France

■^-^ .^'i^,-;^!:

. > , .

"A ■, '

.\,i U,. _<i -.w • •■^

I • f I

UBRART

UNIVERSITY OF CAUFOWUA

BiVERSlOi

JAMES G.J.PENDER,EL BRODHURST
COUNT DE BOSCOBEL.

^ .m^^^aFL^Mmi^^,m.^^if^''^^^^^Ki^

■j^^t^- 2-9 X., u ?-

FRANCE

In ihe same scries

ENGLAND

ITALY

SVt^ITZERLAND

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/francehomeOOhomeiala

THE WESTERN FA9ADE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL.

I FRANCE tl

BY

GORDON HOME

WITH 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1914

••«<:*.«»#•«« •tl**<ti»*«H»ff«i««*t»tv*«*<

>««rr'«*%ii**#'fifti

i«titf<n'.l>i«##«»*ttta«fftc«i»i«.*4»;sAirv .

^ifM^^ll^rMlM'MinM^MlM^M^^i^

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Introductory ........ 1

CHAPTER H

The Genesis and Characteristics of the French . 6

CHAPTER HI
Family Life — Marriage and the Birth-hate . . 23

CHAPTER IV

How the French govern Themselves .... 49

CHAPTER V
On Education and Religion 67

CHAPTER VI

Some Aspects of Paris and of Town Life in General 86

V

vi FRANCE

CHAPTER VII

PAOK

Of Rural Ltfe in France ..... 114

CHAPTER VIII

The Rivers of France . . . . . . .143

CHAPTER IX
Of the Watering-Places 169

CHAPTER X

Architecture — Roman, Romanesque, and Gothic — in

France ......... 193

CHAPTER XI

The National Defences ...... 205

INDEX 213

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Western Facade of Amiens Cathedral . Frontispiece

FACING PACIE

2. Combourg, a typical Ckdteau of the Mediaeval Type . 8

3. In the Cafe Armenonville in the Bois de Boulogne,

Paris ........ 17

4. In the Place du Theatre Franfais, Paris ... 25

5. Evening in the Place d'lena, Paris .... 32

6. In the Centre of Paris ...... 41

7. The Market-Place and Cathedral at Abbeville . . 48

8. Five-o'clock Tea in Paris ..... 65

9. Children of Paris in the Luxembourg Gardens . . 72

10. Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne Country . . 75

11. La Roche, a Village of Haute Savoie ... 78

12. A typical Cocher of Paris . . . . . 90

13. Autumn in the Champs Ely sees, Paris ... 95

14. A Breton Calvaire : the oratory of Jacques Cartier . 123

15. A Peasant Child of Normandy .... 126

16. The Cathedral and part of the Old City of Chartres . 137

17. The Chateau of Amboise on the Loire . . .144

18. Chateau GaiUard and a loop of the Seine . . 152

19. Mont Blanc reflecting the sunset glow . . . 155

vii

vm

FRANCE

20. Evian les Bains on Lake Geneva

21. The Chapel on the Bridge of St. B^nezet, Avignon

22. The Chateau of Chenonceaux .

23. St. Malo from St. Servan

24. Monte Carlo and Monaco from the East

25. Mont St. Michel at High Tide .

26. Cap Martin near Mentone

27. The Vegetable Market, Nice .

28. The Pyrenees from near Pamiers

29. The Galerie des Glaces at Versailles
80. The Roman Triumphal Arch at Orange
31. French Destroyers
82. Soldiers of France in Paris

FACING I'AGE

158
161
168
171
174
177
165
187
190
192
194
201
208

Sketch Map of France on page 212,

FRANCE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The more one knows of France and the French
at first hand, and the more one reads the ideas
and opinions of other people concerning this great
people, so does one feel less and less able to write
down any definite statements about the country
or its inhabitants. Whatever conviction one
possesses on any aspect of their characteristics
is sure to be shaken by the latest writer, be he
a native or a foreigner. Every fresh sojourn
in the country upsets all one's previous ideas in
the most baffling fashion. One used to think
the Parisian cocker a bad driver, and then dis-
covers a writer who eulogises his skill. When he
knocks over pedestrians, says this writer, he does
so because his whole life is given up to a perpetual

2 FRANCE

state of warfare with the pubHc, from whom he
gains his hvehhood. This point of view being
new to one, it takes a Httle time before it can be
safely rejected or accepted, and before this pro-
cess is completed a man of most decided views,
and possessed of a wide knowledge of France and
the French, comes along with the statement that
no IVenchman can drive. He supports it with
a dozen good reasons, and leaves one with a bias
towards earlier convictions.

It used to be axiomatic, platitudinous, that
Frenchwomen dressed better than Englishwomen.
People whose knowledge of France is, say, ten,
perhaps fewer, years out of date would accept this
without a thought, and yet one is inclined to
think that the Frenchwoman's pre-eminence has
gone. No doubt all that is truly chic, all that is
essentially dainty in feminine attire, emanates
from the brain of the Parisian, but the women of
the French capital no longer have any monopoly
in the wearing of clothes that give charm to the
wearer.

Then as to French cooking. The day has not
long passed when to breathe a syllable against
the cooking of the French would be to proclaim
oneself a savage, but what does one hear to-day ?

INTRODUCTORY 8

Openly in London drawing-rooms people are
heard expressing their preference for the food
supplied in English homes and hotels. They
dare to state that many of the courses provided
in French hotels and restaurants are highly
flavoured, but uneatable ; that the meat provided
is nearly always unaccountably tough and full of
strange sinews and muscles that give one's teeth
much inconvenience ; that the clear soup is com-
monly little more than greasy hot water contain-
ing floating scraps of bread and vegetables ;
that the sweet course is incomparably inferior
to that of the English table.

The difficulties confronting those who attempt
to describe the Gallic people are only realised
when one grasps the fact that almost anything
one wi'ites is true or untrue of a fragment of the
nation. Who could suppose that the inhabitants
of soil facing the North Sea would have similar
virtues and faults to those who dwell on the
shores of the Mediterranean ? They seem of a
different race, and yet a curious unity pervades
the Norman, the Breton, and the Burgundian,
the Provencal, the dwellers on the great wheat
plain, and the Iberians of Basses Pyrenees. One is
tempted to deal with each portion of the country

4 FRANCE

separately, but to do so would make it necessary
to produce a library of books, and in trying to
pick out qualities common to the whole nation
one is checked at every turn by the contradictions
that present themselves continually. With the
mind resting for a time on one part of France,
it would be easy to describe the people as very
clean, but mental visions of other parts arrest
the pen, and a qualified statement is alone
possible. Then the mind hungers for an oppor-
tunity of preparing a series of maps, showing
by various colours where the people live who
possess this or that salient quality. If such
maps were presented to the reader, and supposing
that districts in which the inhabitants were in-
clined towards thriftiness were shown red, the
whole country would be of the same glowing
colour, and therefore this map need not be drawn,
but the same does not apply to wages and
prosperity, nor to religious fervour, nor to the
social manners of the people, and on these and
a very large number of subjects the variations
are so great that what the writer has ventured
to condense in the chapters which follow may
be open to much limitation, and even to contra-
diction. He has always felt a very deep apprecia-

INTRODUCTORY 5

tion of the country and the people, and the joy
of arriving in France is one of the pleasantest
things in his experience. The curious smells that
are wafted to the deck of the steamer as it is
tied up by the quayside bring to him in one
breath the essence, as it were, of the life of France,
which has for him so great an attractive force.
In that first breath of France, the faint suggestion
of coffee brings to mind the pleasant associations
of meals in picturesque inns or in the cafes of
Paris in sight of the amazing movement of the
city ; the suspicion of vegetables recalls the
colour and human interest of countless market-
places and chequered patches of cultivation on
wide hedgeless landscapes ; and that indefinable
suggestion of incense and a dozen other im-
palpable things brings with it the whole pageant
of French life, its colour and gaiety, its movement,
its pathos, and its grand moments, all of which
act as a magnet and irresistibly attract him to
the southern shores of the Channel.

CHAPTER II

THE GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
FRENCH

In fairly clear weather the strip of salt water
cleaving England from France seems so narrow,
that to a Brazilian familiar with the Amazon
it might be taken for nothing more than a great
river. To a geologist the English Channel is a
recent feature in the formation of Europe of
to-day, while the modern aeronaut regards it
as a blue mark on the landscape as he wings
his way from London to Paris. Turbine steamers
plough from shore to shore in less than an hour,
so that on a windless day the crossing is a mere
incident in the journey between the capitals ;
yet the race which dwells on the chalk uplands
terminating precipitously at Cape Gris Nez is
so entirely different from the people who have
for the last thousand years made their homes

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 7

on the Kentish Downs, that the twenty miles of
sea seem scarcely adequate to explain the com-
plete severance. The intercourse between the
inhabitants of Gaul and Britain must have been
both considerable and constant for some time
before the domination of Rome had swept up to
the Channel, for it is known from Caesar's records
that the Armoricans, who extended from Cape
Finisterre to the Straits of Dover, were able
to send 220 large oak built vessels against his
galleys. From the same source one is aware
of the large trade carried on across the narrow
sea, and there were Celtic tribes in the south of
England colonised from the Belgae of the Con-
tinent. Further than this, the megalithic re-
mains of Wiltshire and Brittany suggest a very
real and remarkable link between the peoples of
Britain and Gaul. Caesar and Strabo are both
very definite in their statements that the people
of Kent were similar to the Gauhsh tribes, not
only in the way they built their houses, but also
in their appearance and their manners. The
coming of Roman civihsation tended to restrict
racial intermingling, and from the beginning of
the Christian era the Channel became more and
more a real frontier. When Norsemen had

8 FRANCE

settled both in England and in the north of France,
this frontier again weakened and vanished with
the Norman Conquest of England, but racially
there was practically no sympathy across the
water beyond what might have been felt for the
Welsh and the Britons in Cornwall. Thus, from
the Romanising of Britain onwards, the similarity
between the peoples who faced one another
across the Channel waned. It is quite probable
that in neither country was there any appreciable
infusion of Italian -Roman blood among the
Celtic populations, for the conquering legions
were composed of troops raised from all parts
of the Empire, but in Britain the Romanised
population was swept westwards by new invaders
from northern Europe, while the Romanised
Gauls were never ousted from the territory they
had held east of the Rhone and the Rhine.
The Latin tongue had probably made very little
headway in Britain, while in Gaul the Romans
had thrust their language upon the Gallic tribes.
It was not, however, the classical Latin of Livy
and Virgil, but most probably the colloquial
Latin of the common soldier and camp-follower.
This debased Latin formed the solid foundation
of the literary language of France of to-day.

w

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 9

The English Channel is therefore a very
effective dividing line between two peoples com-
pletely different in every characteristic. But
who were these people whom the Romans called
Gain ?

Their coming was possibly not earlier than
600 or 700 B.C., and by 300 B.C. they occupied
that part of Europe now covered by France,
Belgium, Holland, Rhenish Germany to the
Rhine, with Switzerland and northern Italy. No
doubt they had moved westward from southern
Russia in that Aryan stream of which they had
formed a part. In the south they intermingled
with the ancient Iberian population ; they appear
to have remained fairly pure in the centre, while
in the north they became more or less mixed
with Teutonic elements pressing forward across
the Rhine. Besides occupying what is now
known as France, these Celts settled or squatted
all over northern Italy, and drove a very con-
siderable wedge into central Spain, where they
formed the fierce warrior people called Celt-
iberians, who served in masses in the Carthaginian
and Greek armies, and held out against the
Romans until about 100 b.c. Further than
this a wing of these Gaulish Celts made their

2

10 FRANCE

way along the Danube, wasted Greece in about
270 B.C., and formed an important settlement
in Asia Minor which was called Galatia up to
about A.D. 500.

The Celts in Italy were the first to come under
the heel of Rome between 300 and 190 b.c.
Gaul itself followed, and a Roman province,
named Narbonensis after its chief city Narbo
Martius (now Narbonne), was formed along the
Mediterranean coast. All the rest of Gaul was
added between 58 and 50 b.c. by Gaius Julius
Caesar, and from that time until the disruption
of the Roman Empire was one of its greatest
and richest provinces.

With the weakening of Roman domination
in the 4th century a.d. a fierce German race or
confederacy, calling themselves " Franks " (i.e.
Freemen), flooded into northern Gaul. They
gave their name to the country they had sub-
jected, and for some five centuries their Merovin-
gian and Carolingian kings ruled without inter-
ruption. The Franks were numerically a small
proportion of the population of France during
this period, and they and other tribes which
had irrupted into Gaul during the same period
gradually became completely absorbed by the

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 11

stubborn Celto-Roman people, and their language
was to a great extent lost owing, perhaps, to the
fascination the splendour of Latin would exert
upon the users of an uncouth tongue. The
Franks had disappeared as a race by the year
1000, but their name had become permanently
attached to the land and the people in whose
midst they had settled — a phenomenon repeated
in the case of Bulgaria.

Towards the north and east of France there
is a very considerable Germanic strain, although
entirely French in language, customs, and sym-
pathy. In the south-east the people have much
Italic blood in their veins, while in the extreme
south-west the Gascons and the Landais (the
people of Les Landes near Bordeaux) are probably
of Iberian stock, nearly related to the Basques
who belong to the pre-Celtic inhabitants of
France, and are therefore more or less distinct
from the main mass of the population who
remained Gallic with a Romanised language.
Although it is true that, with one exception, all
the different elements have been quite assimi-
lated, the patois spoken in some districts is barely
comprehensible to the ordinary Parisian. The
exception is Brittany, where the people are an

12 FRANCE

admixture of the primitive inhabitants with Gauls
and Celts from Britain who migrated to the
peninsula during the 4th and 5th centuries,
their language being pure Celtic to this day, and
so similar to Welsh that a Breton onion-seller
in Wales can make himself understood without
much difficulty. The seamen Brittany provides
for the French navy are undoubtedly the finest
sailors the country possesses, and they have for
some time past formed a very real portion of
French sea power.

The people of Normandy have a strong in-
fusion of Scandinavian blood and certain pecu-
liarities of speech, but they are scarcely greater
than the difference between that of the Londoner
and the Yorkshireman. Whatever has been the
stock from which the inhabitants of modern
France has sprung, their extraordinary capacity
of assimilation seems to have endowed them
generally with those national characteristics popu-
larly labelled the genius of the French. This
process, discernible all through the pages of
history, seems as vital to-day as ever.

To any one familiar with the French people, it is
a matter for astonishment that the average Briton
fails in the most profound fashion to realise the

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 18

most obvious of the national characteristics of
his neighbours across the Channel. The popular
notion is that the French are a frivolous people,
devoted to pleasure ; they are supposed to be
veritable Miss Mowchers for volatility ; to speak
with extreme rapidity ; to have a taste for queer
dishes which the same Briton regards with
abhorrence ; and are, generally speaking, a
people with the lowest of morals. All these
ideas are more or less erroneous, and only as the
average Englishman comes to learn the truth
can the French character be better understood.
In the first place, the French, far from being a
mass of frivolity, are one of the most serious
peoples in the world. They have to such an
extent woven a care for the future into the fabric
of the nation, that the humblest honne-a-touU
faire, the underfed midinette, and simplest son
of the soil, aim at and generally succeed in be-
coming modest holders of State rentes. Instead
of the happy-go-lucky methods of the middle and
lower class Anglo-Saxon, who will turn a family
of sons and daughters loose upon the world with
very little thought as to their future beyond the
bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, the
French parent regards it as his duty to see that

14 FRANCE

each daughter is provided with a dot suitable to
her position, and the Civil Code requires a parent
to leave a proportion of his property to each
member of his family. French men and women
work out their incomes with such exactness
that they know to a sou what they have to spare
for pleasure, and with a very large mass of the
people in town and country that margin is so
microscopically small, that pleasure in the
sense of a commodity that is bought is often
only obtainable at long intervals. In Paris,
where the inaccurate ideas of French life are
generally gathered, it is the almost universal
custom for a family to dine at a restaurant on
Sundays, in order that the bonne-d-tout-faire, who
cooks the meals and waits at table in the average
flat, may have most of the day off. Thus the
week-end visitor to the capital sees in every
cafe and restaurant families dining in public, and
gathers the impression that all these people are
spending their money on an evening's amuse-
ment. Probably, if the fiats to which these
people return a little later were examined, it
would be found that there was practically nothing
in the tiny larders, for it is the French custom to
buy daily at the markets in small quantities at

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 15

the lowest prices, and the meals taken at a res-
taurant on Sunday do not entail any loss through
deterioration of food at home.

It is wrong, too, to suppose that the average
French people speak more rapidly than the Anglo-
Saxon. They are more vivacious, and they often
put more emphasis and gesticulation into their
conversation than their island neighbours; but
there are Englishmen who have a right to speak,
who will affirm with the greatest assurance that
the French are the slower and more deliberate
speakers of the two! No doubt it will take a
long time to entirely eradicate from among ill-
informed Anglo-Saxons the notion that a French
menu is largely composed of strange creatures
not usually regarded as edible, but the excellence
of French food and cooking is getting so widely
known and appreciated that this ancient mis-
conception is being steadily dissipated.

Perhaps it is because no sooner does the
visitor land at Calais or Boulogne, or step out
of the railway terminus in Paris, than he sees a
kiosk where comic papers full of improper draw-
ings are boldly exhibited, that he comes to the
conclusion that the French are an entirely im-
moral people. But painful as it is to witness

16 FRANCE

this flaunting of vulgar suggestion before the casual
passer-by, it is not quite a fair gauge by which to
take the standard of morals in France. There
was no wave of Puritanism in France as in Eng-
land, and the standard of public decency is there-
fore lower, but French home life is probably
nearly as moral as in England, and it is a well-
known fact that girls belonging to the middle
classes live irreproachable lives in the almost
unnatural seclusion maintained by their parents.
The attitude of the young man towards the
other sex before he marries is certainly lament-
ably inferior to that of the Anglo-Saxon who may
fall from the ideal to which he has been trained,
but nevertheless regards his failure as a disaster,
while the French youth looks upon such matters
as a recognised feature of his adolescence.

Justification for the idea prevalent in Anglo-
Saxon countries that the French are exceptionally
lax in their morals, can be found in the fact that
in all ranks of French society there is no secrecy
maintained when irregular relations have been
established, and also in the fact that the illegi-
timate births are considerably more than twice
as numerous as those of Great Britain and Ireland.
It should be remembered, however, that Germany

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 17

stands only a trifle better than France in this
matter, while six other European countries are
infinitely worse.

What are to the man in the street the char-
acteristics of the French race are, therefore, so wide
of the truth, that until simple and accurate books
on this great and talented people are used in all
British schools it will take a considerable time
to put matters straight. In the meantime an
opportunity occurs here to do something in this
direction.

More than any other nation on the whole
face of the earth the French are a people of great
ideas. They frequently leave their neighbours to
carry out the conceptions with which they enrich
the world, but they think on a great scale, and pro-
duce men and women whose agility of mind is often
hugely in advance of the age in which they live.
It was a Frenchman who first thought it feasible to
sever Africa from Asia, and made the first attempt
to cut the cord that unites North and South
America ; it was the French who led the way in
applying the internal combustion engine to loco-
motion, and they have dazzled the world with the
brilliant performances of their flying men. A
Frenchman was the pioneer in tunnel boring, and

18 FRANCE

his son Isambard Brunei devised a railway on
such a magnificent scale that it still remains an
ideal which engineers regard with admiration.
Another Frenchman, Charles Bourseul, invented
the telephone, and yet another led the way in
the science of bacteriology. As conscious empire-
builders on a world-wide scale the French were
also putting their ideas into practice when
England was still thinking commercially in such
matters. England as a whole always does think
in pounds, shillings, and pence, and in empire-
building possessions have mainly been added to
the British Empire with the idea of increasing its
trade. In naval developments France recently
led the way with the submarine and submersible,
setting an example to the rest of the world which
has been followed so thoroughly that the lead
in this arm of sea-power is no longer with the
pioneer country. Innumerable instances could
be given of the initiative in big ideas being
taken by Frenchmen, and of other nations taking
them up and developing, perfecting, and some-
times consummating for the first time projects
devised in France.

Mr. C. F. G. Masterman has laid stress on the
patience of the British working man, but that

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS Id

willingness to endure hard circumstance is not
so pronounced in England as in France. There
endurance continues too long, so that when harsh
treatment becomes absolutely intolerable there is
not a fraction of patience left, with the inevit-
able result that explosions of varying degrees
of violence take place. British workers bestir
themselves and demand redress of grievances
before they are at the end of their patience, and
can therefore wait while the country becomes
famihar with their new needs. England has thus
known no " Reign of Terror," nor does the
Government of the day suddenly collapse before
some public outburst of passionate feehng. The
people who can endure the inconvenience of a
Government monopoly in matches, which makes
that commodity vile in quality while costing a
penny a box, must indeed be patient.

The average Frenchman desires to live a quiet
and peaceful life without hurry or bustle. He is
content with long hours of work if he can carry
on that occupation at an easy pace, for he is
steadily industrious, and his easy-going nature
lets him disregard misgovernment too long for
safety, for when at last he is roused out of the
ambling pace of his normal life, underground

20 FRANCE

elements of cruelty and bloodthirstiness may
come to the surface with sudden and terrible
swiftness. If fair and honest government and
tolerable conditions of labour could be perpetually
guaranteed to France, there is scarcely a people
in the world who would live more peaceable and
uneventful lives, for the British relish for adven-
ture and the enthusiasm for hustle to be found in
the United States finds no echo in the average
French mind. Alongside this disinclination to
go helter-skelter through life is the fact that in
certain ways the French people are all artists,
and that they have the critical faculty developed
to a most remarkable degree ; their capacity for
discrimination and criticism might indeed be
singled out as the most salient characteristic of
the whole people. Even the humblest citizen
is seldom prepared to express unqualified admira-
tion for any piece of handicraft or painting, but
will look with thoughtful care on the object of
consideration, and probably supply an intelligent
reason for only giving it partial approval.

On the other hand there is a great tendency to
over fondness for generalising without sufficient
data ; there is a delight in reasoning and logic
which often leads to false conclusions owing to a

GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS 21

want of real knowledge. This love of reasoning
and the capacity for criticism seem to have given
the nation a regard for consequences and a care to
avoid the more or less inevitable economic day
of adverse reckoning which comes to those who
are careless and indefinite in their arrange-
ments. It is the general thriftiness found
all through the peasant and bourgeois class of
France that has, to such a great extent, saved
the various grades in the social scale from emulat-
ing the ways of those above them. The disgrace
of insolvency is so terrifying to a French household
that a thousand economies are practised to keep
such a contingency afar off, and in following this
rule of life much social intercourse, and nearly all
effort to seem more opulent than the family
purse will permit, go overboard. Thus it has
become a characteristic of a most definite order
that a Frenchman's home is his castle in a fashion
far more real to the stranger than is the case in
Anglo-Saxon countries.

Briefly it may be stated that the French are a
serious, cautious, patient, and exceedingly! in-
dustrious and home-loving race, enjoying their
hardly earned hours of pleasure in a more de-
monstrative fashion than do the nations whose

22 FRANCE

climates are less sunny. They are critical and
fond of generalisation, are capable of large
and splendid moments of inspiration, and have
on the whole feminine rather than masculine
characteristics.

CHAPTER III

FAMILY LIFE MARRIAGE AND THE BIRTH-RATE

For an English resident in France to become an
intimate in the home of a French family is a
rare enough occurrence, and for a visitor to
attempt to discover anything as to French
family life first hand is generally a quest doomed
to failure. In the vast mass of the middle
classes the habit of mind is to remain as far as
possible on the estate of one's ancestors or in the
place in which one is known. There is no wish
to live in foreign lands ; those who are obliged
to do so are pitied, and foreigners who come to
take up permanent residence in France are in
most instances regarded as people who, for some
regrettable reason, are obliged to live outside
their native land. This idea prevents the
foreigner from receiving a cordial welcome, and
he generally labels the people of his adopted

23

24 FRANCE

land as inhospitable. On the other hand, it must
be remembered that Belgians and Italians be-
longing to a common stock are assimilated with
extreme rapidity into the great body of the
nation.

