To return to that first question.  M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply be France teaching America.  It seemed to me that the outlook was dark —­almost Egyptian, in fact.  What would the new teacher, representing France, teach us?  Railroading?  No.  France knows nothing valuable about railroading.  Steamshipping?  No.  France has no superiorities over us in that matter.  Steamboating?  No.  French steamboating is still of Fulton’s date—­1809.  Postal service?  No.  France is a back number there.  Telegraphy?  No, we taught her that ourselves.  Journalism?  No.  Magazining?  No, that is our own specialty.  Government?  No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate.  Religion?  No, not variegated enough for our climate.  Morals?  No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves.  Novel-writing?  No.  M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to teach us.  Can it be Deportment?  But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction, except to a few.  Those few are pleased.  They are enjoying their joy as well as they can.  They confess their happiness to the interviewer.  They feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that they had sugar between the cuts.  True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar.  And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened.  Yes, they are pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may say, with little recurrent shivers of joy—­subdued joy, so to speak, not the overdone kind.  And they commune together, these, and massage each other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the interviewer:  “It was severe—­yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how true it was; and it will do us so much good!”

If it isn’t Deportment, what is left?  It was at this point that I seemed to get on the right track at last.  M. Bourget would teach us to know ourselves; that was it:  he would reveal us to ourselves.  That would be an education.  He would explain us to ourselves.  Then we should understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme.  He could explain us to himself—­that would be easy.  That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to himself.  But to explain the bug to the bug—­that is quite a different matter.  The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.