social duties in, 
 
 21, 22; social relations, 54; stu- 
 dents in, 24-28; systematic 
 nature of, 2, 3; lack of local tra- 
 dition, 35, 36. 
 
 University of Paris, 4, 5. 
 
 Vice-rector of University of Paris, 
 
 4,5. 
 Visiting, 47-49; cards, 83-85. 
 
 War of 1870, 376. 
 
 Wars of religion, 254-256. 
 
 Women, French, in higher educa- 
 tion, 14; characteristics of, 138, 
 139; in Uterature, 208-210; dif- 
 ferent ideals of, 210, 211; 224, 
 225. 
 
 Wordsworth, his "Prelude," 310, 
 311. 
 
 Zola, Emile, 357, 358.