The hospitality of the average French house-
hold of the middle classes is, owing to the need
for great thrift, narrowed down to the necessarily
limited circle of the family. No sooner is the
aforetime stranger joined to a family by the tie
of marriage than the doors of the homes of all
the relations are thrown wide open to receive
him. It is this custom which makes it so essential
for the prospective parents-in-law to ascertain
the antecedents, the status, and financial prospects
of a proposed husband for their daughter. Should
some disaster, monetary or otherwise, fall upon
this new addition of the family, the blow is in-
flicted upon all the members and all the branches
of that circle. Similar enquiries are put on foot
by the parents of a son who is intending to ally
himself to another family.

Wherever the family tie is given undue im-
portance there is inevitably less willingness to
entertain the stranger and to take the risks this
wider sociality involves. So English people, with

FAMILY LIFE 25

Paris (which they do not really know) as the
basis of their observations, are too ready to state
with confidence that there is no real home life in
France. It may be that there is less in the capital
than in the rest of the country, but Paris is the
least French portion of France. The English, or
more accurately the British, quarter of Paris
remains outside the closely guarded circles of
Parisian family life, and large sections of the city
live in water-tight compartments even as they do
in London. What does the average middle-class
family know of the French residents in London ?
Probably the number of those of the upper classes
who are closely in touch with French residents
of their own social rank is very small, and the
humble French population of Soho and Pimlico
live their hard-working lives almost as detached
from the rest of the city as though they were on
the other side of the Channel.

One of the most marked differences between
the Anglo-Saxon and the French home is the
fact that in the latter the place of the house-
maid is to a very great extent taken by men.
The sterner sex dust and sweep and polish as a
matter of course. There is little restriction on
the amount of noise made by the servants, male

4

26 FRANCE

and female, while they are about their work.
It is quite usual to hear them laughing, talking,
singing, and even shouting to one another, where
in an English household there would scarcely
be a sound above the quietest conversation
drowned by the noise of the broom.

The ordinary house of the middle classes does
not enjoy that periodical refurbishing and re-
decorating accepted as necessary north of the
Channel. With a wife as keen as himself on
living well within their joint income the French
head of the family is not urged to put aside a
certain annual sum for new curtains, carpets,
chair and sofa covers, and such expensive items.
The initial outlay on the home is generally
considered to be almost sufficient for a lifetime
if care is used in maintaining what has been
purchased. It is not necessary to have entered
many French homes to become familiar with the
typical bedroom which is reflected faithfully
enough in the average hotel. One essential
feature of a bedroom as the Anglo-Saxon knows
it is alone allowed to form a feature of the furnish-
ing of the apartment. It is the bed, draped as
a rule with elaborate curtains and coverings and
surmounted by some form of canopy. A massive

FAMILY LIFE 27

feather-bed-like eiderdown, covering about one-
half of the necessary area of the bed, reposes at
the foot and leaves those unfamiliar with these
nightmare pillows wondering if the people who
use them are a practical race. The dressing-
table and washstand are generally hard to find.
If there is a cabinet de toilette, these essentials
of a bedroom will be stowed away in what is
often a roomy cupboard, and where the feature
does not exist, both pieces of furniture will be so
modest in dimensions and sufficiently well dis-
guised to be almost unrecognisable at a casual
glance. Conspicuously placed, however, will be
an ample sofa and a writing-table not necessarily
provided with adequate writing materials. Every
effort is made to give the sleeping apartment
as much the atmosphere of a reception-room
as sofas and chairs and an absence of toilet
appliances will allow, for when, right away in
the fifteenth century, it became the custom for
the sovereign to hold audiences in the bed-
chamber the rest of French society imitated the
royal example, until it became an established
usage in bourgeois circles as much as in those
of the class which enjoyed the direct influence
of court fashions. Democratic and Repubhcan

28 FRANCE

France has swept away the whole edifice of the
monarchy, but unconsciously perpetuates in a
most remarkable fashion the weakness of a
sovereign to carry on the business of the day
from his bed !

The average husband regards the cabinet de
toilette as the peculiar possession of his wife, and
would hesitate to enter that annexe to his bed-
room unbidden. Possibly to those who have
been brought up with this idea the English custom
of providing a small dressing-room for the hus-
band and allowing madame paramount rights
over the whole bedroom may seem unaccountably
odd.

Formality is generally the prevailing note of the
reception-rooms. Comfortable chairs have only
lately begun to make their appearance at all, and
as a rule the middle-class household maintains
a traditional severity in the arrangements of its
drawing-room. Straight uninviting chairs and
an absence of any indications of books, magazines
or papers, or anything in the way of a needle-
work bag or a writing-table that is in regular
use, deprive the room of any home-like indi-
viduality. The extreme economy exercised in
the use of fuel makes the unnecessary lighting of

FAMILY LIFE 29

a fire a wanton extravagance. Commodities in
Paris cost double or even more than double what
they do in the British Isles, and in the country
generally one-third more ; the salaries of the
civil and military officials, who form such a big
section of the middle-class population, are con-
siderably less than those enjoyed in England,
and the incomes of the professional classes are
as a rule smaller than those of the Englishman.
Add to this the abnormally high rents of Paris
and it will be understood that in the capital there
is always need for the most rigid economy.
Madame must keep a watchful eye on the house-
hold store of coal, not only to see that it is not
wasted in her own fires, but to make sure that
pilfering is not carried on by her servants. Where
in England a fire is kept quietly smouldering, it
will be raked out in France and relighted when
required a few hours later. In this way a good
deal of hardihood in the endurance of cold is
developed, and contrivances in the way of stoves
that burn fuel with extreme economy are much
in use. This restraint in coal consumption re-
duces the quantity of carbon particles discharged
into the atmosphere of French cities, and accounts
to a great extent for the clearer air the inhabitants

80 FRANCE

enjoy, at the same time keeping the annual bill
for coal and wood down to very modest pro-
portions.

Economy must also be rigidly maintained
in the purchase of food, and this is generally
accomphshed by discreet buying in the markets.
A servant or a member of the household makes
daily purchases in this manner, and the middle-
man's profits on the chief part of the food re-
quired are successfully avoided. In Paris the maid-
of-all-work, who is generally the only servant
employed in a modest flat, makes these daily
purchases, out of which she obtains from those
with whom she deals a commission of a sou in
every franc expended. This is a universally recog-
nised custom, but in addition there is a prevalent
but altogether reprehensible practice, known as
faire danser Vanse du panier. It is pure dishonesty,
for the bonne puts down in the books a small over-
charge on each item, and this with the market-
man's sou du franc amounts to a considerable
sum in the course of a year, often nearly equal to
her wage. It is an interesting fact that Breton
servants are generally quite guiltless of the over-
charge system, for the people of Brittany are of
much the same stock as the Welsh, concerning

FAMILY LIFE 81

whom there is a proverb for which the writer
fails to find justification.

Dejeuner at 11.30 or 12 and dinner at 6.30 or
7 are the two essential meals of the day. Break-
fast, served in the bedroom, consists of coffee or
chocolate and small crisply baked rolls with butter
and perhaps honey, while the Anglo-Saxon meal
called tea is only an established feature among
the upper classes, where English customs are
extremely fashionable. The two chief meals
both consist of at least four courses, with a cup
of coffee added to give a finish to the whole. It
might be thought absurd for those who are poor
or living with great economy to begin their meals
with an hors-d'oeuvre, but Miss Betham-Edwards,
whose knowledge of the French is sufficiently
wide to be an authority, asserts that a careful
housekeeper will give this preliminary course
as an economy, for being great bread-eaters a
little scrap of ham or sausage or herring eaten
with several mouthfuls of bread will take the
edge off the appetite and enable her to be less
lavish with the other courses. Soup is very
frequently made out of the water in which vege-
tables have been stewed with a suspicion of flavour-
ing added, and the meat courses are provided

32 FRANCE

not from large joints, but from little scraps of
meat which the French butcher produces in
astonishing quantities from the same animal as
his English neighbour handles in an entirely
different and very much less economical fashion.
These methods of cutting with a view to quantity
rather than quality give much of the meat an
luihappy toughness as though it were cut across
or against the grain. Even the bonne-d-tout-faire
will prefer to make a sacrifice in the quantity of
food in each course of a meal if by so doing she
can be quite sure of finishing with a cup of coffee.
The contrast of the mid-day meal, consisting
of a chop and bread and cheese, supplied by the
small provincial hotel to the commercial traveller
in England, with that provided or obtainable in
France, is astonishing. It is true that the knife
and fork given for the first course must be re-
tained for those that follow, but this little labour-
saving custom can be overlooked in the presence
of the savoury dishes that follow. Still more
pronounced is the contrast when dinner-time
arrives, for a very large majority of country
hostelries in England will offer nothing more
varied than a large plate of ham and eggs or cold
meat, followed by bread and cheese and perhaps

FAMILY LIFE 88

apple or plum tart. It is the universal demand
for appetising and well-cooked meals throughout
France that ensures for the wayfarer wherever
he goes an excellent dinner of several courses.
It would, however, be unfair not to mention that
a very great improvement has been taking place
in the hotels of England in the last few years
owing to the demand for well-cooked meals caused
by motorists. The pre-eminence of France in
this matter will cease to be remarkable before
long if the present rapid progress is maintained.
If one enquires still further into the reasons for
French folk being dainty in the way their food
is prepared, the explanation given by Mr. T.
Rice Holmes that Celtic peoples as a rule have
weak stomachs may perhaps be the correct
answer.

If wall-papers are not often renewed in French
houses, there is a delight in clean raiment which
is most commendable. Clothes which are not
washable are frequently sent to the cleaner, and
as the most poorly paid midinette generally buys
good materials for her clothes they last some
time, and will stand cleaning and refurbishing
better than the average clothes worn by her
equals in England. This is typical of the inborn

84 FRANCE

thrift of the whole nation. Personal ablutions are,
on the other hand, not so frequent or so thorough
as among Anglo-Saxons, the supply of water for
this purpose being generally very meagre and the
basin for washing the face and hands awkwardly
small. The itinerant bath is still to be found in
coimtry towns. It is brought to the house of
those who desire to indulge in this luxury, and
the water at the required temperature is pro-
vided also. The rinsing out of a bath with a
little clean water after it has been used is not
considered a sufficiently thorough method of
satisfying individual fastidiousness, and a cotton
covering large enough to entirely line the bath
is therefore usually provided for each person.
If one adds to this the difficulties confronting
those for whom it is considered scarcely within
the limits of propriety that they should be entirely
unhampered by garments while in the bath,
this simple operation of the toilet becomes a
somewhat laborious undertaking !

It has been already stated how great is the
reverence of the French for the family. It is
certainly fostered by that wonderful institution
the Family Council, a form of highly developed
autonomy dating from the far-away days when

FAMILY LIFE 85

France was a Romanised province. The council
is formed to look after the welfare of orphans
and weak-minded and ne'er-do-weel minors. It
consists of six members — three from among the
relatives of each parent — and is presided over
by a local juge de paix, who is attended by his
clerk.

For those sons of wealthy parents who are
developing into incorrigible idlers and a source
of perpetual anxiety to their parents, owing too
often to the excess of ill-judged kindness lavished
on only sons by widowed mothers, there has been
instituted in France what is known as la maison
paternelle. If sent to this establishment the boy
generally threatens to commit suicide or some
other desperate act. He is at first placed in a
solitary cell, where he is under the constant
supervision and the special care of a " professor,"
who is appointed to deal with the particular
case. By salutary talk, the most inflexible
discipline, and regular studies, accompanied by
a judicial kindliness, the refractory youths are
almost invariably brought to their senses after
a few months, and retain the warmest affection
for the professors in after years.

As a rule the French child of almost every

86 FRANCE

class except the very lowest comes into the world
with the prospect of some future inheritance of
land or capital. The first infant in a very large
proportion of families is both alpha and omega,
and it is very exceptional for parents not to
restrict their offspring to two or perhaps three,
which is almost counted as a large family. For
some time past census figures reveal the very
remarkable fact that considerably over If millions
of married couples are childless. Rather more
than a quarter of the marriages result in one
child ; another quarter has two children, and 17
per cent are childless. Thus the duty of making
up the deficiency of one large section and the
total failure of another falls upon one -third of the
married couples, and the latest returns show that
this task is only just accomplished, the average
number of births for each family hovering about
the bed-rock figure 2. The year 1907 was alto-
gether alarming, for the figures showed 19,890
more deaths than births for the twelve months,
and it has been with considerable relief that the
civilised world has seen the surplus turned over
to the more healthy direction in subsequent
years. With a population that does not increase
there is less and less danger of overcrowding or

FAMILY LIFE 87

of extreme poverty, and therefore France houses
her citizens better than Germany, England, or
the United States. The individual child arrives
in the world with his or her place more or less
made in advance, and as the years pass by the
son or daughter steps into the vacancy caused
by the departure to " the land o' the leal " of
a parent or relation. Such an even balance of
vacancies and new arrivals tends to make liveli-
hoods more stable in France than in the countries
where the number of persons to the square mile
is steadily increasing ; it robs the whole nation of
any desire to find homes outside the limits of the
fatherland, and makes it practically impossible
to make any real use of colonial possessions.
Until civilised countries come to settle their
differences without the senseless and futile appeals
to brute force, by which they have unsuccessfully
striven to do so in the past, this static condition
of the population of France can only be looked
upon as a calamity, but the growing strength of
commercial ties is weakening bellicist prejudices
and national antipathies every day, and the fact
that the nations are now asking themselves
whether any advantage is gained by fighting a
civilised people shows that the world is on the

88 FRANCE

threshold of emancipation from what is most
truly a great illusion.

Being so often the only child or one of two, the
infant enters on life as the ruler of the household.
The devoted parents, instead of following the
golden maxim, which says " Apply the rod early
enough and there will be no need to use it at all,"
give way to every passing mood or whim of their
offspring, and insist that the nurse shall follow
the same foolish course. If the infant cries it
obviously needs something, and this must be
supplied regardless of character-building. No
wonder that la maison paternelle has been found
a needful institution in the land I Maternal
duties are not as a rule undertaken by the mother,
and in a very large number of instances this is
necessitated or at least encouraged by the large
share in the maintenance of the household taken
by the wife. In Parisian fiats the concierge,
owing to the smallness of his wage, is generally
obliged to go out to work and depute his wife to
undertake his duties during his absence. A
mewling and puking infant under these conditions
is a nuisance and must be brought up elsewhere.

In the average middle-class home the children
are not given their meals in the nursery, but at

FAMILY LIFE 89

a very early age eat at the same table as their
parents, and enjoy a varied menu including wine
when English children are still having little besides
milk puddings and mince.

Much more is concentrated into the earlier years
of life in France than across the Channel. This is
particularly so in regard to the jeune fille, who
ceases to come under that title as soon as she has
reached the age of twenty-five. The business of
getting married must be achieved by that time, or
else there is nothing for it but acquiescence in the
popular judgment that the young girl has become
an old girl — is on the shelf — and to preserve her
self-respect must retire either to a convent or a
conventual boarding-house. This custom is, like
many others, as undesirably mediaeval, gradually
breaking down owing to the strongly intellectual
training now given to the jeune fille at state lycSes.
No religious instruction is given in these schools,
and the girls are therefore developing a new inde-
pendence. A change, too, is taking place in the
extremely secluded life that girls of the middle
and upper classes have hitherto led. They are
not invariably taken to school and fetched by a
maid, and it is quite possible that this emancipa-
tion from continual supervision may lead to a

40 FRANCE

considerable modification in the present method
of arranging marriages. The existing system of
the choice of a husband for their daughter being
made by the devoted parents has a striking
similarity to the customs of the Far East. The
young men the jeune fille is allowed to see are
only those who are eminently eligible, that is,
whose financial position is sound and whose
family connections are not likely to cause anxiety
when brought into the family circle by the union
of the two young people.

To the French mind the idea of the betrothal
of a man and a girl without the necessary means
for immediately entering the state of matrimony
is looked at with the most extreme disfavour.
" Falling in love " might lead to most undesirable
family ties, for each of the two parties concerned
marries a family as well as a husband and wife
respectively. No, the manage dHnclination is a
danger, and the young people must learn to fall
in love during the honeymoon, a task the French
girl seems to find less impossible than it sounds.
The Anglo-Saxon method of a growing and
entirely non-committal intimacy followed by a
period of betrothal scarcely exists in France.
Having little knowledge or experience of men,

I HE CENTRE OF PARIS.

FAMILY LIFE 41

the girl accepts the suitor proposed by her parents
because, as a rule, she has not much choice and
the time is short before she has reached the old-
maidish age of twenty-five. Then beyond this
there is all the thrill and romance of some new
and strange life in which she may succeed in
falling desperately in love with her husband. If
not, the situation has occurred before, and the
average married woman seems to find some
solace in other interests; there will perhaps
be a son or a daughter, or possibly both, and
on them it will be easy for her to expend her
pent-up feelings of love, and later on there will
perchance come what is an ideal with the
average Frenchwoman — the satisfaction of being
a grandmother.

During the short time between the formal
acceptance of her proposed husband and the
wedding ceremony the affianced pair are not as
a rule allowed to be together alone. No doubt
in many instances this harsh ruling of long-
established custom is broken through, but it
would be done surreptitiously unless the parties
concerned were exceptionally emancipated from
the great body of French tradition. It is also
quite unusual for the mother to speak of love

42 FRANCE

when discussing with her daughter a man who has
offered himself as a husband ; it is merely under-
stood that he is pleased with the girl's general
appearance and not dissatisfied with her dot.

Strict Roman Catholics do not recognise the
civil contract beyond going through the required
legal ceremony. The banns, stating several per-
sonal particulars regarding the parents as well
as the contracting parties, are put up at the
mairie ten days before the marriage can be per-
formed. If the betrothed pair have not reached
the age of thirty, they must have the consent of
their parents, but over twenty-one they are able
to obtain that consent through a legal process
at the office of a certified notary. Even extreme
action of this character does not entail total loss
of a certain portion of the parental inheritance,
for the Civil Code does not permit parents to
leave more than a proportion to strangers.
One-half must fall to the children's share. Quite
recently an example of the small satisfaction this
may cause to the recipients came to light. An
aged grandparent's estate produced a sum of
100 francs, to be divided equally between four
legatees. The legal expenses entailed in certify-
ing the status of each party and other matters

FAMILY LIFE 48

ran up to such a large sum that the surplus
divisible was barely 20 francs.

On the appointed day the wedding party
assembles at the mairie, where the mayor, after
reading to the couple that portion of the Civil
Code relating to the duties of the married state,
hears their declaration and the permission of
the parents, after which both parties exchange
wedding rings and are pronounced man and wife.
The register having been signed, first by the wife
and then by the husband, the civil ceremony is
complete, and in Republican society the wedded
pair as a rule trouble themselves not at all about
the attitude of the Church to the contract they
have made. Many, however, as already stated,
do not regard this as the real wedding, and the
bride and bridegroom remain apart until the
next day, or perhaps two or three days later,
when the religious ceremony is performed in a
church. There the wedding rings are blessed
before being put on, and the completion of the
religious ceremony is marked by the presentation
of a tray for offerings. One cannot be very long
in a French church without this opportunity
presenting itself. The writer has vivid recollec-
tions of his almost precipitate retreat from the

44 FRANCE

Madeleine after he had been present for a
short time at a service in that classic church
on the occasion of his first visit to Paris. His
memory recalls how cheerfully he paid for his
seat for the first time, how he produced another
coin when, with a charming smile, a young woman
applied for a second alms, and how, when a third
bag was placed before him with the words your
les yauvres, he found a sou, and in a few moments
had, with a sigh of relief, exchanged the Gre-
gorian solemnities of the great church for the
rattle and stir of the Boulevard des Capucines.

But to return to the wedding ceremony. The
young couple having been now made man and
wife in the sight of Church as well as the State,
they start on their voyage together into the
unknown, to discover one another and, if possible,
after what answers to a time of courting, to fall
in love with each other. Should this time of
exploration into each other's characters and
temperaments, likes and dislikes, prove entirely
unsatisfactory, it becomes a matter of acute
interest to enquire how the knot may be loosened
or untied. Until 1883 divorce was not legal,
but since that year of emancipation the Civil
Code permits it for several reasons. These are

FAMILY LIFE 45

divided under three headings : first, unfaithfulness
or desertion on either side ; second, acts of violence
and injures graves, which covers the great area
of incompatibility of temperament; and third,
penal sentences passed on the man or woman.
It is fairly obvious that this wide doorway will
permit the entrance of a great majority of those
who wish for freedom from an ill-chosen partner,
and the result has been a steady increase in the
number of divorces in recent years. The figures
were 10,573 in 1906 and 13,049 in 1910. Even
the Church of Rome will allow the marriage
tie to be severed under certain conditions not
perhaps open to a poor couple.

There can be little doubt that divorce in
France is facilitated by the fact that the wife
has in most cases an independent source of in-
come, and is therefore economically on her feet
in the event of a termination of her wedded state.
She is, generally speaking, looked upon with less
favour as a divorced woman than is a man. No
doubt this is due to slow-dying prejudice in favour
of the man in these circumstances. Changes are,
however, coming with such accelerating speed in
these matters that anything written to-day is
more or less out of date by the time it is printed.

46 FRANCE

To come back to the normal condition of married
persons in France, there is no doubt that, surpris-
ing as it may seem, the jeune fille does in a very-
large majority of cases settle down contentedly
with the husband chosen by her parents. She
blossoms with the speed of an Indian juggler's
magic plant into a woman of affairs, and in a very
short time is taken into the fullest confidence in
monetary matters by her husband. Many
develop such a capacity for business that they
rapidly out-distance their men folk in such matters,
and if, as is very often the case in middle-class life,
they are obliged to contribute towards the family
budget, their earnings will frequently exceed
those of the easy-going husband. Any one at
all intimate with France knows the keenness and
capacity of the woman in business, whether as a
shopkeeper, a manageress, or a hotel proprietor.
They can drive a hard bargain and are less easy
to deal with than men, although the writer is
inclined to think that he has met quite as many
men as women who are difficult or unpleasant in
a financial matter.

In spite of this frequently existing superior
ability in dealing with money matters, a wife must
obtain her husband's written consent before she

FAMILY LIFE 47

touches her capital ! And further than this, the
Civil Code requires that the husband must make
good any deficiency from his wife's original dot
should he wish to obtain a divorce, notwithstand-
ing the fact that the diminution had taken place
with her consent ; and it is a curious and interest-
ing fact that in the case of disagreement the
husband finds the Code ignores the perchance
superior wisdom of the wife.

As a rule it is madame who rules the household,
while " mon mari " is a worshipper who obeys
willingly, both being the slaves of their child or
children, to whom within the strict boundaries of
comme il faut nothing must be denied. How, with
such spoiling as children, the French man and
woman grow up to do their share in the world's
work it is hard to understand. Possibly the
dislike evinced by the race as a whole to undertake
an adventurous career entailing risk, the lack of
some of the luxuries which have been long enjoyed,
and an element of uncertainty may be in part
ascribed to the lack of discipline in the nursery.
An explanation for this characteristic might be
given by merely pointing to the figures of popu-
lation, which, as just mentioned, remain almost
stationary, and do not provide that driving force

48 , FRANCE

which sends other peoples out into new lands in
great numbers; but this condition of a static
population has been brought about voluntarily
by the people themselves, through their desire to
be sure of a safe and prearranged career for their
offspring. And so it is the family life of the
French, the predominance of the weaker partner,
and the craving after those conditions of existence
generally regarded as feminine, which result in
a weakening of France as a colonising nation, and
often cause misgivings in the minds of those who
are her well-wishers.

'^

CHAPTER IV

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES

It may be broadly stated that the French people
are content to be governed and to feel a con-
trolling authority in operation in all departments
of their lives. This results in a silent acquiescence
under long-endured grievances which could easily
be redressed by a little ventilation of public
opinion. Where the Anglo-Saxon uses his news-
papers to make known his attitude towards
various matters requiring new legislation, where
he takes advantage of an election, parliamentary
or municipal, to obtain undertakings from candi-
dates, the average Frenchman will neither write
nor speak, so that editors and deputies, and the
great public as well, remain generally ignorant
of a widespread area of smouldering resentment.
Like the burning coal-beds not unfrequently
discovered in Central Europe, the underground

49 7

50 FRANCE

combustion, which has perhaps been continuing
for many years, is only brought to hght by
accident.

