The fused individualities separate; the
joined lives break asunder, like one of Prince
Rupert's drops; each goes on a separate
way; each finds new hierophants and new
divinities; and so the ball of life and love is
kept up with other players—but the same
marker. What a pity it is that the third
term should ever come!

Now, Englishwomen do not understand
this kind of love making; we have no national
equivalent for it, even among the most
inconsiderate of our flirting, charming, bewitching
coquettes. I cannot say it is a national
loss to be filled up.

The worst characteristic of a French lover is
his suspiciousness. It is the worst characteristic
of French society generally. Profound
ineradicable scepticism is the plague spot, the
festering sore of the modern French mind. That
no man is honest and no woman faithful,
are the Alpha and Omega of the popular
creed; to believe that his trusted friend will
betray him for self-interest, his wife deceive him
for the most paltry pleasures, that the man
who offers him a service does so for some
sinister motive, and that the caresses of his
betrothed hide some fault planned or committed;
to believe that he lives in the midst of snares
and enemies, and that he must trust to his
intellect alone to help him out of them—this
is the creed of the modern Frenchman, and
this he calls wisdom and knowledge of the
world.

His suspicious know no limit, and no rest.
A bouquet which he has not given, a soirée
to which he is not invited, friends that he
does not know; even a new gown or a new
mode of dressing the hair—are all
indications that the lady is betraying him,
and that he must bend his mind and tax all
his faculties to "find her out." He is
never unconvinced; for, even if he " finds
out " nothing, he says only that he has been
tricked, and that Madame is more skilful
than himself; more artful he says, if very
angry. French women are generally
submissive to this kind of thing. They are
marvellously patient and forbearing, those gay
little creatures; and they expostulate and
gesticulate, and affirm and disclaim with a
volubility and a grace and an earnestness that few
men can resist. So the storms blow over;
and Madame (for all that has been written
refers chiefly to widows), Madame only shrugs
her shoulders, and laughs, and says, " Mon
Dieu, quel homme! " as she dries her eyes and
settles her smooth bands of glossy hair. But,
they don't much mind, they say, and would
rather have a French lover—with all his fire
and fury and jealousy and suspicion, with
whom they can have a dramatic scene, and
then a poetic reconciliation—than a stiff sombre
Anglais, cet homme sevère, who takes up
his hat and wishes them good day, and won't
be brought to hear reason any how. An
Englishman is the horror of most French
women.

And Frenchmen too, they have the same
horror of English pride and independence
in Englishwomen. They almost all say that
they would rather be deceived with smiles,
than treated with the coldness, the pride, the
disdain, the iron wilfulness of a faithful
English woman. They cannot understand it. It is a
new experience, and they don't admire it.
Anything but this: Italian revenge, Spanish
passion, and French inconstancy, all rather than
the cold severity and marble pride of Englishwomen.
It is a riddle to them. It is long
before they can be brought to understand it,
and longer still before they will accept the position
—une peu basse, they say—that our women
assign them. There is generally terrible
confusion between French and English lovers at
the first, and very seldom any real union of
heart and life even if they marry; unless
the wife has been so long abroad as to lose
her nationality, and to adopt foreign views
and foreign feelings.

Another peculiarity among the French
is their strictness with the unmarried
women. They cannot understand the liberty
of our young ladies. It is a crime in
their eyes—a premium for immorality. A
French fiancée is never allowed a moment's
unrestricted intercourse with her lover.
Perhaps she sees him only once or twice
before her marriage—for marriage is a
commercial affair in France; and so much a year
with my daughter, is married to so much a year
with your son: but it is the marriage portion
and the income that marry: the daughter
and the son are merely accessories. Which
makes it very easy for our unmarried women
to be totally misunderstood in France—and
sometimes painfully so. For liberty recognised
among us as natural and proper, is there
considered dangerous and immoral. I knew an
instance of this.

In the corner yonder, just under that
broad-leaved palm of the Jardin d'Hiver—
are M. Auguste and Miss Harriet;
Mademoiselle Henriette as he calls her. Miss
Harriet is about thirty, an orphan of good
family, tolerably well-looking, lady-like and
rich. She is a little original, and passes even
in England for being eccentric and too
independent. M. Auguste is the possessor of some
five or six hundred a year (he is rich for a
Parisian); possessor too of certain small
properties beside. They met by accident:
they were travelling together from Avignon,
and they first met at Vaucluse, by the Fountain.
An acquaintance sprang up between
them: very naturally: which left them
mutually pleased with each other. It was
an adventure; and, Miss Harriet being an
impulsive lady on the verge of her wane,
liked adventures. All Englishwomen do.

M. Auguste received permission to visit
her. They both adroitly gave each other
such proofs of their mutual respectability
as took off all that might have been
equivocal in their acquaintance. M.