It must be admitted that this class of the French bourgeoisie surveys the world from rather a Chinese standpoint.  The Celestial, as is well known, considers all real civilisation confined to China.  Every one outside the bounds of the Middle Kingdom is a barbarian.  This is rather the view of the French bourgeois.  He is convinced that all true civilisation is centred in France, and that other countries are only civilised in proportion as French influence has filtered through to them.  He will hardly admit that other countries can have an art and literature of their own, especially should neither of them conform to French standards.  This is easily understood, for the average Frenchman knows no language but his own, has never travelled, and has no curiosity whatever about countries outside France.  When, in addition, it is remembered how paramount French literary and artistic influence was during the greater portion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and how universal the use of the French language was in Northern Continental Europe amongst educated people, the point of view becomes quite intelligible.

In spite of this, I enjoyed my excursions with these delightful French lawyers quite enormously.  The other pupils never accompanied us, for they found it difficult to keep up a conversation in French.

The average intellectual level is unquestionably far higher in France than in England, nor is it necessary to give, to a people accustomed for generations to understand a demi-mot, the elaborate explanations usually necessary in England when the conversation has got beyond the mental standards of a child six years old.  The French, too, are not addicted to perpetual wool-gathering.  Nor can I conceive of a Frenchwoman endeavouring to make herself attractive by representing herself as so hopelessly “vague” that she can never be trusted to remember anything, or to avoid losing all her personal possessions.  Idiocy, whether genuine or feigned, does not appeal to the French temperament.  The would-be fascinating lady would most certainly be referred to as “une dinde de premiere classe.”

The French are the only thoroughly logical people in the world, and their excessive development of the logical faculty leads them at times into pitfalls.  “Ils ont lesdefauts de leurs qualites.”  In this country we have found out that systems, absolutely indefensible in theory, at times work admirably well in practice, and give excellent results.  No Frenchman would ever admit that anything unjustifiable in theory could possibly succeed in practice—­“Ce n’est pas logique,” he would object, and there would be the end of it.