When legislation takes place on some important
economic issue it will be framed, as a rule, on
abstract lines disregarding the past, and in many
ways ignoring general convenience. There is
in this way little evolution in the growth of the
French constitution, and an old law may exist
unmodified so long that when change comes it
is so out of date that it must be swept away.
The Revolution cut down to the roots the rotten
tree of unregenerate feudalism, and planted in
its place a sapling which has to conform to the
essential requirements of progress; it must be
trimmed and lopped, and must put forth new
growth in order that it too, in the effluxion of
time, may not become as unsuited to modern
needs as its predecessor.

In August 1789 the first Republican Parlia-
ment wrote down certain cardinal matters relating
to the welfare and freedom of the individual
and called it the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen. Thirteen years before
this the United States of North America had
drawn up their Declaration of Independence,

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 5l

and no doubt this inspired those who framed the
more compactly worded document. In their
seventeen brief articles French Republicans, in
an age when ideas of freedom had fertilised both
sides of the Atlantic, boldly and simply stated
their new-born beliefs, commencing with the
assertion that " All men are born and remain
free and have equal rights." In Article 2 they
stated that " the object of all political groupings
is the preservation of the natural, inalienable,
and sacred rights of man," those rights being
" liberty, property, security, and the right to
resist oppression." Although possessing the last-
mentioned power, it has already been pointed
out that the people are slow to make use of it.
The nation likewise fails to carry out the spirit
of Article 9, which says, " As a man is deemed
innocent until he shall have been declared guilty
should it be necessary to arrest him no rigour
that is not essential^ for the securing of his person
shall be tolerated by the law." In the final — ^the
17th — Article there is food for thought for the
Socialist, for it is there stated that property is
" an inviolable and sacred right," followed by
the qualifying sentence, " No man may be deprived
of it, unless public interest demand it evidently

52 FRANCE

and according to the Law, provided, moreover,
that a fair indemnity be first paid to him."
Even the most civilised of peoples are still a
good deal short of that high degree of wisdom
and goodness which will make every man com-
petent and willing to be his brother's keeper,
and it is therefore probable that for some time
to come Article 17 will stand as a living part of
the French Constitution. It is interesting to
remember that in the Declaration of 1789 the
right of Habeas Corpus was first established in
France, while it had been on the statute book
of England for over a century, and would have
been there some time before but for repeated
rejections by the House of Lords.

Upon the splendid substructure of the Declara-
tion of the Rights of Man the first French
Constitution was reared. It was framed with
care, took two years in the making, and was
finally accepted by Louis in 1791. Since then
there have been many constitutions, but, omitting
the Napoleonic interlude, the principles of the
Declaration show themselves with triumphant
ascendency as the foundation of each recon-
struction. Like all written constitutions, modi-
fications are frequently found necessary. There

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 53

is none of the elasticity of the unwritten con-
stitution which exists only in the land of the
people who are said to have a genius for governing
themselves, and perhaps it is that endowment
with the capacity for self-government which
makes the nebulous character of the British
Constitution so valuable. It is true that a very
great majority of well-educated British people
could not give any clear idea of the nature of the
constitution of their country, and when any
constitutional point arises only a handful of
experts can state how far the precedents of the
past, by which the constitution is modified,
affect the immediate issue ; and yet there would
be a considerable feeling of alarm if it were
seriously proposed to make the whole situation
plain by producing a modern written constitu-
tion, however much based on all that has gone
before.

Britons, as a rule, do not even trouble to
acquaint themselves with the survival of many
ancient royal prerogatives. Walter Bagehot^
puts into one pregnant paragraph what Queen
Victoria could do without consulting Parliament.
"Not to mention other things," he writes, "she

^ The English Constitution, Introduction to 1872 Edition.

54 FRANCE

could disband the army (by law she cannot
engage more than a certain number of men, but
she is not obliged to engage any men) ; she could
dismiss all the officers, from the General Com-
manding-in-Chief downwards ; she could dismiss
all the sailors too ; she could sell off all our ships
of war and all our naval stores ; she could make
a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a
war for the conquest of Brittany. She could
make every citizen in the United Kingdom,
male or female, a peer ; she could make every
parish in the United Kingdom a ' university ' ;
she could dismiss most of the civil servants ;
she could pardon all offenders." The present
sovereign could do the same, but safeguards in
the form of impeachment of Ministers and change
of a Ministry preserve the country from proceed-
ings of this nature; but in a country with a
written constitution such legacies from the days
when the head of the State was a military dictator
exist no longer.

While the British law -makers and admini-
strators bear on their backs the whole weight of
centuries of laborious constitution-building, the
French work with the light equipment of a
constitution framed in 1875, everything prior to

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 55

that date being null and void.^ No French
politician is therefore required at any time to
be aware of a usage of the reign of Louis XL, or
any curtailment of the royal authority which
may have taken place when Philippe Auguste
occupied the throne. The throne itself has ceased
to exist since the fall of Napoleon III. in 1870,
and France since that year has remained under
its third Republic.

The laws passed in 1875 provide that the
legislative power shall be in the hands of two
assemblies — ^the Chamber of Deputies and the
Senate — and the executive in those of an elected
President and the Ministry. The Upper House
or Senate is composed of 300 members, now
entirely elected by the Departments or Senate.
They must be over forty years of age. In
England, if the Prime Minister is a commoner he
can only go into the Upper House as a listener, and
all the Cabinet are under the same restriction, but
in France Ministers can sit in both Chambers and
can speak in either place as occasion requires or
the spirit moves. Voting, however, is restricted
to the Chamber to which the Minister belongs.
One is inclined to wonder whether eloquence

^ The Constitution was slightly revised in 1879 and 1884.

56 FRANCE

that stirs the hearts and sways the voting in
the British House of Commons would be as produc-
tive if addressed to the hereditary body. There
is no separate Minister for the Post Office, that
office being included in the Ministry of Commerce,
and there are only twelve Ministers against the
twenty or twenty - one of the British Cabinet.
The Ministry of Labour and Public Thrift appears
almost quaint to the much less thrifty people of
England.

The Lower Chamber consists of 584 deputies,
and is elected every four years by universal
suffrage. On coming of age, every citizen not
in military service and having a residential
qualification of six months may exercise the
franchise. Women have not yet achieved the
right to vote. Perhaps the majority of French
married women exercise already as much power
as they care to possess, for even peasant women
are quite familiar with the method of voting
through their docile husbands. Only in 1897
were women entitled by law to act as witnesses in
civil transactions; prior to that date a woman
came under the same category as a minor or the
insane !

That the Frenchwoman is beginning to wake

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 57

up to the possibilities of her twentieth - century
emancipation is shown in a hundred directions.
In January 1913 a woman came forward as a
candidate for the French presidential chair, the
first in the history of the Republic. WTien
questioned as to the seriousness of her purpose
she asked, " And why not a woman head of the
State ? People may regard it as a joke ; but
what about Catherine the Great and Queen
Victoria ? " When one remembers, too, the
astonishing business capacity of the average
Frenchwoman, one is inclined to echo the
question, " Why not ? " There are already more
than a dozen women barristers in Paris, besides
seventy doctors, eighteen dentists, ten oculists,
and six chemists ! Women, too, have for many
years occupied on the railways of France positions
which are exclusively in the hands of the stronger
sex in England. Who is not familiar with the
hard-faced woman who with a horn at her lips
controls the level crossings ?

The only restriction among French citizens to
becoming President is that which rules out any
member of a royal family which has reigned in
France. He is elected for seven years and the
salary is £48,000 a year, one half of which is

58 FRANCE

received as salary, the other being for travelhng
and official expenses connected with office. This
sum appears generous when contrasted with
the £5000 paid to the British First Lord of the
Treasury and his unpaid services as Prime
Minister of the Crown. The President appoints
all the Ministers and heads of the civil and
military departments. He declares war with the
consent of both Houses, and a Minister counter-
signs every act.

The national desire for security prompts the
men folk of a large proportion of the upper middle
classes to aim towards the pleasantly safe pigeon-
holes in the State dovecot. In order to attain
these places of refuge from commercial or pro-
fessional struggle, every public official who has
reached the desired haven of his ambition, or
at least one of the assured steps that will surely
lead him thither, is the subject of endless demands
for aid in the same direction from his remotest
relatives and acquaintances. Upon this system
of pistonnage the aspirant to an official position
must lean, for if he does not the crowd ready to
ffil each vacancy will all have superior chances
on account of the word here and there spoken on
their behalf in the right quarter. Pistonnage

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 59

does not, however, apply to those who aspire to
a seat in either the Senate or the Chamber of
Deputies, where a salary of 15,000 fr. a year and
free travelling relieves the representative of
financial anxiety, so long as he is devoting his
time to his country's service.

By direct and semi -direct taxation about
£25,000,000 was produced in 1912. These taxes
include a levy on windows and doors, varying
according to the density of the population, the
more closely inhabited areas paying more than
the less populous. There is a tax on land not
built upon, assessed in accordance with its net
yearly revenue based on the register of property
drawn up in the earlier half of last century and
kept up to date. The Building tax is 3.2 per cent
on the rental value, and is paid by the owner.
The Personal tax places a fixed capitation on
every citizen, varying from Is. 3d. to 3s. 9d.
according to the department. The Habitation
tax is paid by every one occupying a house or
apartments in proportion to the rent. The
Trade License tax embraces all trades, and
consists of a fixed duty levied on the extent of
business as revealed by the number of employes,
and population, and the locaUty, and so on, and

60 FRANCE

also an assessment on the letting value of the
premises.

By indirect taxation a little over £100,000,000
was raised in 1912. The sum was realised by
stamps of all sorts (excluding postage), by
registration duties on the transfer of property
in business ways and general changes of owner-
ship, and by customs, including a tax on Stock
Exchange transactions, a tax of 4 per cent on
dividends from stocks and shares, taxes on
alcohol, wine, beer, cider, and alcoholic liquors
generally, on home - produced salt and sugar,
and on railway passenger and goods traffic.
The State monopolies of tobacco, matches, and
gunpowder produced the large sum of £38,000,000,
but even this did not meet the charges for
interest on the National Debt, which were about
51 J millions, the accumulated sum for which this
is required being (1912) £1,301,718,302. This is
almost double as great as the British national
indebtedness.

Over each of the 86 Departments is a prefect
chosen by the Minister of the Interior, and
through him the minor officials are kept in
touch with the Government. The arrondissement
and the canton are administrative divisions into

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 61

which each Department is divided, each canton
including about a dozen communes. The com-
mime is controlled by the mayor, who is chief
magistrate and, as in England, is the head of the
municipal body. According to the size of the
commune deputy mayors are elected. The great
city of Lyons requires 17 of these officials, and
when one remembers that the presence of the
mayor or a deputy mayor is required at every
marriage in order that it may become legal, the
number does not seem excessive.

Every canton has its juge de paix, who is in
a general sense a police court judge. He tries
small cases, but his responsibilities are carefully
limited, and he may not inflict a fine exceeding
200 francs. Any offence requiring a heavier
hand must go up to the Tribunal correctionnel de
V arrondissement or the court of Premiere Instance,
The juge de paix wears a tall hat encircled with
a broad silver band, and although, as a rule, a
man who has received a fairly good education,
his salary averages between £120 and £160 per
annum. On such an income there is no oppor-
tunity for pretentious living ! The wife of a
juge de paix cannot, as a rule, afford to keep a
nursemaid, and one maid-of-all-work is as much

62 FRANCE

as the menage can afford to maintain. Never-
theless the position is an honourable one, there
is a pension at sixty years, and the hours of
labour are, to the man with a sense of humour,
often brightened by the absurdity of the cases
that are brought into court. There is generally
much fun for the court in the frequent cases of
diffamation, in which citizens drag one another
into the presence of the juge de paix for calling
each other names. The court allows noisy alter-
cation in a fashion unknown in England, and the
task of the magistrate is, to the Anglo-Saxon
mind, almost beyond belief. The breezy out-
pourings of plaintiff and defendant are ended
with the juge de paix^s words, " You can retire,"
and, as a rule, some sound and friendly advice
has been offered to the unneighbourly neighbours.
A very considerable amount of litigation arises
through the possession of land or houses, for the
thriftiness of the French has always inclined the
people towards the ownership of their farms or
the land they till. In the old days before the
Revolution, all such disputes came before courts
in which the unprivileged and poor might be
fairly sure of losing the day. The scandal of
those venal courts was so great that nothing

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 63

short of a clean sweep could effectually rid the
land of the curse they inflicted, and the overthrow
of the monarchy was followed by the estab-
lishment of administrators of justice who were
servants of the State and none other.

The correctional courts mentioned deal with
the graver offences which are outside the ambit
of the juge de paix. As a rule there are three
judges and no jury. These courts are empowered
to inflict punishment up to imprisonment for
flve years. The Courts of Assize are held every
three months in each Department. They are
presided over by a councillor of the Court of
Appeal with two assistants and a jury of twelve,
but a unanimous verdict is not required, the fate
of the accused hanging on a majority only.
Another feature of these courts is the juge
d' instruction's secret preliminary investigation
into each case.

Superior to the Courts of Assize are those of
Appeal and the Cour de Cassation, which became
so well known to the English public during the
famous trial of Dreyfus. This court, as its name
implies, can abrogate the ruling of any other
tribunal, with the exception of the administrative
courts. This high authority decides on matters

64 FRANCE

of legal principle or whether the court from which
appeal has been made was competent to make
the decision in question. It does not concern
itself primarily with the facts of the case, and if
it should annul any finding the case is sent to a
fresh hearing of a court of the same authority.

The administrative police, or gardiens de la
paicc, are approximately equivalent to British
police constables, and must not be confused with
the gendarmerie, which is a military body carrying
out civil duties in times of peace. The gendar-
merie are recruited from the army, there being
one legion in each army corps district. Their
strength is roughly 22,000 men, equally divided
between cavalry and infantry. In Paris there
is a separate force known as the Garde republi-
caine, which carries out police duties very much
the same as the gendarmerie in the Departments.
They number about 3000, of whom 800 are
mounted. The French prison system was in a
very antiquated state in 1874, when a commission
on prison discipline issued its report in favour
of cellular confinements. Prisons were therefore
reconstructed, and after many years had elapsed
some of the older ones were demolished, the
prisoners thereafter being removed from the

HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 65

disadvantages they encountered in association.
The system of isolation required the construction
of a huge new prison at Fresnes-les-Rungis. It
contains 1500 cells, and when it was completed
in 1898 the historic Paris prisons of Grande-
Roquette, St. Pelagic, and Mazas were swept
away.

Taken as a whole, one can scarcely endorse
Taine's utterance that modern France is the
work of Napoleon. The present organisation
of the nation is undoubtedly due to the masterly
brain and tireless energy of Napoleon, but the
national characteristics of the French people
have shown little change. The existence of a
constitution, the even-handed administration of
justice, and the opening of the highest offices in
the State to the citizen of the humblest origin,
do not yet seem to have affected the nature of
the people. Laughter, tears, and anger are still
near the surface ; love of adventure in thought,
word, and deed does not yet lead the French
into the acquisition of the solid advantages
their enterprise would bring did they only per-
severe on the hnes of their initial enterprise. In
spite of the almost frantic desire for liberty
there is no doubt that the French tamely submit

66 FRANCE

to a regime which Enghshmen would find in
some matters quite intolerable. If suspicion of
smuggling falls upon a house the police can
make domiciliary visits of a quite arbitrary
character. The Civil Code, too, must be re-
garded as oppressive so long as it retains its
attitude of looking upon the untried person as
guilty until such time as his trial establishes his
innocence, and the Anglo-Saxon mind is revolted
at the practice of endeavouring to extort a
confession from a prisoner. The Napoleonic
mould did not alter these qualities, and even in
the matter of religious tolerance the French
have still much to learn.

CHAPTER V

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION

The annual sum of 4250 francs (£170) was
considered by Napoleon — in so far as he had
opportunity for considering the subject — a suffi-
cient amount of money to devote directly to
the education of the people ! But the rulers of
States a brief century ago were, as a whole,
inclined to leave educational matters in clerical
hands, and the nineteenth century will stand
out in the world's history as the dawn of State
responsibility in regard to the education of the
people.

At the Restoration in 1814 more than twelve
times as great a sum as that expended by Napoleon
was being devoted to education, and the amount
rose to 3,000,000 francs in 1830, to 12,000,000
during the Second Empire, and to 160,000,000
under the Third Republic. To the last sum

67

68 FRANCE

must be added another 100,000,000 francs (ex-
cluding the money devoted to the erection of
schools) spent by the municipalities and com-
munes, making a total of about £11,400,000.
In 1912 the State alone was spending about
£12,000,000 on national education.

At the head of this great spending department
of the State is the Minister of Public Instruction.
He controls not only the whole of the primary
schools, but to some extent the entire educational
machinery of the country, private schools being
subjected to State inspection and supervision.
Between 1901 and 1907 some 3000 public clerical
schools, and more than 13,000 private clerical
schools, were suppressed by law. The law passed
in 1904 required that all schools controlled by
religious bodies should be closed within the next
ten years, which period is just about to elapse.
Since the State awoke to its responsibilities in
educational matters, it has taken roughly a
century finally to extinguish clerical control.
The schools are divided into the three grades of
Primary, Secondary, and Higher, and the State
admits into any of these pupils of any grade of
society. In the rooms of lycee or college the
classes meet in a truly democratic fashion.

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 69

The college, which is controlled by the commune
under the State, is considered inferior to the
lycee, which is entirely in the hands of the
central authority. While the primary schools
are compulsory and gratuitous between the ages
of six and thirteen, the secondary schools charge
small fees ranging from £2 a year up to £16.
But parents with bright children can often avoid
this expenditure through the lavish system of
scholarships offered by the State.

Lycees were first established for girls in 1880,
and there are now several in existence, one of
them having 700 students. The hours of the
classes are from 8.30 to 11.30, and from 1.30
to 3.30, and the aim has been to run them on the
same lines as those of the boys. Since clericalism
was removed from the education of girls, there
has no doubt been a very considerable change
in the scholastic environment of the jeune
fille, but until a long period has elapsed it will
be difficult for any but those in the closest
touch with educational life in France to point
out how far the advantages outweigh the dis-
advantages or vice versa. The lay schoolmistress
may be in essentials as religiously-minded as any
convent-trained type of woman. Her influence

70 FRANCE

on her pupils may produce as moral and as
religious types of women in the coming generation
as those of the immediate past, but in such
a change in the training of the girls of a race
not fond of moral discipline who can foresee the
results ?

The general tendency of the training given in
the lycee has been towards the suppression of
originality. There seems to have grown up in
the mind of the authorities an impression that
the only means of keeping the youth of France
under proper control is by holding them down
with an iron grip, not merely during the hours
of work but during recreation also. This may
have been necessitated by a certain lack of
discipline in the earliest years of life, young
children being allowed to have their own way
to an altogether undesirable extent. As soon as
they are old enough the boys, having, as a rule,
begun to be a source of much trouble in the home,
are sent to school. If their parents are able to
afford the fees, the gates of the lycee soon close
upon their days of wilfulness and disobedience.
In place of the home life and the feminine in-
fluence with which they have been familiar, they
are confronted with a discipline of semi-military

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 71

severity. Games are not allowed, and in the
hours of recreation in walled playgrounds of a
generally forbidding order, walking and talking
alone are permitted. Here, as in the class-room,
the boys are perpetually under the eyes of the
pion, whose duties are restricted entirely to the
maintenance of order. Owing to suppression in
natural directions, it is not surprising if the
minds of the boys should turn into the unhealthy
directions of intrigue and pernicious literature.

M. Demolins, who a few years ago tried the
experiment of running his school on English lines,
has found the results excellent. So greatly
appreciated are his efforts to abolish the bad
features of the lycee that he is unable to meet the
demand on the capacity of his buildings. He is
of opinion that the Anglo-Saxon is superior to
the French because of the better training given
at school, discouragement of initiative and sup-
pression of independence being the chief features
of the schools of his own country, while the Anglo-
Saxon allows boys a freedom which develops
self-reliance and individuality.

" Every one knows our dreadful college,"
writes M. Demolins, " with its much too long
classes and studies, its recreations far too short

72 FRANCE

and without exercise, its prison walks a mono-
tonous going and coming between high heart-
breaking walls, and then every Sunday and
Thursday the military promenade in rank, the
exercise of old men, not of youth."

The boarder at the lycee, of course, feels the
harshness of the regime to a degree that the day-
boy never experiences, home hours mitigating
the severity of the long working day.

As a whole, it may be said that the ideal of
the educational system has been intellectuality
rather than that of character building, and in
the former France is superior to England, the
system producing a higher average of intellectual
capacity. If both countries could take to them-
selves the strong features that each possesses it
would be very materially to their advantage.
Changes in the right direction are already taking
place in France. It is quite probable that the
pion will be suppressed before long, and cricket,
football, and other manly and health -giving
games are beginning to take the place of the old
man's stroll under supervision. The fact that
the Boy Scout is appearing all over France seems
to herald the dawn of a growing sturdiness and
manliness in the youth of the nation. At the

CHILDREN OF PARIS IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 73

present day the average boy has an undoubtedly
girlish softness in his dress and general appear-
ance. He wears sailor suits at an age which
would produce laughter amongst Anglo-Saxon
boys. He appears in white socks for several
years longer than the English boy would tolerate,
and his thinly-soled boots suggest the promenade
rather than any form of strenuous game. His
clothes do not appear to have been made for any
hard wear, and as a rule the knickerbockers of
soft thin grey material so generally to be seen
are unfit for any rough use whatever. Even the
large black leather portfolios in which books
and papers are carried to and from school seem
to receive as careful handling as though they
belonged to a Government official rather than
that most destructive of creatures — the school-
boy. In England one is familiar with the sight
of four or five books dangling at the end of the
strap which secures them, enabling the owner to
convert his home-work into a handy weapon of
offence, but the soft leather case of French boys
and girls, which must be carefully carried under
one arm, offers no such fascinating by-purpose.

If parents keep their boys in socks for a
longer period than seems rational to the Anglo-

10

74 FRANCE

Saxon, they frequently go farther with their
girls, who often enough may be seen with bare legs
until they are nearly as tall as their mothers.

Very much stress is laid on the examinations,
which commence at the age of fifteen or sixteen,
when the lycee and college training terminates.
The system since 1902 has consisted of a period
of seven years divided into two parts. At the
expiry of the first, which consists of four years,
the pupil can choose one of four courses. The
first is Latin and Greek, the second Latin and
sciences, the third Latin and modern languages,
and the fourth sciences and modern languages.
Having passed three years on one of these
courses, he should be ready for the two examina-
tions by which he can obtain the degree known
as the Baccalaureat de V enseignement. This is
the outer gateway to be passed through before
the scholar can enter the citadels of any of the
great professions, such as law, letters, medicine,
or Protestant theology.

The State provides the higher education in
its universities and in its specialised higher
schools, and since 1875 private individuals and
bodies, so long as they are not clerical, have been
permitted to take part in the advanced educa-

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 75

tional work of the country, but the State faculties
alone have the power to confer degrees. The
five classes of faculties associated with the
various universities confer degrees in law, science,
medicine, letters, and Protestant theology.

The keystone of the arch of learning in France
is the Institut de France. It embodies the five
great academies of science and literature, but
omits that of medicine, which stands apart.

