Nataly was not so sympathetic.  Only the Welsh and pure Irish are quick at the feelings of the Celtic French.  Nataly came of a Yorkshire stock; she had the bravery, humaneness and generous temper of our civilized North, and a taste for mademoiselle’s fine breeding, with a distaste for the singular air of superiority in composure which it was granted to mademoiselle to wear with an unassailable reserve when the roughness of the commercial boor was obtrusive.  She said of her to Colney, as they watched the couple strolling by the lake below:  ’Nesta brings her out of her frosts.  I suppose it’s the presence of Dr. Schlesien.  I have known it the same after an evening of Wagner’s music.’

‘Richard Wagner Germanized ridicule of the French when they were down,’ said Colney.  ‘She comes of a blood that never forgives.’

’"Never forgives” is horrible to think of!  I fancied you liked your “Kelts,” as you call them.’

Colney seized on a topic that shelved a less agreeable one that he saw coming.  ’You English won’t descend to understand what does not resemble you.  The French are in a state of feverish patriotism.  You refuse to treat them for a case of fever.  They are lopped of a limb:  you tell them to be at rest!’

‘You know I am fond of them.’

’And the Kelts, as they are called, can’t and won’t forgive injuries; look at Ireland, look at Wales, and the Keltic Scot.  Have you heard them talk?  It happened in the year 1400:  it’s alive to them as if it were yesterday.  Old History is as dead to the English as their first father.  They beg for the privilege of pulling the forelock to the bearers of the titles of the men who took their lands from them and turn them to the uses of cattle.  The Saxon English had, no doubt, a heavier thrashing than any people allowed to subsist ever received:  you see it to this day; the crick of the neck at the name of a lord is now concealed and denied, but they have it and betray the effects; and it’s patent in their Journals, all over their literature.  Where it’s not seen, another blood’s at work.  The Kelt won’t accept the form of slavery.  Let him be servile, supple, cunning, treacherous, and to appearance time-serving, he will always remember his day of manly independence and who robbed him:  he is the poetic animal of the races of modern men.’

‘You give him Pagan colours.’

’Natural colours.  He does not offer the other cheek or turn his back to be kicked after a knock to the ground.  Instead of asking him to forgive, which he cannot do, you must teach him to admire.  A mercantile community guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over by its Dagon Capital, finds that difficult.  However, there ’s the secret of him; that I respect in him.  His admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds, wins him entirely.  He is an active spirit, not your negative passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible.  And his faults, short of ferocity, are amusing.’