In England some social importance attaches
to a man on account of his having been educated
at Eton or Harrow and having afterwards taken
a degree at one of the two mother universities,
irrespective of his having shown himself an
indifferent scholar, but south of the Channel the
scene of a man's education counts for naught in
later life. The moral and social sides of the
English system would seem to have crowded out
to a great extent the intellectual side, which,
with the essentially practical people of France,
forms the whole structure. From the teacher
in the primary school to the heads of the uni-
versities no effort is made to influence character :
" As soon as the student leaves the lecture hall
he is free to return to the niche he has constituted
for himself, to its probable triviahty and its

76 FRANCE

possible grossness, or to the vulgar pleasures of
the town. . . . We lose the advantage of that
peculiar monastic, thoughtful life which is offered
to the young Englishman." ^

An almost childlike simplicity seems to be the
keynote of the religion of that portion of the
French people which still adheres to the observ-
ances of the Roman Church. The nation, until
recent years, professed the Catholic faith and
worshipped the Virgin as the mother of the
Saviour of the world. In her honour, and to
keep her presence ever in mind, to envisage her
to mortal eyes, they erected statues and placed
little figures at street-corners, by the road-side,
and upon the altars of churches, and these are
still objects of veneration among the people.
One of the largest and most imposing representa-
tions of the Virgin is Notre Dame de France, a
colossal figure cast from guns captured in the
Crimean War, which is erected on the summit of
the basaltic cliff which towers above the ancient
town of Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute Loire). The
figure is so gigantic — it stands forth gilded by
the rising or the setting sun high above one's
head, even when standing on the top of the rock

1 W. L. George.

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 77

upon which it has been erected — that one can
scarce forbear to look upon it without some
admiration, irrespective of its merits as a work
of art. The features are of a sweet and simple
beauty, although of a stereotyped order, and even
to those whose religious ideas do not lean in the
direction of the veneration of representations of
deities it is easy to see how a simple peasant, trained
in the religious system which erects such images,
can fall into the attitude of prayer by merely
looking on such an achievement. . . . Gazing
at the figure standing high in the midst of an
amphitheatre of picturesque mountains, one feels
some explanation for the attitude of the religious
towards the immense figure; . . . and then one
turns away to descend from the rock, and passing
behind the pedestal of the effigy one observes a
door, and above it a notice to the effect that on
payment of ten centimes one may ascend within
the Vierge, and when the maximum fee has been
paid one may actually place oneself within the
head and gaze out upon an immense panorama
from a position of wonderful novelty. . . . Where
is the vision, where the sense of fitness, where
any atmosphere of sanctity ? Does the in-
congruity of such an arrangement strike no one

78 FRANCE

among the religiously-minded people who visit
Le Puy ?

It would appear that the French prefer to
have all that is outward in their religion as
much a part of their daily lives as any other
objects of common use. Thus the coverings of
the inner doors of a French church are almost
invariably worn into holes or discoloured with
the frequent handling of those who every day
spend a few minutes in the incense-laden atmo-
sphere of their parish church. The floors are
dirty with the constant coming and going from
the streets, and the need for doormats does not
appear to be observed. On week-days, apart
from the clergy, it is exceptional to see a man
in a church unless he is there in some official
capacity. One will find men carrying out repairs,
and it does not seem to occur to them to remove
their hats; one will see them as tourists with
guide-books in their hands, or, as at St. Denis
in the suburbs of Paris, a man in uniform will
conduct visitors through the choir and crypt,
and he too finds it unnecessary to uncover his
head ; but one goes far to find any other than
women and children kneeling in prayer before
the altars or stations of the cross on any other

0f

^

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 79

day than Sunday. It is the women whose
rehgious needs bring them into places of worship
in the midst of the working hours of the week-
day, men rarely coming unless their steps are
directed thither for a wedding or a funeral.
And on Sundays few churches would be required
if the women ceased to attend.

Funerals have not yet lost their impressive
trappings as is the case in England, where even
the poor are beginning to find it less a necessity
to have the hearse drawn by horses adorned with
immense black plumes and long black cloths
coming down almost to the ground. In France
these things are still much in evidence, and
imposing black and purple hangings studded
with immense silver tear-drops are put up in
the church if the estate or the relatives of the
deceased can afford such melancholy splendour.
Before leaving the church after the funeral
service, friends and relatives pass one by one to
the bier, and there each takes a crucifix and
makes the sign of the cross.

The interior of a French church is, as a rule,
so dark and shadowy that the clusters of candles
burning before the shrines sparkle brilliantly in
the cavernous gloom of its apsidal chapels.

80 FRANCE

casting an uncertain and mystic light on pictures
and effigies of saints and apostles, on shining
objects of silver and gold, and on gaudy orna-
ment and tinsel. Looming out of the obscurity,
the ghostly representation of the crucified Christ
is faintly illuminated ; a few inky figures are
grouped before the altars, their blackness relieved
only by the white caps of the peasants — for it is
the custom for women to wear black when they
go to church ; the air is heavy with incense, and
one feels that superficial glamour which makes
its strong appeal to those who find satisfaction in
the mainly sensuous emotions caused by these
surroundings. When an organ pours forth its
sonorous and mellow notes and men's voices chant
Gregorian music before the brilliantly lighted altar
sparkling with golden ornament, when the solemn
Latin liturgy is recited and the consecrated
elements are raised by the priest, the average
religious requirements of the French would seem
to be satisfied. Those who do not find any satis-
faction in watching and listening to these offices
of the Roman Church as a rule drop into a state
of agnosticism, if not of complete irreligion. To
be logical one must do so, and a growing majority
of Frenchmen seem to find no other course

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 81

unless they belong to the comparatively small
body of Protestants or the Jewish communities.^
There can be no doubt at all that the Roman
Church has lost its hold on a vast proportion of
its adherents, and those who are still numbered
among the " faithful " are every year shrinking
in numbers.

" French Protestants," writes Mr. W. L.
George,^ "and French Jews are as devout, as
clean-living, as spiritually minded as our most
enlightened Churchmen and Nonconformists ; a
visit to any Parisian synagogue or to the Oratory
will demonstrate in a moment that the French
have not forgotten how to pray. The congrega-
tions are as large as ever they were, and they
contain as great a proportion of men as in
England." And he adds : " This distinction of
sex must everywhere be made, and particularly
in France, where Roman Catholicism flaunts a
sumptuous aestheticism, voluptuous and worldly,
capable of appealing both to the refined and to
the sensuous." Mr. George believes that French
Catholics have not turned against Christ, but
against the ministers of the Christian religion in

^ The Protestants number about 600,000, the Jews 70,000, and the
nominal CathoHcs 39,000,000.

" France in the Twentieth Century — an admirable work.

11

82 FRANCE

his land because they have been discovered to be
unfaithful servants. It is his belief that the
Church is dying — " dying hard but surely " ;
and who can quarrel with his statement that the
people have turned their backs on its ministers,
that they are on the threshold of agnosticism,
and that the Church is putting forth no hand to
stay them ? The next two or three generations
can scarcely fail to witness the death by atrophy
of the Roman faith in France; but the French
are not an irreligious people, and perhaps a wider
faith may spring up from the ashes of the creed
which is so fast growing cold.

One might compare religious systems to the
unresponsive edifices in which public worship is
conducted, for they seem equally incapable of
spontaneous adaptability to the needs of the
people, and only the stress and labour of the laity
ever produces any adaptation to the changing
needs of those for whom the structure exists.

Because the accumulated resentment of the
French people as a whole against the shortcomings
of their national Church has resulted in a complete
divorce from the State, and because the clergy
have rebelled against the laws which have
recently been passed, and have therefore become

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 83

in a certain sense outlaws — servants, as it were,
of a discredited section of the community — it has
been easy for superficial observers to come to
the conclusion that the French nation has virtu-
ally assumed the garb of atheism. This is
always the arrow which strikes the legislative
body determined to dissociate itself with any
form of religion, but as in England, where devoted
Churchmen are ranged on the side of disestablish-
ment, so in France the national voice that spoke
for a severance between Church and State was
not that of a people without religion, but rather
that of a people unwilling to maintain a system
which had fallen away from its duty and its
ideals. Atheism and agnosticism would appear
to be phases in the religious development of the
human race, the positions into which various
types of mind are driven when dissatisfied with
the explanation of the purpose, duty, and future
of the individual as set forth by a particular
Church. That some new development of the
truth will supersede that which has been cast
aside seems inevitable.

In this period of upheaval what is the attitude
of the people, of the peasant, to M. le Curit
Social intimacy between priest and parishioners

84 FRANCE

is very great, and the cmre is often a very
good fellow whose practical religion is much
broader than the ecclesiasticism he represents.
He is, roughly speaking, of the peasant class and
is regarded as socially inferior by the equivalent
to the " county " circle of his neighbourhood.
Unlike the English clergy, who are often dis-
tinguishable from the laity by little besides a
distinctive collar and hat, he is always to be seen
in his soutane and with white -bordered black
lappets beneath his chin. He is, as a rule, anti-
Republican, and is therefore out of sympathy
with the people and the whole apparatus of the
government of to-day. To a huge mass of the
people he is nicknamed the calotin.

Paul Sabatier explains how the association of
the Church with politics affects the relations of
priest and parishioner : —

At election times, especially, how great an impression
is made on the mind of the simple by the defeat of one
who has been put forward as the candidate of le bon
Dieu, and the triumph of the candidate of " the
Satanic sect " ! When such coincidences recur over
forty years with increasing frequency, the most pious
countryman begins to ask if Satan be not stronger than
the Almighty. The artisan, meeting his parish priest,
speaks in a tone at once commiserating and mocking of
God's business, which is not going well. Blasphemy !

ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 85

thinks our good priest. But no ; they have only
blasphemed who taught him to identify a political
party with religion. His rudeness is not very different
from that of Elijah, chiding on Carmel's summit the
priests of Baal. . . . But this rudeness, like that of the
prophet, disguises an outburst of religious feeling, still
awkward in its manifestation, and even, perhaps,
expressing itself by deplorable means . . . ^

Since 1882, when the undenominational schools
were established, there has been a fierce battle
between Church and State, which has scarcely
come to a close at the present hour ; but emerging
from the din and dust of the prolonged warfare
there is one salient fact, namely, a growing
desire among the great mass of teachers for
increasing the undenominational moral teaching
in the schools. A compelling force is obliging
the school to build up a strong moral training
for the young, entirely independent of clerical
influence.

^ France To-day: its Religious Orientation. M. Sabatier pro-
claims himself a Protestant who has sought to love both Catholicism
and Free Thought.

CHAPTER VI

SOME ASPECTS OF PARIS AND OF TOWN LIFE IN
GENERAL

The reckless driving and the wonderful lack of
regulation in the streets of the capital and the
majority of the cities of France do not prevent
the streets from possessing a character encourag-
ing sociality and relaxation. This is due to a
great extent to the ever-inviting cafe, which con-
trives to keep clean table-cloths and the oppor-
tunity of a comfortable meal in the open air within
six feet of a rushing and tempestuous stream of
wheeled traffic. In addition there is much market-
ing in France, which adds colour and human
interest to what might otherwise be a featureless
street or square. In walking as a mere visitor
through the streets of a French town, one seems to
witness more of the intimate life of the place in
a few hours than one would do in England in a

80

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 87

week. From the baking of bread to haircutting
and shaving and the eating of food, there is
much more of work and play visible from the
curb-stone. In England the staff of life seems to
reach the dining-room table by invisible means,
so seldom does one see bread carried through
the streets, but among the French — a nation
of bread-eaters — long loaves as well as circular
ones are to be seen tucked under the arm of
almost every tenth person one meets. The
working classes seem to be continually buying
bread freshly baked, and one loaf at a time !
And those who may be seen carrying bread or
vegetables, or whatever they have just purchased
at the market, are more at home in the street
than are Anglo-Saxons, who are apt to regard
the common highways of their towns as channels
for coming and going to and from business or
pleasure whereon lingering or conversation is
undesirable, indiscreet, and not without danger,
for it is generally recognised that those who pass
hours of rest or idleness in the streets are persons
without homes or of undesirable reputation.
But in a French city one is invited at every turn
to buy a newspaper or periodical at a kiosk and
to take a seat at a table close by, where, having

88 FRANCE

ordered a bock or a cup of coffee, one is free to
read undisturbed for hours.

In Paris the gossip of the boulevards is part
of the Hfe of a big section of the people, and yet
to the casual and superficial observer it might
be thought that there was less opportunity for
chatting in the streets than is offered in London.
The French boulevard is in reality no more free
from danger than the English street, but the
people have accustomed themselves to the con-
ditions. Among Latin peoples there is a time-
honoured weakness for throwing out of the
window all sorts and conditions of rubbish, and
those who are chatting in a patch of shade in
some quiet corner of a street may be rudely
disturbed by the fall of a basinful of old cabbage
leaves or other kitchen ejecta. Worse than this
are the strange and often offensive odours that
assail one in the streets. Imperfect sanitation is
commonly the cause of the noxious atmosphere
of so many streets in French towns. The artist
sometimes pays a heavy price for the picture he
obtains of some picturesque quarter on account
of the contaminated air he is obliged to breathe.
In Caen, where splendid Norman and Gothic
churches thrill those who appreciate mediaeval

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 89

architecture, the malodorous streets often frighten
one away.

Sanitation has improved enormously in recent
years, and is still making great strides forward,
but the people have a great deal to learn in the
use of the new appliances that are provided.
This leeway is less easy to make up than that of
mechanical contrivance, and much time will no
doubt elapse before every one is educated up to
the proper appreciation and use of sanitary
arrangements. Municipal authorities have also
much to learn. There should not exist the smallest
loophole for an architect to erect a modern
building without providing a direct outlet to
the open air to all the sanitary quarters, and
yet in a recently erected hotel in the Etoile
district of Paris, such a cardinal requirement of
health is ignored, the only ventilation being
a window that lights a cupboard for hot-water
cans, and that in turn is the sole ventilation of
a bathroom, outside air reaching neither the first
nor the last ! London, which before the Great
Fire was a city whose smells had become pro-
verbial, is now the cleanest and healthiest city
in the world, its sanitary by-laws leaving no
loopholes for slipshod work ; but Paris, the

12

90 FRANCE

world centre for the choicest and most exquisite
of perfumery, has still much progress to make
before complete enjoyment of its cheerful, busy,
richly coloured street life can be experienced.

Every one knows the difficulties of looking at
and observing with seeing eyes the everyday
objects with which one is surrounded. A little
girl paying a visit to London from the country
once pointed out to the writer what a number of
blind horses there were to be seen in the streets,
and he was obliged to confess that he had never
noticed any. Such limitations seem to debar
one from making comparisons between one's
own form of urban civilisation and another, but
allowing for a certain lack of observation in the
land of one's upbringing, there are some
features of French town life to which one may
draw attention.

Very early in his first experiences of Paris the
visitor discovers that the rule of the road is to
keep to the right, and that there is little certainty
of what may happen where the great streams of
traffic meet. The policeman of Paris may hold
up his baton, but it is not in the least likely that
a complete check to the traffic behind him will
result. After an exhaustive study of London

A TYPICAL COCHER OF PARIS.

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 91

methods the Parisian authorities have come to
the conclusion that it ^ is the French character
which prevents their officers from carrying out
the same methods in Paris. Notwithstanding the
quiet way in which the French submit to certain
laws which would not be tolerated in England,
they appear to resent control in this department
of life. The police of Britain are a bigger, more
solid and imperturbable type than those of their
neighbours across the Channel, but an east-ender
might make impertinent comments if the police-
man who held up his donkey -cart had patent
leather toe-caps to his boots — a by -no -means
unusual sight in Paris !

The quaint, noisy omnibuses pulled by three
horses abreast have been replaced by heavy
motor - propelled vehicles which still, however,
preserve the old features of first- and second-
class sections, and the standing accommodation
for eight or ten persons. One mounts and alights
from the middle of the rear of the vehicle, the
opening being guarded by a chain controlled
by the conductor — a method offering less oppor-
tunity for dropping off before the 'bus has come
to a standstill. Although the motor -cab is
present in considerable numbers, the horse-drawn

92 FRANCE

taxi still holds its own. It is cheap, and although,
through the close coupling of the front pair of
wheels, it can be overturned quite easily, it is a
decidedly pleasant means of conveyance, with
less anxiety for the fare than the auto-taxi,
but the drivers seem to desire to out -do the
chauffeurs in giving as much thrill and sensation
as skilful and often reckless driving will provide.

His hatred of the bourgeois — the " man in the street "
— in spite of, and indeed because of, his being a potential
client, is expressed at every yard. He constantly tries
to run them down, which makes strangers to Paris
accuse the Paris cabman of driving badly, while in point
of fact he is not driving at all, but playing with miracu-
lous skill a game of his own. . . . The cabman's wild
career through the streets, the constant waving and
slashing of his pitiless whip, his madcap hurtlements
and collisions, the frenzied gesticulations which he
exchanges with his " fare," the panic-stricken flight of
the agonized women whose lives he has endangered,
the ugly rushes which the public occasionally make at
him with a view to lynching him, the sprawlings and
fallings of his maddened, hysterical, starving horse,
contribute as much as anything to the spasmodic
intensity, the electric blue-fire diablerie, which are
characteristic of the general movement of Paris.*

No doubt the hansom-cab — the gondola of
London as some one termed it — would have

1

Rowland Strong, The Sensations of Paris.

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 98

survived if it had accepted the hmitations of
the taximeter, but refusing to adjust itself to
circumstance its numbers steadily diminished.

Among the omnibuses and taxis of both types
and the numerous private motor-cars there
passes at all times of the day a wonderful stream
of country vehicles. Vegetables are conspicuous,
but these might be overlooked, whereas the hay
and straw carts assail the eye by their immense
proportions. They might almost be dubbed
lazy men's loads, for they have the appearance
of moving hay - stacks and require the most
skilful manoeuvring in the midst of so much
impetuously driven traffic. These country carts
almost give the streets of Paris a provincial
flavour, their horses and drivers being more
essentially rural than anything one sees in London,
even in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden.
Riding quietly through the wheeled traffic the
sight of half a dozen members of the semi-
military Garde repyhlicaine is a very familiar
one. Their uniforms are so military in character
that visitors to Paris generally mistake them for
soldiers.

On the pavements of the streets a striking
feature is the number of women who go about

94 FRANCE

their business without wearing hats. In the
dinner hour of the midinette, between twelve and
one (from which she derives her name), this is
particularly noticeable, the streets and public
gardens overflowing with this hard-worked and
underpaid class of Parisienne. These girls and
women are the " labour " of the dressmaking
establishments wherein is produced all that is
most admired by the well-dressed women of the
world. The majority are very underpaid, the
young and inexperienced earning about 1 fr. 50
a day, the petites couturieres, as a rule, having a
wage between 1 and 3 francs a day, which does
not go far in Paris, where the cost of living is
roughly double that of London. In the leading
establishments the midinette may earn from
£35 to over £50 a year, but these are the highly
skilled ouvrieres and do not represent a very
large proportion of the whole, whose incomes
have been roughly estimated in three divisions,
each representing one-third of the whole number.
The most poorly paid third receives less than
5 francs a day, the intermediate section attains
the 5-franc level, and the most prosperous third
exceeds it to the amount already mentioned.
A small number of women become what is known

AUTUMN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS.

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 95

as premieres in famous houses in the Rue de la
Paix, the classic street from which the fashions
in woman's attire for the whole of the civilised
world are believed to emanate. These clever
French women are endowed with a very high
degree of taste and skill, and their gifts reach
a comparatively high market value, bringing in
an annual income of about £150.

The work-girls who take sewing to their homes
can earn from 75 centimes to 2 francs a day.
In her interesting book on Paris life Mile, de
Pratz gives the following two budgets of midi-
nettes receiving £34 and £48 per annum : —

850 fr. ■peT annum 1200 fr. per annum
(£34). (£48).

Lodging 100 £4 150 £6

Food 550 £22 750 £30

Clothes 100 £4 150 £6

Heat, light, washing, and recreation 100 £4 150 £6

850 1200

The struggle to make ends meet on the smaller
incomes is no doubt great, for Paris, it must
always be remembered, does not provide cheap
living for any one, not even in its poorest quarters.
As a whole the midinette class is badly fed and
therefore delicate and too often a prey to con-
sumption. It does not produce a high average

96 FRANCE

of good-looking girls, for, being fond of amusement,
late hours are indulged in very generally, with
the result that when the hour for work arrives
insufficient rest has been obtained. No doubt
in so large a class — they are computed to number
about 110,000 — there is a wide range of character
and morals, but there seems little doubt that, as
a class, the chastity of the most poorly paid
does not rank high. In a moral atmosphere
such as that breathed by Parisians as a whole,
it would be almost impossible for girls subjected
to so much temptation on account of poverty to
resist. And there is commonly no loss of self-
respect when the downward step has been taken,
for even when a girl convicted of such moral
laxity is blamed, she merely replies with calmness
that it is quite natural.

The Apache class lives in its own particular
quarter of the city, and its members are not
easily recognisable by the general public. The
fraternity tattoo a certain arrangement of dots
on the forearm by which recognition is instantly
obtained. These dots indicate the motto of
the Apache, Mort aicx vaches ! by which is in-
tended their perpetual warfare with the police.
This strange class of anti-social beings is recruited

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 97

from many grades of Parisian life, all suffering
from some abnormal mental condition unless
drawn into the grip of the strange brotherhood
by mischance when very young, as will some-
times happen with girls at an immature age. In
spite of the national training in arms of the young
men of France, this incredible class continues
to exist and to perpetrate outrage, murder, and
robbery. How many of these outlaws of society
have experienced military service, and to what
extent it has modified or accentuated their
abnormality, are questions to which one would
like to have answers.

Probably the average Parisian of the middle
classes is more aware of the enormities of the
concierge than of the Apache. The one is an
ever-present annoyance, and the other a thing
read about in the evening newspapers, but not
encountered personally. Not so La Concierge,
This individual is employed by a landlord to act
as his watchdog in a block of flats. His duties
are connected with showing the flats to prospec-
tive tenants, collecting rent, keeping the stair-
cases clean, and delivering letters, the last being
required because the Paris postman does not
climb the stairs in flat buildings — all the letters

13

98 FRANCE

for the building being delivered into the hands
of the concierge. It is this matter of one's
letters which gives the caretaker his power.
He uses it to extort liberal gratuities for every
small service, as well as a handsome etrenne on
New Year's Day. It is the landlord who is
at the fountain-head of the trouble. How
seldom is it otherwise ! He pays the concierge
an entirely inadequate sum for his services, and
as he has to supplement his income in some other
way he, as a rule, leaves his wife in charge for
a large part of the day and earns a supplemental
sum elsewhere. The Frenchwoman is too often
inclined to avarice, and it seems to be the excep-
tion to find in Paris a concierge's wife who will
not levy a form of blackmail on the tenants
whose letters come into her hands. She will
make herself familiar with the character of the
correspondence that each tenant receives, and if
insufficiently tipped will not hesitate to hold up
any letters that she believes are of importance.
The opening of letters with steam is not beneath
the moral plane of Madame la Concierge, and by
various means she obtains such an intimate
knowledge of the concerns of each tenant that
peace and freedom from endless petty annoy-

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 99

ances can only be bought at the price which she
deems satisfactory. Mile, de Pratz gives a vigor-
ous picture of this bugbear of flat life in Paris,
telling of the scandals that are circulated con-
cerning entirely innocent people who have failed
in the liberality of their etrennes, and how the
residents of ill-reputation buy immunity from
these baneful attentions by their liberal tips.
How long, it may reasonably be asked, will
Paris consent to this iniquity, which could be
remedied by the delivery of letters direct to the
door of each flat ?

It is often a matter of discussion how far the
proverbial politeness of the French goes beneath
the surface. Generalising on such a topic is
hedged about with pitfalls, and the wary are
disinclined to enter such debatable ground.
Compared to the British, whose self-consciousness
or shyness too often leads to awkwardness in
those moments of social intercourse when dexterity
is needful, the French are undoubtedly ages
ahead. The right phrase exactly fitting the
requirements of the moment comes easily to
their lips, and with it, as a rule, the right expres-
sion and attitude ; and yet one must travel often
in the miderground railways of Paris to see a

100 FRANCE

man give up his seat to a woman who is standing.
It is understood that a young man cannot offer
his place to a young woman, because it would
suggest arriere-pensees; but if this regrettable
state of affairs does exist, the restriction to such
action does not apply when an old woman
carrying a bundle is standing beside a youth,
who could not be accused of anything but courtesy
if he rose to save her the discomfort of standing.
But no one seems to think such action a require-
ment of common politeness. While one finds
great charm and civility among the assistants
in shops, which often add very much to the
pleasure of shopping, a disagreement on a busi-
ness matter may be handled with much less
courtesy than in a British shop. A hard, almost
angry expression will come upon madame or
mademoiselle's face, where over the Channel one
would meet a look of mere anxiety. But Paris
shopkeepers no doubt have a very cosmopolitan
world to attend to, and they perhaps encounter
many rogues. There is unevenness in manners
everywhere, and while one class of workers may
be soured by adverse conditions and lose their
natural charm in the economic struggle, another
will expand in the sun of easy and pleasant

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 101

conditions. The Parisian horse taxi-cab driver
with his picturesque shiny tall hat and crimson
waistcoat is not conspicuous for his politeness
unless his pour-boire is very liberal, and the
railway porter can easily be insulting if he is
dissatisfied with a tip. In London there is much
unmannerly pushing on to trams and omnibuses
during the morning and evening hours, restricted
here and there by the method of the queue, but
in Paris all the chief stopping -places of the
omnibuses are provided with publicly exposed
bunches of numbered tickets. On a wet day a
little girl or a cripple has merely to tear off one
of these slips of paper, and when the 'bus arrives
the conductor takes up his passengers in the
numerical order of their tickets — all unfair hust-
ling being thus eliminated.

The Parisian bonne a tout faire has been
diminishing in numbers for many years. In the
thirty years between 1866 and 1896 the total
was nearly halved, leaving about 700,000 of this
overworked and underpaid class. The day of
frilled caps has gone, and even a bib to the apron
is considered an out-of-date demand. It is no
doubt the need for stringent economy in the
flats constituting the greatest part of home life

102 FRANCE

in Paris, which is responsible for the dishke to
domestic service on the part of the young women
of the capital.

An undesirable arrangement in flat buildings
is the housing of all the maids of the building in
very small bedrooms on the top floor. In the
hours in which the girls are free from duty they
are able to do more or less as they please on their
floor, and the result is that the natural protection
of the home is missing in the hours of rest and
leisure, when their need is most pressing. The
average bonne a tout faire is not disinclined to
hard work, and she is clever and willing to put
herself to any trouble in an emergency or when
there are guests to be entertained. Boredom
however, seems to settle upon her during the
normal routine of life, and her buoyant nature
makes her inclined to sing and talk loudly about
her work. She is in a great proportion of cases
more intimate with the family than the servants
in London flats, and on this account her manner
assumes a familiarity that in the circumstances
is fairly inevitable. A man visitor will commonly
raise his hat to the maid and call her "Made-
moiselle."

Probably the Paris maid-of-all-work is not

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 103

worked any harder than the single servant in
London — the only real difference being the
morning marketing, which she regularly under-
takes. There is attractiveness in the life she
sees in the streets and markets, and in addition
there is the tradesman's sou which finds its way
into her pocket for every francos worth of goods
purchased. If honest the girl's commission begins
and ends with the sou du franc, but if she is
otherwise she will make little alterations to the
amounts in the household books, and thus add
by these petty but perpetual thefts a considerable
sum to her annual wages. How far such dis-
honesty is practised it is impossible to say, and
in the absence of any figures one may hope that
a few cases are the cause of much talk.

Rents in Paris are high, and the tendency is to
mount still higher. Blocks of fiats that have
been let at a quite reasonable rent are frequently
" modernised " with a few superficial improve-
ments and renovations and relet at vastly in-
creased prices. This is much the case with those
formerly let at from £60 to £100 a year, and the
restriction in the number of cheaper homes
available for the poor has been going on so
steadily that the problem has become one which

104 FRANCE

it will be necessary for the State to tackle. The
increase in rents has, in some instances, been
only 10 per cent, but in many instances it is more
than that, and here and there the upward bound
has reached three or four times that amount.

One is sometimes puzzled to know how the
Parisian struggles along, for besides his ascending
rent he has to pay much more for all household
stuff, whether it is curtains for his windows
(which are taxed), a cake of soap, or an enamelled
iron can. No wonder that the best sitting-room
is kept shut up on certain days of the week,
and that polished wooden floors are so frequently
seen in place of carpeted ones.

Tenants having large families are in a most
awkward predicament, for landlords on all hands
discourage them, and if the Government wish to
go to one of the root causes of the diminishing
birth-rate, they must see to it that the housing
of the middle and lower middle classes is a less
difficult and precarious feature of their struggle
for existence. Perhaps, now that the United
States has set the example of lowering and in
some instances sweeping away the protective
tariffs on certain articles, France may follow suit.
If the heavy duties on cotton goods were removed

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 105

there is no doubt whatever that the burden of
housekeeping in France would be instantly re-
lieved. But the rehef in this respect would be
trifling compared to that which would be felt
in the food bill. Tea costs from 4s. to 6s. per
pound. Sugar averages 5d., rice 6d., and jam
lOd. per pound. A remarkable instance of the
working of the tariff is given by Mile, de Pratz
in her interesting work already quoted. " In
a small village I know near Paris," she writes,
" thousands of pounds worth of fresh fruit and
beet-sugar are exported each year to England.
But this village uses English -made jam made
from their own fruit and sugar, which, after
being exported and reimported, costs half the
price of home-made French jam."

As recently as March 1910 the protective
system of 1892 was strengthened, duties being
raised all round. In support of the changes it
was argued that foreign countries were adopting
similar measures, and that fiscal and social
legislation were laying new burdens upon home
industries. With Great Britain still maintaining
its system of free imports and the United States
moving in the direction of Free Trade, the first
argument begins to lose its force.

14

106 FRANCE

These questions of rent and the cost of food
do not, of course, press upon the very consider-
able numbers of wealthy residents in Paris, but
they are not on this account less vital to the
well-being of the mighty cosmopolitan city.
And if these features of urban existence were
overlooked in any book, however slight, which
aims at putting before the reader some salient
aspects of French life, the blank would leave
much unexplained. Bearing in mind the expense
of living in the large towns a thousand little
things are at once interpreted.

It has been said of Paris that the population
belongs less to France than that of any other
city in the country, for the proportion of residents
of other nationalities has gone up prodigiously
in the last half century. There is a glamour
about the city which seems to act as a magnet
among all the civilised nations of the world.
" The aristocratic class," says Mr. E. H. Barker,^
" nominally so much associated with Paris life,
is becoming less and less French. The old
Legitimist families, so intimately connected with
the Faubourg St. Germain under the Second
Empire and a good while afterwards, who at

^ France of the French.

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 107

one time held so aloof even from the Bonapartist
nobility, have greatly changed their habits and
views of social intercourse. The two nobilities
now intermarry without apparent hindrance on
the score of prejudices, and mingle without any
suspicion of class divisions. But all this society
helps to form what is called Le Tout Paris,
which is almost as cosmopolitan as French."

When one stands before the great Byzantine
Church of the Sacre Coeur, that holds aloft its
white domes against the sky up above Paris on
the hill of Montmartre, and looks down on the
multiplicity of roofs, there is always a film of
smoke obscuring detail and softening the out-
lines of some portions of the city. Yet when one
walks through the streets the clean creamy
whiteness of the buildings would almost give the
stranger the impression that he had reached a
city that had no use for coal. Even in the older
streets where renovation and repairs are very
infrequent there is never a suspicion of that
uniform greyness that the big cities of Britain
produce. In all the great boulevards in the whole
of the Etoile district and wherever the houses
are well built and of modern construction, the
bright clean stone-work is so free from the effects

108 FRANCE

of smoke that a Dutch housewife would fail to
see the need for external cleaning. The fa9ades
of nearly all the houses in the newly reconstructed
streets have a certain monotony about them
which has been inherited from the days of
Hausmann's great rebuilding. There is seldom
any colour except in the windows of shops, for
the universal shutters, which in Italy are bril-
liantly painted bright green, brown, blue, or
even pink, are here uniformly white or the
palest of greys. So many of the new streets
are, however, planted with trees that the colour
scheme resolves itself into green and pale cream,
except in winter, when the blackish stems of the
trees add nothing to the gaiety of the streets.

Contrasting the streets in the neighbourhood
of the Pare Monceaux with those of Mayfair,
London has the advantage for variety of archi-
tectural styles and for complete changes of
atmosphere ; but for spacious splendour, for
what can properly be termed elegance, Paris
stands on a vastly higher plane. The dreary
stucco pomposity of Kensington and Belgravia
fortunately cannot be discovered in Paris, and
it is well for the world that few cities indulged
in this architectural make-believe. While

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 109

Belgravia can only keep her self-respect by
continually covering herself with fresh coats of
paint, the honest stone -work of Paris lets the
years pass without showing any appreciable signs
of deterioration. Unlike London, where there
are seemingly endless streets of two and three
storeys, Paris has developed the tall building of
five or six floors. The girdle of fortification has
no doubt directed this tendency. Where the
streets are not wide the lofty houses increase the
effect of narrowness, and many of the side streets
in the St. Antoine district have, with their
innumerable shutters, a very close resemblance
to some Italian cities.

It is a mistake to suppose that the whole of
Paris has been rebuilt ; for, apart from Notre
Dame and such well-known Romanesque and
Gothic churches as St. Etienne-du-Mont, St.
Germain, the tower of St. Jacques, and the
Sainte Chapelle, there are gabled houses of
considerable age in many of the by-ways. These
are almost invariably covered with a mask of stucco
that does its best to hide up their seventeenth-
century or earlier characteristics. The beautiful
and dignified quadrangular building that is now
called the Musee Carnavalet, was the residence of

110 FRANCE

the Marquise de Sevigne and was built in the
sixteenth century, although altered and added
to in 1660. Earlier than this is the fascinating
Hotel Cluny, a late Gothic house built as the
town residence of the abbots of Cluny. This
building even links up modern Paris with the
Roman Lutetia Parisiorum. Another interesting
architectural survival is the Hotel de Lauzan, a
typical residence of a great aristocrat of the days
of Le Roi soleil. The Palais du Louvre, dating
in part from the days of Fran9ois I., the Tuileries,
begun in 1564 and finished by Louis XIV., and
the Conciergerie wherein Marie Antoinette and
Robespierre were confined, are buildings of such
world-renown that it is scarcely necessary to
mention them.

In many ways Paris is similar in arrangement
to London. It is divided in two by its river,
which cuts it from east to west, and the more
important half is on the northern bank. The
wealthy quarters are on the west and the poorer
to the east. The great park, the Bois de
Boulogne, is also on the west side of the city.
In Paris, the ancient nucleus of the city was an
island in the river, but London, although it
originated on a patch of land raised high above

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 111

the surrounding marshes, was never truly in-
sulated. The Bastille, which may be compared
with the Tower of London, occupied a very
similar position not far from the north bank of
the river and at the eastern side of the mediaeval
city. All the chief theatres and places of amuse-
ment are on the north side of the river, and, as
in London, so are all the Royal Palaces; but
here the parallels between the cities appear to
end, and one observes endless notable differences.
The Seine divides the city much more fairly
than does the Thames. London has no opulent
quarter south of its river, but Paris has the
Faubourg St. Germain, where her oldest and most
distinguished residents have their residences —
houses possessing solemnly majestic courtyards
guarded by stupendous gateways. In the same
quarter are some of the more important foreign
embassies. And the river of Paris being
scarcely half the width of that of London has
made bridging comparatively cheap and resulted
in more than double the number of such links.
There is no marine flavour in Paris. No vessels
of any size reach it, and its banks are not there-
fore made ugly by tall and hideous wharf build-
ings. It is a walled city, being encompassed by a

112 FRANCE

circle of very formidable fortifications, still capable
of resisting attack by modern military methods.
Its broad avenues and boulevards, tree-planted
and perfectly straight, give the whole city an
atmosphere of spaciousness and of dignity that
is lacking in London, if one excepts the vicinity
of Regent Street and Piccadilly, and a few other
west-end thoroughfares.

Wherever one goes in France among the cities
and larger towns the ideas of big and eye-filling
perspectives are aimed at by the municipal
authorities and architects. Lyons, Nice, Orleans,
Tours, Havre, Montpellier, Nimes, Marseilles,
to mention places that come readily into the
mind, have all achieved something of the Parisian
ideal, and even the more mediaeval towns,
whenever an opportunity presents itself, expand
into tree-shaded boulevards of widths that would
make an English municipal councillor rub his
eyes and gasp. It is curious to witness how, in
many of the older towns, the narrow and cramped
quarters, necessitated in the days when city walls
existed, are continuing their existence in wonder-
ful contrast to spacious suburbs. The glamour
of these narrow ways is so entrancing to the
visitor and the lover of history that he trembles

PARIS AND TOWN LIFE 113

to think that a day may come when all these
romantic nuclei of French cities have been rebuilt
on the ideals of Hausmann.

Wherever one wanders in France, even in
mere villages, one can scarcely find a place that
has not at least one cafe with inviting little tables
on the pavement, giving that subtle Latin
atmosphere so refreshing to the Anglo-Saxon
(who, however, would never dream of wishing
to imitate the custom in his own country), and
so full of that curiously fascinating Bohemianism
which Mr. Locke has caught in the pages of The
Beloved Vagabond. Could Britain exchange the
public-house for the cafe half the temperance
reformer's task would be done, but one can
scarcely contemplate without a shiver the pro-
spect of eating and drinking in the open air
anywhere north of the Thames for more than a
few weeks of summer.

15

CHAPTER VII

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE

Peasant ownership of land does not always imply
prosperity, and because such a vast majority of
French peasants possess their own few acres,
one must not jump to the conclusion that all
these little farmers live comfortable and prosper-
ous lives. In very large tracts of what has so
often been called " the most fertile country in
Europe," ^ the peasant is only able to tear from
the soil he owns the barest existence. By
unremitting toil he makes his land produce
enough to give him and his family a diet mainly
composed of bread and vegetables. Meat, coffee,
and wine come under the heading of luxuries,
and so much that is nutritious is missing from
the normal dietary that it would seem as though
the minimum requirements of health were not

* The same claim is frequently made for England.
114

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 115

met. Long hours of steady toil, and food
which the Parisian would consider insufficient
to make life tolerable, is the lot of the peasant
proprietors of France wherever the soil is un-
generous or distance from railways and markets
keeps prices low.

In the unprofitable soils of the Cevennes, and
in certain parts of the province of Correze, the
peasants can cultivate little besides buckwheat
and potatoes. The latter, with chestnuts which
are also produced in these mountainous districts,
form the staple food of the agricultural popula-
tion, and their drink is water, which they some-
times enliven with the berries of the juniper.
This is the simple and hard-working life of those
whose lot is cast in what may be called the stony
places. Quite different are the conditions of life
in Normandy or the wonderfully fertile plain of
La Beauce, where is grown the greatest part
of the wheat produced in France. Here the
generous return for the labour expended on the
soil brings such prosperity to the peasant owner
that he often turns his eyes to higher rungs in
the social ladder than that of husbandry, offering
his land for sale, and so giving opportunities for
the capitahst to invest in a profitable industry.

116 FRANCE

Success may be said to bring with it dangers
to which the peasant of the poorer soils is not
subjected. Writing of the farmers of La Beauce
and of parts of Normandy, Mr. Barker says :
" Too often are they found to be high feeders,
copious drinkers, keenly, if not sordidly, acquisi-
tive, unimaginative, and coarse in their ideas and
tastes. Material prosperity, when its effects are
not corrected by mental, and especially by moral,
culture, has an almost fatal tendency to develop
habits that are degrading and qualities that
repel. ... It is to be noted as a social symptom
that among the class of prosperous agricultural-
ists in France, the birth-rate is exceptionally
low."

Of the 17,000,000 of the population who are
more or less dependent upon agriculture for their
livelihood, only about 6,500,000 actually work
on the soil. Those who own holdings of less
than twenty-five acres number nearly 3,000,000,
and the total area of land held in this way is
something between 15 and 20 per cent of the
whole cultivated area. About three-quarters of
a million persons possess the balance. The sizes
of the holdings, of course, vary enormously.
Besides those who own their land, there is the

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 117

large class of metayers, who are part of a
complicated system which persists in spite of
its theoretical impossibility of smooth working.
Where a landowner is a gentilhomme campagnardf
he will in most cases have a few farms attached
to his residence, which is always le chdteau
to the peasant, however difficult to discover its
old-time manorial splendours may have become.
The farmers who work for the landowner are
not rent-payers : they merely share with him in
the results of their labour, a system of co-opera-
tion which results in very close relations between
landlord and farmer. No hard and fast rules
are followed as to the proportion of the crops
which falls to the landlord, or what share he has
of the cattle. It is common for him to furnish
draught animals as well as seed and implements.
This system is limited very much to those dis-
tricts where agriculture has stood still for a very
long period, such as the Limousin, and the total
of the land worked on the metayage system is
only 7 per cent of the whole of the cultivated
land.

To this day the methods of husbandry main-
tained in the less accessible departments are
scarcely ahead of the Romans, and on the slopes

118 FRANCE

of the Pyrenees one may still see the flail in use
for threshing purposes, while the plough with a
wooden share, which seems likely to hold its own
for a long time to come in certain of the moun-
tainous districts, is the same as those depicted
by prehistoric sculptors high on the rock-faces
of Monte Bego on the Franco-Italian frontier.

In the greatest part of France oxen are used
for draught purposes, and these picturesque,
cream-coloured beasts, yoked to curious big-
wheeled country carts, are always an added
charm to the country road. Whether they are
seen patiently plodding along a white and dusty
perspective of tree-bordered road, or are standing
quietly in a farmyard with lowered heads while
the queer tumbril behind them is being loaded,
they have picture -making qualities which the
horse lacks.

The carts are wonderfully primitive, two
wheels being favoured for purposes which in
England are always considered to require four.
In fact the four-wheeled cart is difficult to dis-
cover anywhere in rural France. Even the giant
tuns containing the cider they brew in Normandy,
or those that are filled with wine in the Midi and
other grape-producing districts of the land, are

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 119

borne on two great wheels, and a pair of clumsy
poles that, when horses are used, are tapered
down to form shafts.

Farms differ in character and attractiveness
according to local conditions in every country,
but France shows an astonishing range of styles.
In the north one finds the timber-framed barn
and outhouse delightfully prevalent, and in
Normandy the farm often possesses the character
of those to be seen in Kent and Sussex, although
south of the Channel the compact, rectangular
arrangement of barns is perhaps more noticeable
than to the north. Between the Seine and the
Loire, the timber -framed structures are very
extensively replaced by those of stone; but
although lacking in the interest of detail, their
colour is exceedingly rich, for the thatched roofs
are very frequently thick with velvety moss,
and the cream-coloured walls are adorned by
patches of orange and silvery -grey lichen. Wooden
windmills are conspicuous on the shallow un-
dulations of the plain of La Beauce. Where
roofs are tiled, they too have become green with
moss, giving a wonderful mellowness to the
groups of buildings. Farther south the farms are
still of stone, and some of them have an atmo-

120 FRANCE

sphere of romance about them in their circular
towers with high conical roofs, and with even the
added picturesqueness of a turret or two.

South of Poitiers the roofs of nearly all the
houses take on the low pitch and the curved
tile which belong to the whole of the southern
zone of the country, and prevent one from
noticing any marked architectural change in
crossing the frontiers into Spain or Italy.

Taken as a whole, the villages are without any
of the tidy charm to be found in nearly every
part of England. A hamlet gives the road that
passes through it the appearance of a farmyard.
Hay, straw, and manure are allowed to accumu-
late to such an extent that in the twilight a
stranger might think he had inadvertently left
the road and strayed into a farm. And whereas
in England the rural hamlet does not usually
crowd up to the thoroughfare, it is often very
much the reverse in France. The writer has
traversed thousands of miles of French roads,
has wandered with a bicycle in the byways, but
has not yet seen a village green with a pond and
ducks, or even a churchyard with a suspicion of
that garden -like finish which makes England
unique. The velvety turf that grows on Britain's

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 121

sheep-cropped commons does not exist outside
that land, and one never even expects to find
the French wayside reHeved by such features.

Economy in using every inch of soil, in avoid-
ing the waste of sunshine on arable lands, and in
preventing the waste of timber caused by letting
trees grow untrimmed, has given the French
landscape its most characteristic features. Hedges
which the Englishman has learnt to love from his
childhood, first because of the wild life they
shelter and the blackberries and nuts they
provide, and later on account of the beauty they
add to every cultivated landscape, are an ex-
ceptional feature in France. In immense areas
such a dividing line is never to be seen, and
saving perhaps for a small tree that is scarcely
more than an overgrown bush, there is little to
break the horizon line except the tall poplars,
birches, and other trees that line the main roads.
These are not allowed to live idle, ornamental
lives : they, like the toiling peasant, must work
for their living by providing as many branches
as possible for the periodical lopping. In this
way wood for the oven and for the kitchen fire
is supplied in nearly every department of the
country,

16

122 FRANCE

In the fat and prosperous districts of
Normandy, where rich grazing lands produce the
butter for which the province is famed, hedges
are as common as in England, and where mop-
headed trees are not in sight, it is not easy to
notice any marked difference between the two
countries.

Brittany is the province where the wayside
cross is most in evidence, but in every part of the
country these symbols of the Christian faith are
to be found. Outside Brittany it is rare to-day
to see any one taking any notice of them, and no
doubt the spread of education and the consequent
shrinking of the superstitions of the peasantry,
make the crucifix less and less a need on dark
and misty nights. Offerings of wild flowers are
still tied to the shaft of the wayside cross, where
they rapidly turn brown, and resemble a handful
of hay. The well-head is a feature of the farm
and cottage which varies in every part of the land.
It is frequently a picturesque object, having
in many localities a wrought-iron framework for
supporting the pulley- wheel.

Horses and mules are seldom to be seen with-
out some touch of colour or curious detail in their
harness. It may be a piece of sheep-skin dyed

A BRETON CALVAIRE. THE ORATORY OF JACQUES CARTIER.

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 123

blue and fixed to the top of the collar, or that
part of the harness will be of wood, quaintly
devised, and studded with brass nails and other
ornament. Red woollen tassels are much in
favour in some districts.

The breeding of horses in great numbers takes
place in the north coast regions of Brittany,
Normandy, and between the mouth of the Seine
and the Belgian frontier. Using cattle for
draught purposes so very extensively no doubt
keeps down the number of the horses in the
country, but in 1905 the total had risen to
considerably over three millions. Tarbes, a town
near the Pyrenees, gives its name to the Tarbais
breed of light cavalry and saddle-horses, and
the chief northern classes are the Percheron, the
Boulonnais for heavy draught work, and the
Anglo-Norman for heavy cavalry and light
draught purposes. Cattle, pigs, and asses have
been increasing in numbers in recent years, but
sheep and lambs have shown a very decided
falling off, 22 J millions in 1885 having dropped
to 17| in 1905. Sheep are raised on all the
poorer grazing lands of the Alps, the Jura, the
Vosges, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees, and
also on the sandy district of Les Landes on the

124 FRANCE

Bay of Biscay. South-western France in general,
and the plain of Toulouse in particular, produce
a fine class of draught oxen. In the northern
districts they are stall-fed on the waste material
of the beet-sugar and oil-works, and of the dis-
tilleries.

It is a popular error to imagine that the State
owns all the forests of France and even the way-
side trees. This is due no doubt to the fact that
certain governmental restrictions do apply to the
owners of growing timber. The total of forest
land amounts to only 36,700 square miles, or
about 18 per cent of the whole country, and of
this about a third belongs to the State or the
communes. Fontainebleau has 66 square miles
of forest, but although the best known, it is not
by any means the largest, the Foret d'Orleans
having an area of 145 square miles. Much
planting of pines has taken place in Les Landes,
and that marshy district, famed for its shepherds
who use stilts for crossing the wet places and
water -courses, has bv this means altered its
character very considerably. Reafforestation is
taking place on the slopes of the Pyrenees and
the Alps which have been laid bare by the wood-
man's axe.

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 125

Standing quite apart from the rest of the
agriculture of the country is the wine-grower.
His industry requires very speciahsed knowledge,
and his dangers and difficulties are in some ways
greater than those of the farmer. It may be the
terrible insect called the phylloxera that destroys
the growth of the vine, it may be mildew, or it
may be over-production, but any of these troubles
bear hardly upon the vine -grower, who is,
broadly speaking, a humble type of peasant with
very little capital. Before the war with Ger-
many these people were a fairly prosperous and
contented class, but since that time formidable
troubles have smitten them very heavily. The
awful visitation of the phylloxera is said to have
cost as much as the war indemnity paid to Ger-
many, i.e. £200,000,000, and when it was dis-
covered that certain American vines were not
subjected to the ravages of the pest, and feverish
planting had established the new varieties in the
land, a new trouble, in the form of over-produc-
tion, presented itself to the unfortunate growers.
More land had been converted into vineyards
than had ever produced such crops in the past,
and a large production of wine in Algeria so
lowered prices that in 1907 affairs in the Midi

126 FRANCE

reached a critical state. Riots occurred at
Beziers and Narbonne, incendiarism and pillage
took place at Epernay and Ay, and for a time
the Government found itself confronted with an
infuriated mass of peasants, who blamed it for
the disastrously low prices then prevailing. They
also attributed the stagnation in the trade to the
fraudulent methods of sale that had become
common. They were not very far from the truth
in stating that they did not reap so much advan-
tage as those who grew cereals and beetroot, while
paying for the protective policy in the high prices
of food and all other commodities.

The peasant might almost be said to wear a
uniform, so universal in France is the soft black
felt hat and the dark-blue cotton smock in which
he appears in the market-place. In this garb
one sees a wide variety of national types, from
the English-looking men of Normandy to the
dark-complexioned, black-haired, and lithe race
of the south. Often the latter have an almost
wild appearance, terrifying to the British or
American girl who strays any distance from the
modern types of palatial hotel which can now be
found in regions of medicinal springs in the
Pyrenees. He is, however, a much less formid-

A PEASANT CHILD OF NORMANDY,

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 127

able person when he enters into conversation,
and, taken as a whole, the agriculturalist is a
very pleasant-mannered, hospitable, and dignified
person. He possesses in a marked degree the
domestic virtues, the level-headed shrewdness,
the patience, thrift, and foresight which give
steadiness to his nation. In small towns in the
south he can be a person of immense sociality.
The place during the warmer months of the year,
after the work of the day is done, buzzes with
conversation, the steady hum of which would
puzzle a stranger until he saw its cause. In the
strange little walled town of Aigues-Mortes, the
entire male population seems to congregate in
the central square, and there passes the evening
at the tables of the three or four cafes. So much
conversation as that indulged in by these peasants
of the Rhone delta would seem sufficient to pro-
duce solutions for all the problems of the wine
industry, as weU as those of rural populations in
general.

Care for the future makes the peasant toil
and save for his children. Husband and wife
will keep their children's future in view in a most
self-effacing fashion, and if their shrewdness in
business may go rather beyond the mark, it is in

128 FRANCE

the interests of their family that they are work-
ing. The reward is too often that which comes
to the old — the sense of being a burden to their
offspring when rheumatism and kindred ills have
robbed them of further capability for toil.

In the country districts that are out of touch
with modern influence, the peasant keeps his
womenkind in a state of subservience that is
almost mediaeval, and the custom of keeping the
wife and daughters standing while the father and
sons are at meals is still said to be maintained in
some parts of the country.^ The peasant is often
a tyrant in his family. In some districts he is in
the habit of calling his sons and daughters " my
sons and the creatures." He is sometimes quite
without any interest in politics. The various
types are, however, so marked that the impossi-
bility of labelling the peasantry of such a large
slice of Europe with any one set of characteristics
is obvious. By reading Zola or George Sand,
one gets an insight into the peasant life which
little else can give.

One of George Sand's descriptions of the
peasantry of the Cevennes is vigorous and vivid.
She writes of it as a race " meagre, gloomy,

* Hannah Lynch, French Life in Town and Country.

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 129

rough, and angular in its forms and in its instincts.
At the tavern every one has his knife in his belt,
and he drives the point into the lower face of the
table, between his legs ; after that they talk,
they drink, they contradict one another, they
become excited, and they fight. The houses are
of an incredible dirtiness. The ceiling, made
up of a number of strips of wood, serves as a
receptacle for all their food and for all their rags.
Alongside with their faults I cannot but recognise
some great qualities. They are honest and
proud. There is nothing servile in the manner in
which they receive you, with an air of frankness
and genuine hospitality. In their innermost soul
they partake of the beauties and the asperities
of their climate and their soil. The women have
all an air of cordiality and daring. I hold them
to be good at heart, but violent in character.
They do not lack beauty so much as charm.
Their heads, capped with a little hat of black
felt, decked out with jet and feathers, give to
them, when young, a certain fascination, and in
old age a look of dignified austerity. But it is
all too masculine, and the lack of cleanliness
makes their toilette disagreeable. It is an exhibi-
tion of discoloured rags above legs long and

17

130 FRANCE

stained with mud, that makes one totally disregard
their jewellery of gold, and even the rock crystals
about their necks." This description is growing
out of date in regard to the hats and knives,
but the picturesque white cap, with its broad
band of brightly coloured ribbon, worn by nearly
all the women over a certain age, which George
Sand does not mention, seems likely to persist.

The peasant women of France are too often
extremely plain and built on clumsy lines.
Exceptional districts, such as Aries and other
parts of Provence, may produce beautiful types,
but the average is not pleasing. This, at least,
is the consensus of opinion of those who profess
to know France well. The writer would not
venture on such a statement on his own authority,
although his knowledge of a very considerable
number of the departments entirely endorses
their opinion. But the more one knows of pro-
vincial France the more prepared does one
become for surprises, and the less ready to
generalise.

Between the educated and uneducated there
is less of a gulf than in other countries, on account
of the very high average of good manners to be
found throughout the whole country, and because

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 181

of the quick intelligence that is common to the
whole people. The almost pathetic awkward-
ness of the old-fashioned English hodge scarcely
exists in France.

Superstitions among the peasantry are steadily
dying out, even in Brittany. The rising tide
of knowledge is finding its way into every creek
and inlet, and is steadily submerging beliefs in
supernatural influences. At one time the rustics
lived in the greatest fear of a rain-producing
demon who was called the Aversier, but the
science of meteorology has reduced his personality
to a condition as nebulous as the clouds that
heralded his approach.

Until quite recent times a very large propor-
tion of the medical work in rural districts was
carried out by the nuns of the numerous convents,
and the preference for the free services of the
kindly Sisters, however limited their knowledge,
to those of the fully qualified doctor of the locality
is easily explained. The rural practitioner's usual
fee has only lately been raised from two francs
to three, but on driving any distance an addi-
tional charge of one franc for every kilometre is
made. The fee of the town doctor, if he is a
general practitioner with a good practice, is from

132 FRANCE

five to ten francs a visit. If he belongs to the
type of second-class specialist not common in
England but numerous in the cities of France,
his fee is from ten to twenty francs a visit. The
first-class specialist charges fifty francs, and some-
times seventy -five francs, for a visit. In the
country the medical man is often content with a
bicycle as the means of reaching his patients,
for his income is not very often above £500 a
year. No doubt the suppression of the monastic
orders in France has improved the position of the
doctors, who found few patients in certain parts
of the country, especially the north-west, where
the fervour of religious belief inclined the rustic
to put the most complete faith in the prescrip-
tions of the nuns. No doubt their ample experi-
ence in the treatment of small ailments (which
the average practitioner so often finds tiresome)
gave the Sisters considerable success in their
medical work. Women doctors in every country
could enormously supplement the work of the
men, and perhaps the day will come when the
general practitioner has a lady assistant to look
after the minor ailments which so often become
serious through lack of sufficient attention. How
relieved would numbers of men doctors be if they

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 133

could turn over to a lady assistant the visiting
of all cases of chronic colds, dyspepsia, and the
like I

Whole books have been devoted to the chateau
life of France, and it would be easy to overstep
the Hmits of this chapter in writing on this
interesting subject. The wayfarer in France
who knows nothing, or next to nothing, of the
interiors of the large houses he sees scattered
over the country would probably say that they
all looked as though shut up and for sale. He
sees in his mind the weed-grown main avenue
and the ill-kept pathways. Visions come to
him of lawns that have grown into hay-fields,
of formal gardens converted into vegetable
gardens, of terrace balustrades falling into decay,
of walls whose plaster has fallen away in patches
like those of a Venetian palazzo, of closed shutters,
and a look of splendours that have passed.
Those who have seen a little more than the mere
outsides of the great houses will tell of occupants
whose incomes have shrunk to such small sums
that they are reduced to living in a few rooms of
their ancestral homes, with insufficient servants
to do more than keep the place habitable, and to
maintain the output of the kitchen garden and

134 FRANCE

a few flowers for the house. That there are many
such chateaux is perfectly true. The occupants
are mainly anti-Republican in their views. They
belong to other days, and are too proud to enter
any profession which would bring them into
jarring contact with the big majority who are
without Royalist leanings. This obliges them to
live in threadbare simplicity on the small income
their shrunken fortunes provide. Two or three
old servants, a few dogs, a horse or two, and a
few other luxuries surround them. Formal visits
at long intervals are paid to neighbours, who
often live at some distance. The cure and
perchance the doctor are intimate visitors ;
there may be a few relations who come for
visits, but this is often the whole of the social
intercourse of M. and Mme. X., who reside in a
portion of a chateau of the time of Louis XV.
which stands surrounded by a large tract of wood-
land. But ample incomes, and here and there
great wealth, maintain many of the great houses
of the countryside with modern luxury in every
department. Changes have come in the chateaux
in recent years which have made breaches in the
wall of old-fashioned formality that was so uni-
versal until quite lately. Instead of sweet wine

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 135

and little hard sponge fingers, tea and brioches
appear at le jive o'clock, as it is often called.
Where the old-fashioned ideas of faithful servants
will allow it, and the masters and mistresses have
felt the influences that flow from Paris, changes
in furnishing appear in the abandonment of the
bareness and austerity of the reception-rooms.
Where such influences have not penetrated, one
may be quite sure to find all the furniture in the
rooms ranged against the waUs, and a complete
absence of flowers, books, or the smaller odds
and ends of convenience or ornament common to
most Anglo-Saxon homes. There may be fine
tapestries, numerous family portraits and other
pictures, elaborate pieces of Boule and ormolu
furniture, ornate clocks, and many other beauti-
ful objects, but restraint and constraint are the
prevalent notes. Bare polished floors and stair-
cases with only small mats or rugs here and there
remain characteristic of the chateau interior.
Too often there is no more individuality in a
house than would exist were it thrown open to
the public as a show-place or museum.

In many of the chateaux of the wealthy the
charm of what is essentially French is linked
with modifications in the directions of Anglo-

136 FRANCE

Saxon convenience and comfort, producing much
the same result as is found in those EngHsh
homes wherein an affection for a Louis XV.
atmosphere has introduced the tall silken or
tapestried panels and the stilted and elaborate
furniture of the eighteenth century.

Surrounded by extensive forests containing
wonderful green perspectives, the chateau is often
quite cut off from the sights and sounds of the
outer world. When the time of the chasse comes
round, the woods may perhaps be enlivened by
visions of the chasseurs in pink or green coats,
three-cornered hats, and tall boots, and the sound
of their big circular horns may be heard. The
silence is more effectually broken when shooting
parties meet and the hattue takes place.

Motor-cars have made neighbours more acces-
sible, and changes are taking place on this
account. In pre-motor days the mistress of a
chateau was often quite unprepared for visitors.
Madame Waddington, the American wife of a
senator, who has put some of her experiences of
social intercourse in the country into a charming
volume,^ describes a visit paid to a chateau that
was half manor, half farm.

^ Ch&teau and Country Life in France, Mary K. Waddington, 1908.

THE CATHEDRAL AND PART OF THE OLD CITY OF CHARTRES.

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 187

We drove into a large courtyard, or rather farmyard,
quite deserted ; no one visible anywhere ; the door of the
house was open, but there was no bell nor apparently
any means of communicating with any one. Hubert
cracked his whip noisily several times without any
result, and we were just wondering what we should do
(perhaps put our cards under a stone on the steps)
when a man appeared, said Mme. B. was at home, but
she was in the stable looking after a sick cow — he would
go and tell her we were there. In a few minutes she
appeared, attired in a short, rusty-black skirt, sabots
on her feet, and a black woollen shawl over her head and
shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us, was
not at all put out at being caught in such very simple
attire, begged us to come in, and ushered us through a
long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms,
the shutters not open, and no fires anywhere, into her
bedroom. All the furniture — chairs, tables, and bed —
was covered with linen. She explained that it was her
lessive (general wash) she had just made, that all
the linen was dry, but she had not had time to put it
away, and she called a maid, and they cleared off two
chairs — she sat on the bed. It was frightfully cold.
We were thankful we had kept our wraps on. She said
she supposed we would like a fire after our long cold
drive, and rang for a man to bring some wood. He
(in his shirt-sleeves) appeared with two or three logs of
wood, and was preparing to make a fire with them all,
but she stopped him, said one log was enough, the ladies
were not going to stay long ; so, naturally, we had no
fire and clouds of smoke.* She was very talkative,
never stopped, told us all about her servants, her
husband's political campaigns. . . . She asked a great
many questions, answering them all herself ; then said,

18

138 FRANCE

* I don't offer you any tea, as I know you always go
back to have your tea at home, and I am quite sure
you don't want any wine.'

Washing days only occur in large French
households once a quarter, or at the most monthly,
so when the moment arrives the whole establish-
ment is in a ferment. An orgy of soap-suds
takes place, and coaling ship in the Navy is
scarcely more disturbing to the even flow of
daily affairs.

Conversation, where people seldom paid a
visit to Paris, ran always in a groove in the
chateaux and lesser houses described by the young
American. The subjects were the woods, the
hunting, the schoolmaster, the cure, local gossip,
and much about the iniquities of the Republic.

Chateau life is too frequently dull. It as often
as not is as out of touch with the realities of
modern life as many English country houses
where there are no young folk, and where there is
no active connection with London and the busy
world. The hunting season and shooting parties
bring life and activity for a time, but " twice-
told tales of foxes killed " do not carry any
fertilising intellectual ideas into the byways of
upper-class life. An excess of formality pervades

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 189

every portion of the day, from the conversation
on a new novel to the afternoon drive or the
solemn game of hezique after dinner. There is
a tendency for politics to bulk largely in con-
versation, even among women, while among men
heat is easily generated on this topic, the French
being natm-ally bellicose. Subjects outside
France, and matters that do not directly concern
the French, rarely come up for discussion, unless
the occupants of the chateau are intellectuels.
It is mainly due to political controversy that
duels arise, nearly all the recent encounters
having been between journalists and politicians.
At the present day, honour is commonly satisfied
when the first blood has been drawn, and when
pistols are used, hits are infrequent. To show
how lightly he took the matter, Ste. Beuve fought
under an umbrella. Thiers fought a duel, and
so also did the elder Dumas, Lamartine, Veuillot,
Rochefort, and Boulanger. Even to-day (1913)
septuagenarian generals are not too old to chal-
lenge one another. General Bosc (seventy-two)
having sent his second to demand satisfaction
of General Florentin (seventy-seven) for an un-
founded charge of encouraging the use of illegal
badges in societies formed for the training of

140 FRANCE

boys in military duties ! It is astonishing that
the French should maintain duelling when it is
well known how opposed was Napoleon to the
absurd practice. " Bon duelliste mauvais soldat,"
he used to say, and when challenged by the King
of Sweden, his reply was that he would order a
fencing-master to attend him as plenipotentiary.
But the French have a keen sense of personal
honour, and one remembers that Montaigne
said, " Put three Frenchmen together on the
plains of Libya, and they will not be a month in
company without scratching each other's eyes
out."

A poor man can hardly afford the luxury of
a duel, for in Paris it costs about 300 francs,
and if one has no friend who is a doctor willing
to attend without a fee, the disbursements will
even exceed this amount I The first expenses are
the taxis for your seconds when they go to meet
the other fellow's supporters. These meetings
take place at cafes, and their bills have to be met
by the duellists. Pistols, if they are used, are
hired from Gastine Renette, who inflicts a
scorching charge of about 100 francs for the loan.
If swords are used they are bought, and the
outlay is less, but not every one who is challenged

OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 141

is sufficiently expert to run the chances of using
white weapons. Further expenses are incurred
in the hiring of a vehicle in which to drive to the
spot selected for the honourable encounter. The
drive is punctuated by halts for refreshment for
the doctor and the seconds, as well as the coach-
man. When the conflict has taken place there
is often much more than " coffee for one " to be
paid for by the duellist. Not only does custom
require him to invite doctor and seconds to
lunch at an expensive restaurant, but if the duel
has re-established amicable relations, there is a
double party to be entertained. To find a quiet
and suitable spot for the meeting is often exceed-
ingly difficult, the gendarmerie in such con-
venient places as the Meudon Woods being
perpetually on the alert, and having offered
rewards to any who warned them of the arrival
of " a double set of four serious-looking gentlemen
in black frock-coats arriving in landaus, with one
gentleman in each set with his gueule de travers.^'
Mr. Robert Sherard has described the pre-
liminaries to a duel forced upon him a few years
ago.

" . . . . My fencing had grown very rusty," he
wrote, " so . . . I went to a fencing school to be coached.

142 FRANCE

The master . . . had the reputation of being able to
teach a man in two lessons how not to get killed in a
sword duel. I was not anxious to get killed, so I availed
myself of his instructions. These mainly consisted in
showing one how to hold one's point always towards
one's adversary with extended arm. When a man so
holds his weapon it is, it appears, impossible for the
other man to wound him. At the same time it is said
to be advisable to develop great suppleness of leg and
ankle so as to be able to leap back, still holding one's
point extended, in the event of the other man's rushing
forward with such impetuosity as possibly to break
down one's guard. It was further explained to me,
that if whilst leaping back I could also dig forward with
my sword, most satisfactory results might be hoped for
(for me, not for the other man)."

It was disappointing to Mr. Sherard, after
gaining much proficiency in leaping backwards
while digging forward with his point, to find that
his antagonist would only fight with pistols.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE

Broadly speaking, one half of France is moun-
tainous, and the other flat or undulating. All
the mountains are on the eastern half, the high
grounds of Normandy and Brittany being scarcely
more than hills. The whole country might, for
some purposes, be considered as an inclined
plane, for in travelling from the Alps on the
eastern frontiers to the Atlantic coast the altitudes
(omitting the valley of the Rhone) are constantly
decreasing. Thus, with the exception of the
Rhone, which carries the snow-waters of the
Bernese and Pennine Alps, the Vosges and the
Jura chains, into the Mediterranean, the waters of
nearly the whole of the more habitable three-
quarters of the country drain westwards to the
Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. Most
of this immense reticulation of river and stream

143

144 FRANCE

is included in the three great systems of the
Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne. The Adour
drains the triangle between the Pyrenees and
the Garonne ; the Charente waters the Plain of
Poitou between the Garonne and the Loire, but
both are of small account in comparison to the
vast areas included in the basins of the great
rivers.

Both the Rhone and the Garonne are of
foreign birth, the first beginning life at the foot
of the great Rhone Glacier in Switzerland,
feeding on her snows and glaciers all the year
round, and the second rising in a Spanish valley
of the Pyrenees.

The Loire, the longest of her rivers, is, however,
entirely a possession of France. It is, like the
Seine, a cause of very much anxiety on account
of its inconstancy. At one season of the year
it inundates large areas with its superabundance,
and at another it is capable of running so low
that only mere streams flow between the sand-
banks. So imfortunately situated is the city of
Tours in times of flood that it has found it neces-
sary to surround itself with a protective dyke.
The chief cause of sudden inundations is when
the flood- waters of two or three tributaries

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 145

conspire to pour in their contributions to the
main channel simultaneously, and only when
these headstrong young things are held in check
will there be any hope of a fairly regular level of
water in the main course. Two centuries ago
(1711) the need for curbing the flood- waters was
recognised so clearly that a dam was constructed
at Pinay, a village 18 miles above Roanne. It
held up 350 to 450 million cubic feet of water,
and has been very successful in maintaining the
supply of water in the river-bed during seasons
of drought, as well as checking the violence of
the floods. In recent times three other dams
have been built, two of them near the busy
industrial centre of St. Etienne, but until several
others have been constructed the flood -waters
cannot be held in check.

Its immense length of 625 miles takes the
Loire through ten departments, but the changes
of scenery are not so remarkable as those of the
Rhone. The source is in the Cevennes, about
4500 feet above sea-level, on the east side of the
Gerbier de Jonc, and almost in sight of the Rhone.
Through Haute Loire in the marvellously pictur-
esque region of dead volcanoes near Le Puy-en-
Velay it takes its course northwards, flowing at

19

146 FRANCE

the foot of basaltic cliffs and chestnut-clad slopes.
On commanding spurs ruined castles are perched
in most romantic fashion, and if it were not for
their painful inaccessibility, the demand among
the wealthy for these little strongholds of the
Middle Ages would run up their value to astonish-
ing figures.

The action of water in the past has been
vastly more energetic in the Auvergnes and
the Cevennes in the ages since their masses
of plutonic rock were produced than at the
present day, for the scoria and the general
debris of seismic disturbance has been so much
eroded that the throats of volcanoes filled with the
last product of the immense heat below here and
there stand out stripped of their cones. One of
the most remarkable of these phenomena is to
be seen at Le Puy. This strange aiguille has
been crowned with a beautiful Romanesque
chapel for some nine centuries, and it is just
possible that a Roman temple stood there at an
earlier date.

In the neighbourhood of St. Etienne the Loire
is considered to be navigable. It traverses the
alluvial plain of Forez, the mountains of that
name to the west separating it from the basin

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE UIT

of its great tributary the AUier, which takes a
roughly parallel course and joins it just below
Nevers. If rivers could express their feeling by
other means than overproduction and strikes,
the Allier would no doubt say something forcible
as to the ascendency of its neighbour, whose
claims to be the parent stream are open to
question.

Nearly all the way through this plain of
Forez the Loire, in fine weather, resembles a
ribbon of fairest blue threaded through lace of
exquisite delicacy, for it is bordered by trees
growing close to the water-side, and only now
and then does the band of blue show an un-
interrupted surface. Lower down bare red hills
are encountered, through which the river has
forced its way to the plain in which stands the
town of Roanne, after which its course is less
picturesque for a time. This is perhaps a
scarcely accurate statement, for picture-making
qualities with trees, cattle, and distant hills are
scarcely ever absent, but there is a certain
monotony in the scenery such as one can hardly
find on the Thames or the Wye. From Nevers
to Orleans there are no towns on the river, which
gradually turns its course to the west, flowing

148 FRANCE

exactly in that direction at Orleans, where its
ample width adds much interest and charm to a
very much modernised city. Its habit of flooding,
and so causing immense damage over large areas,
has made it necessary to construct very formid-
able dykes, which now protect the country it
traverses between La Martiniere and Nantes.
Between Orleans and Tours, where embankments
do not exist, the writer has seen the cream-
coloured flood-waters foaming and swirling past
trees, fences, and hay-stacks over large areas of
the Sologne. Here and there it has been almost
impossible to see any indications of the usual
river-bed, and so level is the country to the south
in the neighbourhood of Beaugency that there
seems nothing to check the floods for several
kilometres from the river. On these occasions
one trembles on account of the danger to which
the thirteenth -century bridge at Beaugency,
patched, and in part rebuilt, is hourly exposed.
It is the oldest bridge on the Loire.

Below Blois embankments contain the river,
and the roadway on that which defends the
north side provides the charming riverside drive
to Amboise and Tours familiar to all who have
visited the romantic chateaux of Touraine. The

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 149

average rise of the river in flood is 14 feet, and
these dykes are quite equal to this task, but
when, as in 1846 and 1856, the Loire raised its
surface to over 22 feet, even these banks were
useless. With dredging, embanking, and dam
construction the river is being gradually harnessed,
but there is still much to be done before riverside
towns can contemplate the rapid melting of
snow in the mountains without the gravest
anxiety.

An upper course in a country of impervious
rock means that the volume of water is not
reduced by absorption, and the difficulties of the
river are increased when it encounters the tertiary
beds of the formation to which Paris gives its
name. In this soft soil the Loire gathers up
great quantities of detritus, which it deposits
farther down, producing the sand- banks which
cost the communities large sums to remove.

If the middle part of its course is not very
interesting, the Loire removes that reproach
between Orleans and its mouth. Its waters, and
those of some of its shorter tributaries, reflect the
towers and crenellated walls of some of the most
remarkable and interesting of all the chateaux of
France. Blois, the scene of the murders of the

150 FRANCE

Due de Guise (who had instigated the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew) and of his brother the Cardinal
of Lorraine ; Amboise, with its great tower, con-
taining a spiral roadway for carriages and the
courtyard in which Mary Stuart had, in 1560,
been the swooning witness of a most appalling
massacre of 1200 Huguenot prisoners, the Due
de Guise refusing to listen to her entreaties that
they should be spared ; Chenonceaux, the scene
of many a royal hunting party, and the possession
for a time of Diane de Poitiers, and Chaumont,
which Catherine de Medici obliged Diane to take
in exchange ; Langeais, where rich furnishings of
the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance bring
one into the very atmosphere of the poignard and
of deadly intrigue ; and Angers, with its seven-
teen round towers, begun by Philippe Auguste,
are all eloquent of the romantic age of French
history, of human passion, of love, hate, and
despair.

It would not be easy to think offhand of any
river of similar length and importance whose
course shows such amazing dilatoriness as that
of the Seine. The statue of a nymph placed at
its source by the city of Paris is only 250 miles
from the sea in a direct line, but the river seems

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 151

to have an unconquerable desire to postpone the
hour when it is swallowed up by the English
Channel, and by turning out of its normal
direction, northwards or southwards, every few
miles it has dug for itself a channel 482 miles
in length. Such sinuosities on the course of a
great river might be called undignified, if one
could not point to that part of the course of the
Moselle that lies between Treves and Coblentz,
and to the Ebro in the middle part of its journey
between Saragossa and the sea. The increased
friction at the numerous sharp curves prevents
the flood- waters from getting away with the
rapidity the Parisians sometimes desire, and this
is partly responsible for the serious damage done
in the capital when circumstances combine to
send down an abnormal quantity of water from
the higher tributaries. In January 1910 the
height of the river above the normal was 24 feet,
and the racing waters swirled against the key-
stones of the bridges. But if the Seine mis-
behaves itself at intervals,^ its average flow is so
steady that its navigability is greater than the
other important rivers. This excellent quality

* Great risings of the Seine occurred in 1658, 1740, 1799, 1802,
1876, and 1883.

152 FRANCE

is due to the fact that about three-quarters of the
basin (an area of some 30,000 square miles) is
formed of permeable deposits, and consequently a
vast absorption is constantly taking place. The
waters subtracted in this way are given back by
the perennial springs supplied by the saturation
of different strata. In rainless summer weather
the first two or three dozen miles of the river
frequently dry up, and only from Chatillon is it a
permanent river. Tributaries of importance then
begin to flow in. The Aube and the Yonne are
followed by the Loing and the Essonne, and just
before Paris the confluence with the Marne takes
place. At the door of the last-mentioned river,
longer than the Seine by 31 miles, is laid much of
the blame for the volume of the floods. Its source
is in the Plateau de Langres not many miles to
the north-east of the Seine. Rich pasture-lands
broken with long lines of tall- stemmed trees and
brown-roofed villages are typical of the scenery
of the main river and its tributaries above Paris.
The painter who loves to be in the midst of
opulent nature is happy here. Quaint groups of
tall trees, whose foliage in the fall of the year
turns to those delicate yellow greens and subtle
browns that are a never-failing joy to those with

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 168

seeing eyes, are everywhere arranged in some
delightful scheme in which reflections in smooth
oily waters add a double charm to the scene.

It is not until Paris has been left behind that
the river begins to wash the bold white ramparts
of the cretaceous beds. In and out of the deeply
indented front the meandering river takes its
way, on the right bank a wall of gleaming white
cliffs and on the left green savannahs stretching
to a far and level horizon. In many places the
escarpments of chalk have the characteristics of
ruined drum towers, of barbicans, and of broken
curtains, so that when Richard Coeur-de-Lion's
^^ flllette d^un an,^^ the Chateau Gaillard which he
caused to be built with such incredible speed,
comes into view, it is at first difficult to believe
that it is anything more than a still more realistic
natural effect. From the high ground that
commands the chateau one looks over one of the
giant loops of the river, hemmed in by green-
topped cliffs of the same marine deposits that
form Gris Nez and the curious caves of Etretat,
as well as the white cliffs of Albion. At one's
feet are the still very perfect ruins of a castle
that stood on the frontier of England's possessions
in France seven centuries ago, and lower still is

20

154 FRANCE

the little town of Le Petit Andely huddled for
protection at the base of the castle cliff.

Farther west, where the cliffs fall away,
stands that historic city of France — Rouen, the
ancient capital of Normandy. It is a port, for
the Seine at this point becomes navigable for
fair-sized sea-going steamers, and one may watch
the unloading of china clay from Cornwall among
the various imports carried directly to the quays.

Possibly the waterway to the sea was
looked upon with little joy by the inhabit-
ants of the city during the ninth and tenth
centuries, when at any time, and without
much warning, the shallow -draught vessels of
the Vikings might appear on the river. How
these bloodthirsty pirates came and came again
in spite of strenuous resistance, heavy losses, and
much Dane-geld, is a terrible chapter in the story
of the Seine. How the night sky became copper-
coloured under the furnace glow of burning
houses, churches, and monasteries, is a picture
which no historian of the river can fail to put
into vivid words. Long ago, however, Rouen
recovered from the disasters inflicted by the
Northmen, and those who wander through her
picturesque streets can find traces of buildings

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 155

that came into existence not very long after this
period.

A rare type of steel bridge spans the Seine at
Rouen. It consists of a travelling platform,
large enough to take horses and carts, and all
the usual load of a ferry-boat, which is slung from
a light framework connecting two tall lattice
steel towers. This curious achievement of
modern engineering and the very tall iron fieche
of the cathedral form the salient features of all
distant views of the city.

Some of the peninsulas carved by the vagaries
of the river are entirely given up to forest, and
for many miles dark masses of trees extend to
the southern horizon. Dykes hold the river to
its course below Rouen. Before they were built
it was impossible for vessels of 20-feet draught
to navigate the river except under exceptional
conditions. A notable feature of the lower
reaches is the bore which occurs at every tide
and reaches its maximum height of about 8 feet
in the neighbourhood of Caudebec, where enter-
prising watermen entice the visitor into their
boats to enjoy a natural water-show that quite
eclipses the artificial thrills of the " Earl's Court "
order.

156 FRANCE

Beautiful and historic buildings are thickly
strewn along the lowest reaches of the Seine.
The ruined abbey of Jumieges, where Edward the
Confessor was educated, raises its lofty Norman
towers high above the trees at the southern end
of a big loop ; the monastery of St. Wandrille,
which is now converted into a private house and
became the home of Maeterlinck a few years ago,
is in a pretty valley leading from the river ;
Caudebec, with its glorious Gothic church and
romantic old streets, stands on the right bank
and has a sunny quay, and an open view
across the sparkling waters, the opulent level
pastures, and the belts of forest beyond ; Lille-
bonne is the Julia Bona of Roman times, and
has important remains of a Roman theatre,
besides the castle, in whose great hall — alas ! no
longer existing — ^William the Norman announced
to a great gathering of leading men his project
of invading England ; Tancarville Castle, with
its prominent circular tower, is reflected in the
broadening waters nearer the estuary, where
Harfleur looks across to Honfleur, and both seem
to dream of the days when their great neighbour
Le Havre was not.

Being an entirely French river, the Loire has

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 157

been described first in this chapter; the Seine
followed, being a smaller river, although of more
commercial importance. Its basin, it should be
mentioned, is not entirely French, some of its
water being taken from Belgium. Of the two
great rivers of foreign birth the Rhone is of the
greater importance. It has a drainage area of close
upon 38,000 square miles, and is the greatest river
of all those that pour their waters directly into
the Mediterranean. Besides this the Rhone is
numbered in that distinguished group composed
of the greatest of the rivers of Europe. More
than any of the rivers of France it stands out as
a big factor in history. One thinks of Hannibal
with his host and his elephants faced by the
swiftness and breadth of its flow ; of the terrible
struggle of the Romans with the Cimbri and
Teutones on its banks; of St. B^nezet in the
twelfth century copying the methods of the
Roman architect of the Pont du Gard, and accom-
plishing what had never been done before, i.e.
the construction of a stone bridge that could
resist the onslaught of the flood -waters for
centuries. Four of the big elliptical arches still
stand, seemingly as strong as the day they were
erected, and above one of the piers rises the little

158 FRANCE

Romanesque bridge chapel where the body of the
good builder was buried.

The source of the Rhone is fitting for such a
mighty waterway. It begins life as a torrent
that pours from the foot of the great Rhone
Glacier, 5909 feet above sea-level. It is now
ascertained that it is the glacier itself from under
which it emerges which gives birth to the river,
and not the warm springs which issue from the
ground at the point formerly reached by the
glacier. Very early on its course another glacier-
fed torrent adds its waters to the Rhone, which
foams and rages through a gorge of typical
Alpine grandeur. The exuberance of its youth
is maintained by the torrents that feed its
adolescent stages. It falls more than 3600 feet
in less than thirty miles from its source, joined
at frequent intervals by companions born of ice
and snow, such as the Eginen, the Binna, and the
Massa, a child of the Aletsch Glaciers. Below
Brieg comes the Saltine, and then follows a quiet
stretch, when the growing river passes through
a stretch of alluvium — a dull period, a first
governess, as it were, to a high-spirited youth —
where floods are frequent. Below the old town
of St. Maurice the river is confined within the

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 159

narrow gorge that forms the western entrance of
the Vallais, and it emerges from this gateway to
Switzerland to flow across the marshy plain that
was formerly the south-eastern end of the Lake
of Geneva. Year by year the debris of the
Bernese and the Pennine Alps is washed down
by the tireless waters, and the date is approxim-
ately ascertainable when the lake will have
ceased to exist. That will be a sad day for the
Rhone, for it is through the filter-like action of
the lake that the river flows forth freed from its
burden of detritus, and Byron's " blue rushing
of the arrowy Rhone " will describe a river whose
character has changed for ever, unless the hand
of man erects barriers in its course, and so
introduces periods of artificial repose. But
France to-day does not receive from Switzerland
the gift of a river in its unsullied youth, for not
long after it has passed from the lake it is con-
taminated by an untutored glacier-bred youth
fresh from the Mont Blanc range, whence it has
carried down much solid matter. For a certain
distance the two rivers do not recognise one
another, the waters refusing to mix, but propin-
quity brings its familiar result and justifies the
copy-book maxim concerning evil companionship.

160 FRANCE

All through the long journey to Lyons the
Rhone preserves the character of an uncivilised
mountain-bred river, of small service to commerce
or communication, although it is termed " navig-
able " from a point between Le Pare and Pyri-
mont. It must be said in defence of the river
that the circumstances of its path in life do not
tend towards the restful stability beloved of
commerce. No sooner does it enter France than
it is obliged to fight its way through a constricted
channel between the Credo and the Vuache, and
gorge succeeds gorge for the greatest part of the
distance between Geneva and Lyons. And who
is there possessing any love for untrammelled
nature who does not love the river's wild moods,
its impetuosity, its generosity, and its reckless
enthusiasm. By the time it has reached the
great city of Lyons it has, however, subdued its
wild ways, for having come within sight of the
beautiful Saone it passes through the city on a
sedately parallel course, and very soon they are
wedded. For the rest of its life — a distance of
230 miles — the Rhone is a hard-working member
of society, carrying day by day the manufactures
of Central France down to the ancient " middle
sea." It was the little time of engagement, the

THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE OF ST. BENEZET, AVIGNON.

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 161

brief interval before the marriage with the Saone
was consummated, that produced the peninsula
whereon the second city of France was founded,
and gave it a situation of the greatest seciu'ity in
unsettled times. No doubt the Segusiani, who
are generally mentioned as the earliest people to
occupy the tongue of land, had had predecessors
on the same spot, but the fogs of prehistoric
times prevent one from knowing much of the
settlement before the Roman had reached the
confluence of the rivers. Then the mists roll
away, and one has a vision of Agrippa making it
the centre of four great roads ; Augustus is seen
giving the city a senate and making it the place
of annual assembly of representatives from the
sixty cities of Gallia Comata. Besides conferring
these distinctions, the reign of Augustus saw the
building of temples, aqueducts, and a theatre.
In A.D. 59, during the reign of the half-demented
Nero, the city was burnt and afterwards rebuilt
on grander lines. Great buildings succeeded one
another until the two rivers must have reflected
as fine a city as could be found within the Roman
Empire. But the unsettled centuries of the Dark
Age of Europe brought successive waves of de-
structive invasion to Lugdunum, and for evidences

21

162 FRANCE

of the Roman period of the city it is necessary to
go to the museum, where, however, the Gallo-
Roman objects are numerous and of the greatest
importance.

Farther down its course the great river's
swift-flowing flood has on its banks the towns of
Vienne, Valence, Avignon, Tarascon, and Aries,
all by a curious chance on the left bank, although
at Avignon and Tarascon there are sister towns
on the opposite side, and Aries has a suburb
across the water. Vienne and Aries still boast
notable Roman structures, and Orange and
Nimes, as well as the Gard, the last tributary the
river receives before entering the period of its
dotage in the Carmargue, preserve vast Roman
buildings at no great distance from the Rhone.
It is just possible that the great part this river
has played in the making of France might have
received a far less adequate recognition had
these visual tokens of the days of imperial Rome
vanished as did so many others.

In its journey southwards from Lyons the
character of the country traversed by the Rhone
imdergoes remarkable changes, and after Valence
there is a decidedly southern aspect in the
landscapes. The olive begins to appear, the

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 168

vine is cultivated on all sides, and dark lines of
cypresses become conspicuous. From Avignon
the dusty limestone country extends across
Provence to the sea, and the arid sun-baked hills
terraced here and there for vineyards, the lines
of sentinel cypresses, and the constant presence
of the olive are the chief features of scenery that
might be in Turkey, in Asia, or the Holy Land.
And yet this river began life in an Alpine glacier
and passed its middle age in the fertile lands of
west-central France. The delta of the Rhone is
a huge triangular area enclosed between the
Grand Rhone and the smaller branch it throws
off near Aries. It is called the Carmargue, and
is a flat waste only cultivated at the river sides,
and in certain patches helped by irrigation.
Almost treeless in great portions, and exposed
to the fierce mistral that blows its cold Alpine
breath upon the delta whenever the mood arises,
it is surprising to find any towns or villages in the
whole district. Yet Aigues Mortes and St. Gilles,
and a few villages, keep alive under the most
adverse conditions. Below Aries, to the east
of the river, and extending to the Etang de Berre,
is the stony plain of La Crau, and there too, in
spite of the climatic discomforts and lack of soil,

164 FRANCE

two or three villages have come into existence
along the main road between Aries and Aix-en-
Provence. The Crau is probably more the work
of the Durance than of the Rhone, which has
deposited its burden of ice-carried boulders in the
Lake of Geneva for ages, while the Durance in its
comparatively short course from the Maritime
Alps has no filtering vat, and in its periods of
flood has forced millions of large stones down to
the Rhone delta, gradually building up a barrier
between itself and the sea, and necessitating a
junction with the Rhone just below Avignon.
When the sun beats down on the level waste of
stones, whose depth averages from 30 to 45 feet,
such heat is produced that a mirage is a not
uncommon result. Any explanation for such a
remarkable number of stones accumulated in one
place was so hard to be found in early days that
it was necessary to resort to the supernatural,
and Strabo records the legend that it was Zeus
who bombarded with these projectiles the
Ligurian tribesmen who attacked the early
Phoenician traders and colonisers of the mouth of
the Rhone.

The Garonne, the last of the four great rivers
of France, is the least interesting. As already

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 165

mentioned it is of foreign birth, its head-waters
being in the Maladetta chain of peaks in a Spanish
portion of the Pyrenees, and the river has
traversed about 30 miles before it enters France
through the cliise of the Pont du Roi. One of the
two torrents in which the river begins its life
plunges into a cavity in the rock, known as the
Trou du Taureau, and does not appear again for
two and a half miles. The Rhone also had formerly
a small subterranean experience in its upper
course, but the roof of rock has been destroyed.
The course of the river is roughly north-
westward until it reaches the formidable plateau
of Lannemezan, where it is turned sharply to the
east, carrying with it the waters of the Neste, a
considerable stream fed by the snows of Mont
Perdu and its big neighbours. In this part of its
course the scenery is exceedingly fine. Before
the snows have melted off the mountains there
are always the pale blue-grey peaks flecked with
sunny patches, and slopes forming a magnificent
background to dark wooded hills full of purples
and ambers, and in spring the more subtle browns
turning to yellow and the palest suspicion of
green. Immense views are obtained from the
Lannemezan plateau, the frontier mountain-range

166 FRANCE

stretching away east and west in a most imposing
perspective of white peaks.

On its eastward course the Garonne passes
the little town of St. Gaudens, whose name is
derived from a Christian boy who was martyred
in 475 by Euric, king of the Visigoths. St.
Martory, the next town, spans the river with a
bridge guarded by a formidable eighteenth-
century gateway which Arthur Young thought
could have been built for no other purpose than
to please the eye of travellers. After this the
westward tilt of France begins to assert itself,
and the river works northwards to the city of
Toulouse, where it gradually turns towards the
west. Toulouse, while owing much to its river,
does not forget the ill-turns it has received from
its mountain-born waterway, which carried away
the suspension bridge of St. Pierre in 1855, and
twenty years later, in a disastrous flood, de-
molished the bridge of St. Michel and 7000 houses
in the Faubourg St. Cyprien, while about 300
people were drowned. This suburb is on the
left bank, and its situation on the inner side of
the curve made by the river as it passes through
the city makes it peculiarly liable to suffer from
floods. The Pont Neuf, occupying a central

THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 167

position, was built about the middle of the
sixteenth century by the sculptor Nicholas
Bachelier, whose arches have proved capable of
resisting the angry moods of the Garonne until
the present day. He adorned with his work
many of the churches and mansions of Toulouse.
For the remainder of its course the river keeps
to a north-westerly direction, and passing along
the northern edge of the plateau which diverted
its course, it absorbs all the rivers that flow from
it. There is no other town of any consequence
until the great port of Bordeaux is reached.
This is not many miles from the mouth of the
Garonne, for when the Dordogne adds its flood
to the longer river the wide tidal estuary called
the Gironde has been entered. It is scarcely
fair on the Dordogne to call it a tributary of the
Garonne when it does not join that river until
it has entered the broad waterway common to
both, but it is undoubtedly a part of the Garonne
system. With the exception of the town of
Bergerac — a place of no importance and of less
interest — the Dordogne has only one other town
on its banks, the little port of Libourne at its
mouth where the wines of the locality are
shipped.

168 FRANCE

The Adour and its important tributary the
Gave de Pau figured conspicuously in Wellington's
successful operations against Marshal Soult in
the concluding period of the Peninsular War,
and it was during the siege of Bayonne by Sir
John Hope, while the Duke was following Soult
towards Orthez, that the famous bridge of boats
was built across the river below the town. The
construction of this bridge entailed enormous
risks in getting the boats across the bar at the
river's mouth, and its successful accomplishment
was considered one of the greatest engineering
feats achieved by the British army during this
period.

f

:

k^

c ■ %

CHAPTER IX

OF THE WATERING-PLACES

French sea-coast watering-places fall easily into
two groups — those of the English Channel and
those of the Mediterranean. The first may be
subdivided into the fashionable places between
Deauville and the Belgian frontier and the go-
as-you-please resorts of Brittany. There are
long intervals between the different resorts, and
few would dream of wandering along the coast
from one to another; but on the Mediterranean
the Riviera is almost one continuous chain of
watering-places from St. Raphael to Mentone.

In the early days, when English doctors were
beginning to recommend their more wealthy
patients to winter on the French Riviera, there
was little beyond the sunshine, the equable
climate, the colour and the loveliness of the
scenery to attract the visitor, and what more,

169 22

170 FRANCE

one asks, could any rational being who has gone
away with congenial companions require ? A
visit to the Riviera amply answers such a frivolous
question. In the early days, visitors and tired
politicians, perhaps of the type of Lord Brougham,
or less strenuous people to whom the fogs of the
northern winter were a periodic menace, found
no hotels much above the average of the country
inn, and villas were not. Obviously these things
had to be provided, and now from Cannes to
Caravan, which is within a shout of the Italian
frontier, there is a very nearly continuous chain
of villas and hotels. And where villas are too
close together to permit the erection of a newly
projected Hdtel Splendide, a terrace is constructed
a little higher up the face of the sea-front, and
the new building offers to its guests finer views
and less noise than those who stay lower down.
Villas are pleasant enough, but they can become
dull to those with a passion for amusement, a
desire to escape from themselves or whatever
one cares to call the disease, and a hotel to such
offers very little more. Besides, one is practically
driven to bed at a quarter to ten, so a casino is
a sheer necessity. Then no one who wishes to
be healthy can be so for long without exercise,

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 171

and a golf-course must be provided. This is a
difficulty on the French Riviera only overcome
at Cannes, where the alluvial Plaine de Laval
near La Napoule offers suitable ground. Every-
where else the mountainous nature of the coast
vetoes the game. Lawn-tennis, however, is quite
possible even where steep slopes reach down to
the sea. The race-course, too, has been found a
necessity for existence, and it has been provided.
The casino offers gambling and music and
theatrical performances. But this is not enough,
there must be a theatre too. A Battle of Flowers
is a relief to the monotony of the days, and at
Nice such an extravagance is indulged during the
Carnival, the climax of the season's manufactured
gaiety. Besides all this there are regattas, motor
weeks, pigeon-shootings, exhibitions of hydro-
planing. . . . The list of distractions is now
so enormous that the visitor almost needs a visit
to one of the quiet spots beyond Genoa to rest
before returning to the gaieties of the season in
Paris or London.

The English were the discoverers of the French
Riviera from the health-resort standpoint. They
wrote books describing fine air and the attractions
of this wonderful coast, and the social distinction

172 FRANCE

of some of the writers assured an attentive
audience. Lady Blessington penned an account
of her journey along the Riviera in 1823, which
reveals a condition of things as far removed from
the luxury of to-day as are the shores of Patagonia.
To journey from Nice to Florence was then more
or less an adventure. " The usual route by
land," she writes, " is over the Col di Tenda, and
via Turin, but this being impracticable owing to
the snow, and as we had a strong objection to a
voyage in a felucca^ we determined to proceed to
Genoa by the route of the Cornice, which admits
of but two modes of conveyance, a chaise a
porteurs, or on horseback, or rather on muleback."
The Lady Blessingtons of to-day travel on an
excellently engineered and, for the most part,
a dust-free road, in the luxurious ease provided
by the builders of the modern motor-car de luxe.
The six-cylindered engine purrs so softly that
the sound of the waves on the rocks beneath the
road is not lost, and even the faint smell of petrol
is overcome by the exquisite productions of Roget
et Cie.

Hyeres stands quite apart from the long chain
of fashionable resorts. It is a picturesque old
town separated from the sea by two or three

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 173

miles of salt marshes, and only ranks as a watering-
place on account of the proximity of Costebelle,
where modern hotels perched picturesquely on
the wooded hills known as the Montagnes des
Oiseaux look across the lies d'Or to the beautiful
Maure Mountains. The villages perched on the
face of the cliffs, and those standing on the
intervals of alluvial shore along the coast of Les
Maures, are typical of the whole Riviera before
the leisured and wealthy classes of the western
nations began to make their annual incursions.
East of the valley at whose mouth stands Frejus,
dozing in the midst of its eye-filling evidences of
importance in Roman times, is St. Raphael, with
its hotel quarter known as Valescure, high among
the pines on the first slopes of the densely wooded
Esterel Mountains. Healthfulness is still the
main attraction here ; but those who do not thirst
for distracting gaiety love the sweet-smelling
solitudes and the bays where the porphyry rocks,
purple-red as the name implies, are overhung by
masses of dark pines, and bathed by waters that
reflect sky, trees, and rocks in a wonderful con-
fusion of strong colour, reminiscent of bays on
the south Cornish coast. Hotels have appeared
near the larger villages on the littoral of the

174 FRANCE

Esterels, but Nature is still free down to the
splashing waves, and it is only when Cannes is
reached that one is in the real Riviera atmosphere.
The first view of the sweeping coast-line between
Cannes and the confines of Italy that suddenly
unfolds itself as one goes eastwards on the coast
road is one of surpassing loveliness, provided that
the weather lives up to its honestly-earned reputa-
tion. A great sweep of sea of an exquisite, a
tender, a most lovely blue fills half the scene. It
is perhaps shaded here and there by clouds, and
their shadows turn the blue to amethyst. There
is a fringe of white along the low sandy shores
of the Gulf of La Napoule. Farther off the coast
becomes steep and clothed with a mantle of dark
green foliage, speckled along its lower margin with
creamy-white villas, while higher, the horizon is
serrated with snow-capped peaks. As the coast
recedes it becomes more lofty, the mountains
coming to bathe their feet in the blue sea. There
are islands and promontories faintly visible in
the soft opalescent haze. Such is the first im-
pression one obtains of a fairyland coast -line,
which owing to various circumstances had to be
discovered to the French people by foreigners.
With their inherited instinct towards roving the

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 175

British have not even been able to keep to their
own land when merely taking a little seaside
holiday.

It might be said of the French that, apart from
their dozen or more seaports, they were until
recently in a state of comparative ignorance as
to the nature of the wonderful coast-line of their
country. It was only recently that any con-
siderable proportion of the great French middle-
class population acquired the habit of taking an
annual holiday by the sea. The expense of such
a migration is a big item in a small budget, and
when undertaken it is the need for economy which
makes the housekeeper prefer to take a house
wherein she can provide for her own menage, and
avoid giving a landlady a living at her expense.

At first the seaside visits were of a very
adventurous character, and little wooden chalets
of a very temporary character were run up.
They were placed in a most haphazard fashion
where land was available. Gardens were not
cultivated; and even when quite a number of
these meretricious little seaside homes had
gathered together at one spot, there was no
attempt to produce the features regarded by the
English as essentials. Instead of the pier with

176 FRANCE

its concert-room raised above the waves on
barnacle-swollen iron pillars, the French build a
casino. In it all forms of evening amusement
are concentrated, and all the holiday life is to be
found there after sunset. The esplanade, that
most tiresome feature of all English seaside resorts,
is only built when the place has become so
matured that it begins to yearn for smartness.
Possibly foreigners are the main cause of the
promenade. On the Riviera, where it has been
the aim of the municipalities and the hotel pro-
prietors to study the habits of les Anglais, the
esplanade is to be found at every resort, and it is
probably only the overwhelming expense due to
the precipitous nature of a very considerable
proportion of the coast that has saved the Riviera
from becoming one continuous promenade from
Cannes to Mentone. Even if this were ever
accomplished the irregularities of the coast are
so pronounced that there would be few oppor-
tunities for those who abominate the sea-front
of the Brighton type to complain. At Cannes
the isolated mass of rock crowned by the
picturesque " old town " effectually cuts the
frontage to the sea in two, and at Nice the tabular
rock in whose shadow ancient Nice grew, forms

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 177

an abrupt termination to the eastward end of the
parade, the central portion of which is called
the Promenade des Anglais, and there is situated
a jetty to satisfy the tastes of the same patrons of
" Paris by the Sea." Villefranche does not give
any opportunity for producing sterile perspectives
on account of the deep and narrow bay formed
by the Cap du Mont Boron and the St. Jean
peninsula. Beaulieu is little more than a fortuit-
ous concourse of villas and hotels, and the only
level ground is that occupied by the Corniche road.
The promontory of Monaco is entirely pre-
cipitous, but gardens on its outward side give
shady walks and charming peeps of the distant
coast. One side of the bay of Monaco is formed
by the curving northern face of the tabular pro-
jection, and facing it are the creamy- white
terraces of Monte Carlo, rising up to the blocks
of equally brilliant red-roofed buildings terminat-
ing in the world-famed Casino, which stands at
the apex of a small projection of the rocky shelf.
The architecture of the Casino is of the common-
place " exhibition" type, and the gardens sur-
rounding it support the parallel. Only the deter-
mination of man could have made the precipitous
slopes of the mountainous sea -front produce

23

178 FRANCE

lawns and flowers and shady trees, for the heat of
summer would destroy all but the hardiest forms
of vegetation, unless artificial aids were employed.
The colour of Monte Carlo is intensely brilliant
on account of the immense reflecting surface of
pinkish limestone rock that towers up some
1300 feet from the sea, and makes the place quite
unique among watering-places. Strictly speak-
ing one hardly has any right to include it in a
description of French watering-places, for Monaco
is an independent principality, and its area in-
cludes Monte Carlo and the intervening town-
ship of Condamine, which is packed in between
the gaming metropolis and the col that separates
Monaco's peninsula from the mainland.

Until 1856 the principality had no gambling
halls, and it was not until 1858 that the Prince of
Monaco laid the foundation stone of the existing
Casino, the gaming-tables having been first set
up within the walls of the old town. In a few
years the annual income from the Casino ran up
to £1,000,000, a sum of £50,000 being the Prince's
share. So by playing down to the widespread
instinct for gambling, one of the most unprofitable
patches of coast has become in proportion to its
area the most revenue-producing in the whole

OF THE WATERING-PLACES It^

world. It is a melancholy reflection that one of
the most perfect spots on the Mediterranean for
enjoying all the warmth of the winter sun should
be so fatally contaminated by a cosmopolitan
crowd of ne'er-do-weels of every grade of society.
One sees all the world at Monte Carlo, for no one
who passes along the Riviera can quite resist the
desire to have a peep at a place of such notoriety.
And so many come to Monte Carlo for this self-
same purpose that the real habitues, the pro-
fessionals and the " last-hopers," are rather lost
sight of in the crowd of quite irreproachable people
who half fill the concert-hall, and drift through
the gaming-rooms throwing a few five -franc
pieces on to the roulette tables " just to see what
happens," or to experience the very edge of the
strange fascination which leads men and women
to fling away a competency in a fevered desire
for wealth.

The two superimposed roads between Nice and
Mentone known as the Upper and the Lower
Corniche, are both laboriously engineered high-
ways, possessing almost unrivalled charms. On
the lower road there used to be a most serious
disadvantage to the enjoyment of the scenery
in the choking clouds of dust raised by every

180 FRANCE

passing vehicle. Motor-cars used to throw up
such a smother of dust that it did not settle for
some minutes, and in the interval fresh clouds
would be produced. Tar has at last been brought
to rescue the charms of the Lower Corniche from
being completely destroyed. Trams grind and
scream as they follow the constant curves of the
road, and their presence robs it of any sense of
repose. It is therefore more possible to enjoy the
changing panorama of bay, cliff, and promontory,
of brilliantly coloured waves in shadow and in
sunshine from a seat in a car than on foot. An
automobile, unless driven very slowly, is tiresome
and tantalizing in such scenery. One can only
compare the sensation of being flung through
beautiful surroundings of this character at 30
miles an hour to being obliged to go through the
galleries of the Louvre at a trot.

On the Upper Corniche the traffic is light, there
are no trams, and dust is scarcely noticeable.
The scenery is altogether on a greater scale. At
certain spots one commands nearly the whole
of the French Riviera at once. The sea is far
below, and its nearer shores are almost invariably
hidden. Whoever passes one on this lofty high-
way is fairly sure to have come there for pleasure,

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 181

business taking few along the high " cornice."
Energetic folk from all the resorts within reach
are to be found climbing up the steep zig-zag
pathways to this splendid vantage-ground.
Frenchmen in clothes suited for le sport or perhaps
wearing the dark city type of jacket suit which
so many adhere to even when holiday-making,
Germans thoughtfully carrying their red Baedekers
with them, and Englishmen of the retired military
officer or I.S.O. type are all to be found enjoying
or " doing " the Upper Corniche in the various
manners of their widely differing temperiaments.
At La Turbie, where the remains of the huge
monument to Caesar Augustus, the conquering
emperor, still bulk prominently in the midst of
the village, there is a funicular railway connecting
the upper and lower roads, bringing the splendid
air and scenery of the heights within reach of the
infirm or the merely slack types of visitors.

The long winding descent from La Turbie to
Mentone brings the two roads together opposite
Cap Martin, a promontory densely grown with
old and gnarled olives and masses of dark pines
that come down to the water's edge. From
beneath their shade one can look across the blue
waves breaking into white along the curving

182 FRANCE

shore to Mentone's villas and hotels overtopped
by its old town on a spur of the mountain slopes
that rise sharply just behind. Although built
at the mouth of two torrents, Mentone is sheltered
by an imposing amphitheatre of lofty mountains,
which very effectually screen it from the treacher-
ous mistral, and it is this fact which has made it
the most popular place for invalids on the whole
of la Cdte d'Azur. It is fortunate in having been
spared the inflictions of overpowering perspectives
of the Nice or Brighton order, and one can sit
close to the shore under the shade of great
eucalyptus trees free from the glare and the traffic
of a big sea-front roadway of the stereotyped
British pattern.

The eastern extension of Mentone, known as
Garavan, is within a few minutes' walk of the
Italian frontier, where the sea-coast resorts become
more brightly coloured and have more archi-
tectural interest in their old quarters, the Ligurian
type of compactly built walled town being scarcely
recognisable in what remains of old Mentone.

Not only is the Riviera a land of winter sun-
shine, it is also one of the most sweetly- scented
coasts in the world. The delicious fragrance of
the lemon and the orange, when those trees are in

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 183

blossom, is often Nature's final lavish filling up
of the cup of enjoyment to overflowing. And
in the spring, when the northern sea-coast resorts
are shivering before the icy winds that sweep
down the Channel, this favoured coast has
nasturtiums and other flowers that England does
not see until late in summer, in their fullest
blossom. France is indeed fortunate in its
Mediterranean shore, of which Plato must have
been thinking when he wrote :

There the whole earth is made up of colours brighter
far and clearer than ours ; there is a purple of wonderful
lustre, also the radiance of gold, and the white which is
in the earth is whiter than any chalk or snow.

Among the watering-places on the Channel
the twin towns of Deauville and Trouville,
separated only by the river Toques, are pre-
eminent among the wealthiest and most fashion-
able of Parisians. Trouville has a longer season,
but it is altogether outshone by its neighbour
during the fortnight of the races in August, and
during the quieter weeks of its season Deauville
probably boasts more leaders of fashionable
French society than any other coast resort. It
is popularly believed that during the season one
cannot smell the salt air off the sea at either of

184 FRANCE

these places on account of the scent used by its
expensive visitors. This is more or less true of
Etretat also, and possibly of Biarritz too, and
no one who dreams of careless attire should come
near these places during the season.

Both places possess splendid stretches of sand,
and therefore bathing is safe, and one of the
greatest attractions to visitors. The casinos are
well adapted to the demands made upon them,
and the villas include, among the various more
temporary old-fashioned types, many that are
quite charming.

Westward from Deauville is pretty little
Cabourg, just beyond the mouth of the River
Dive, where William the Norman assembled his
army for the invasion of England. Here also
the beach is of excellent sand, extending for four
miles. The casino is, of course, a prominent
feature, and there is a broad terrace, not far short
of a mile in length, raised above the beach.
Between Cabourg and the mouth of the Orne
one finds one of those embryo seaside places that
are typical of the haphazard fashion in which
French watering-places grow. It bears the
curious name of Le Home-sur-Mer, and in its
present stage of development is little more than

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 185

a railway -station and a collection of widely
scattered and hurriedly - built villas, dumped
anywhere along a sandy ridge.

After Deauville the seaside resort most patron-
ised by the opulent is Etretat. It has none of the
advantages of a sandy shore, and bathing from
the steep shingly beach is often so dangerous that
the authorities insist on securing intrepid bathers
by rope around the. waist. Good swimmers
enjoy the depth of water to be found close to the
shore, and have no fear of a buffeting by big
rollers ; but to the weak or timid the conditions
are often forbidding, and on such days there are
more early arrivals than usual at the first tee on
the golf-course.

From the point of view of scenery Etretat
holds a high position, its bold chalk cliffs adding
enormously to the picturesqueness of the coast.
Erosion produces very curious effects in the
chalk, boring vast cavities with wonderfully
domed roofs, and leaving natural arches and pro-
jecting ribs that sometimes suggest the colossal
legs of a white elephant. The arch springing
from the central projection of the chffs, known
as the Porte d'Aval, is approachable from the
east at low tide, and a nearer view can be

24

186 FRANCE

obtained of an isolated pillar called the Aiguille
d'Etretat.

There are lofty cliffs at Fecamp and a curving
bay, with a casino in the centre and the mouth of
the Fecamp River to the east ; but it cannot
claim to be so much the resort of fashion as its
western neighbour. The town has a busy port
and all the picturesqueness contributed by the
fishing-boats that go to the cod or herring fisheries.
There is, as well, the abbey church and the Bene-
dictine distillery with its interesting museum,
but such features do not attract many holiday-
makers, who are looking for amusement of the
entirely social order.

St. Valery-en-Caux has a beach made up of
both sand and shingle, the upper portion of the
bathing-ground being exceedingly stony. On the
lower level children bathe in safety, and the joy
of shrimping is indulged in by visitors of all ages.

A little to the east is Veules, where the cliffs
are low and of rather loose earth, and the beach
is not ideal for bathing. It is popular with the
people of Rouen, being conveniently placed and
inexpensive. The shrimp here too offers a fund
of excitement to the families who are usually
content with the most simple of amusements,

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 187

provided they can drop into the casino after
dinner.

Dieppe, owing to its connection with England
by the Newhaven steamers, is popular among
English visitors, who can run over for a day or
two with the minimum of trouble and expense.
The broad sunny Plage, the casino to which
one is free all day on payment of three francs,
and the Etablissement des Bains keep the place
very full of life and gaiety throughout the
season ; but one does not expect to find there the
people who may be seen at Etretat or Deauville.
Possessing a busy and not unpicturesque port, an
historic fifteenth- century chateau^ and a beautiful
Gothic church, it is surprising to find the sea-
front so entirely suggestive of one of the newly
developed resorts. To the north-east is Treport,
an interesting and picturesque little coast town,
with the usual requirements for bathing and
summer visitors. Along the top of the great bank
of shingle are the dressing-sheds, with wooden
steps at intervals leading down to the beach.
Those who have any interest in history find the
proximity of the famous old town of Eu a great
attraction, but golf acts with such magnetic force
over the average Anglo-Saxon that such con-

188 FRANCE

siderations do not often weigh in the choice of
a hoUday resort. The French have only lately
begun to know the joys and the profound dejec-
tions of golf ; it is not yet a necessary adjunct to
a seaside resort. Where there are golf-courses it
is mainly British capital that brings them on to
the sand-dunes. Le Touquet is very cosmo-
politan, but it could hardly exist a month without
its English patrons. It is one of those places
which come into existence with the wave of
the capitalist's wand. He says, in effect, "Let
us make on this waste an ideal health resort, let
us erect hotels, casinos, theatres, and to these add
golf-courses, croquet lawns, lawn-tennis courts,
and polo grounds ; we will have rides through
the forest and bathing facilities on this shore, and
we will advertise until the whole world knows
that we have made this place." And, having
spoken, everything desired straightway comes to
pass, so that one reads on a leaflet concerning
this newly arrived resort such items as these : —

10 hotels. 2 golf-courses.

2 casinos. 3 croquet lawns.

2 theatres. 17 lawn-tennis courts.
10 miles of forest rides. 3 miles of sandy beach.
A polo ground. Drag-hounds.

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 189

Paris Plage is the newly-built town, brought
into existence through the needs and attractions
of Le Touquet, Etaples being a Uttle too far away
to answer this purpose.

Farther north is Boulogne, with its own casino
and promenade and its village resorts, such as
Hardelot, close at hand. So numerous, indeed,
are the bathing-places of this type that it would
be tiresome to even attempt a list of them all,
but they all have their own devotees — French,
English, and American — and any little villa along
the coast of Normandy or Picardy may during
the hot months be the temporary home of men
and women whose names are household words
on either side of the Channel.

Brittany is farther away from Paris and from
England, and its charms are only beginning to be
appreciated. With the exception of Dinard,
there is no place that is expensive or smart in
any sense. Some of the villages on the long and
deeply indented coast-line have at least one good
hotel, and if one is content with what the sea will
provide in the way of amusement, the happiest
of holidays may be spent there. Bathing, saihng,
fishing, sketching, walking, exploring quaint
villages, and seeing the curious social customs

190 FRANCE

that still live in this very Celtic corner of France,
fill up endless days, and only those to whom
none of these things appeal can be dull, provided
the weather is tolerably fine.

Biarritz, down at the southern extremity of
the French Atlantic coast, in the innermost corner
of the Bay of Biscay, with its neighbour St.
Jean de Luz, are far away from the two great
groups of coast resorts. The first was popularised
among both French and English on account of the
frequent visits paid to it by King Edward VII.
It was understood when Le Roi Edouard came
to Biarritz that no one was to take any notice
whatsoever of his presence. Cameras were
promptly confiscated if any one attempted to
snapshot the King or any of his friends, and it
was in this way possible for the sovereign who
loved to step down into the crowd, to forget the
tedious functions of his office. After Sunday
morning service he would stroll along the pro-
menade with one or two friends in the most
informal fashion, so that a chance British visitor
who did not dream that he might at any moment
rub shoulders with his sovereign would almost
gasp with astonishment when he suddenly dis-
covered that he had actually done so !

OF THE WATERING-PLACES 191

Only at intervals does the sea give up its
onslaught upon the rocks that form the coast at
Biarritz, and one of the charms of the place is
to be found in the magnificent displays given by
the Atlantic. Thundering waves rear themselves
in great walls of green, marble-veined with foam,
which fling themselves in a chaos of white upon
the smooth, sandy shore of the Plage or the
deeply indented promontory which contains the
fishing port. The town is very modern, but is
well built and extremely clean and pleasant in
every way, the new streets being full of good
houses in gardens that are something more than
a patch of unmown grass.

Besides bathing, for which there are three
etahlissements, there is golf and lawn -tennis,
while the proximity of the Pyrenees gives oppor-
tunity for motor drives in the midst of deep
valleys, whose vast slopes clothed with pine or box
fall precipitously to torrential rivers. The whole
country, too, is rich in memories of Wellington's
successful completion of the Peninsular War.
St. Jean de Luz was for a time his headquarters,
the house he occupied being still in existence.
Nearly all who stay at Biarritz go on to Pau, the
inland winter resort close to, but not within the

192 FRANCE

actual embrace of the Pyrenees. English people
visit both places mainly in the winter and spring.
They make the season at those times, while
French and Spanish visitors flood thither in the
summer, putting up prices at that period of the
year to a height not reached during the zenith
of the English season. Almost every form of
sport and open-air exercise can be enjoyed at
Pau, and foxhounds meet regularly throughout
the winter. The town is magnificently placed
on the north side of the Gave de Pau, and the
view it commands of the snowy range of peaks,
with the deep and picturesque valleys leading
up to them, is one of the finest possessions of
this character to be found in any town of France.

•

■ ^ -^ -.... V ■^- .vpt_

THE GALERIE DES GLACES AT VERSAILLES.

CHAPTER X

ROMAN, ROMANESQUE, AND GOTHIC
ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE

In the wide range of its ancient and mediaeval
architecture France stands next to Italy. Its
Roman buildings are almost as fine as anything
to be found in that country, its Gothic structures
include some of the world's masterpieces, while
in examples of the Renaissance only the country
where the re -birth took place can rival her.
England, which competes closely in the Roman-
esque and Gothic periods, is out of the running in
the earlier epoch, and takes a very much lower
position in the works that succeeded the death
of the pointed style. Italy, the most formidable
rival, is superior in its Roman remains, but
inferior in its Gothic work. In the Renaissance,
Italy, its home, stands easily first, and in works of
the Byzantine period its possessions at Venice

193 25

194 FRANCE

and Ravenna leave the western nations far
behind.

Prehistoric architecture is well represented in
Brittany, where the vast scale of the Carnac lines
— the Avenues of Kermario — dwarfs the British
survivals on Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor. There
are numerous dolmens and tumuli, containing
chambers roughly constructed out of unhewn
stones of the New Grange (Ireland) type, but
there is nothing comparable to Stonehenge.

When one comes to the Roman period the
remains are so splendid that many are satisfied
with what they have seen in Provence, and do not
feel impelled to see Rome before they die. Nimes
stands first among the towns of Provence for the
splendour of the Roman structures it has pre-
served. Not only has it an amphitheatre which is
more perfect than any other in existence, but its
temple, dedicated to Caius and Lucius Caesar,
adopted sons of the Emperor Augustus, between
the first and the fourteenth year of the Christian
era, is also the best preserved in the world.
Having been used successively as a church, a
municipal hall, and a stable, it is now a museum
of Roman objects, and seems capable of standing
for an unlimited time. Besides these most famous

.•«»^S

THE ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT ORANGE.

ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 195

structures there are two gateways, one of them
bearing an inscription stating that it was built
in the year 16 B.C. To the north of the town are
Roman baths of wonderful completeness, and in
their restored condition of very considerable
beauty. Over them on the hill -top rises the
Tour Magne, a Roman watch-tower which formed
part of the defences of the city. Stretching
across the deep and rocky bed of the river Gard,
about 14 miles to the north, is the vast aqueduct
which carried the water-supply of Nimes across
the obstruction caused by the river. The three
superimposed tiers of arches filling the wide space
make one of the most imposing of all the Roman
works that have come down to the present time.
Aries is a serious rival to Nimes. It has
preserved its amphitheatre, built about the
first century a.d. and large enough to hold an
audience of 25,000 persons. The remains of its
theatre, with two marble columns of its pro-
scenium, which were utilised as a gallows in the
Middle Ages, standing out among the fallen and
dislodged stones, has preserved just enough of
its form to be exceedingly impressive. In the
disused church of St. Anne have been gathered
a most remarkable collection of Roman sarco-

196 FRANCE

phagi, altars, and many other objects of richly
sculptured stone, while in the Avenue des Alys-
camps one may see the cemetery of Roman
Aries just outside the city walls, dating from
the reign of the Emperor Constantine. On the
two sides of the avenue there are many stone
sarcophagi, the larger ones, of which there are
two or three dozen, having retained their lids.
There are remains of the forum and a tower of
Constantine's palace, built early in the fourth
century.

Orange has a theatre which, now that the
upper tiers of seats have been restored, has very
much its original appearance. The immense
stone wall, forming the back of the semicircular
stage, is 118 feet in height and 13 feet thick.
Stone was close at hand, making its construction
easy, and the auditorium was hewn out of the
limestone hill against which the theatre was
built. There appears to have been a permanent
roof of timber — a unique feature — for there are
structural indications leading to such a con-
clusion, as well as signs of fire, which no doubt
was the cause of its disappearance. In about
A.D. 21 a very fine triumphal arch was erected
at Orange, then known as Arausio, and this still

ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 197

stands complete, save for the detrition on its
surface caused by the weather and perhaps some
rough handhng in the Dark Ages. Very judicious
restoration has given one a convincing idea of
what is missing where the structure has not been
overlaid with new work. St. Remy has contrived
to preserve a considerable portion of its triumphal
arch, and close to it a remarkably perfect mauso-
leum, 50 feet in height. It is adorned with much
sculpture like the archway, and both stand upon
an exposed rocky plateau. There are, indeed, so
many survivals of this period which one would
like to mention that there would be no space to
deal with any later age. Vienne, on the extreme
confines of Roman Provincia, has its temple, rebuilt
in the second century, converted into a Christian
church in the fifth, and made more famous during
the Revolution by the celebrating within its
walls of the Festival of Reason. Remains of the
city walls, of a theatre, of the balustrade of a fine
staircase, of a pantheon, an amphitheatre, and
a citadel are still to be seen. The Roman
aqueduct, which supplied the city, restored in
1822, is still to some extent in use !

Perigueux is full of indications of its Roman
buildings. The Tour de Vesone is in part a

198 FRANCE

Gallo-Roman temple, dedicated to Vesuna ; the
remains of the amphitheatre include much of
the outer wall, in which are staircases, vomitoria,
and the lower vaulting now partially exposed.
At Lillebonne, mentioned in another chapter,
are the carefully excavated remains of a theatre ;
at Carcassonne, at Narbonne, at Lyons, in Paris,
and in other cities and towns, Roman foundations
and many sculptured stones are full of significance,
and of absorbing interest to the historian, the
architect, and the archaeologist.

Following the age of Roman domination came
those strangely fascinating centuries of disruption
and destruction in which the outward influences of
Rome slowly gave way before the westward march
of the lower but healthier civilisation of the tribes
of central and eastern Europe. When these new
peoples had settled down among the older
occupants of the country, they began to build
permanent structures for themselves, and although
there may have been some craftsmanship among
them, they were unable to do more than make in-
different attempts to copy the architecture of the
Roman era. The dark shadow that the irruptions
caused to fall upon the face of Europe leaves the
world in ignorance as to the fate of the archi-

ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 199

tects, and stone masons who reared the noble
works of Rome's supremacy in western Europe.
It would appear that in the two or three centuries
of uncertainty, if not of perpetual warfare and
social chaos, no one had time or opportunity
to do more than erect hurried fortifications of
the crude type one sees in the Visigothic portions
of town walls, such as those of Carcassonne.
No architect could flourish under such conditions,
and unless he migrated to the seat of the Eastern
Empire opportunities for applying his knowledge
were no doubt impossible to find. And at Con-
stantinople a new development of architecture was
taking place, in which the exterior was disregarded
to a very considerable extent while internal
decoration became extravagant, Byzantine art
being dissatisfied unless every portion of walls
and roof was richly ornamented and brilliant in
colour. The profession of the architect being
useless, the dependent handicraftsmen would
inevitably die out, and thus from the sixth
century, which is about the earliest date of any
Romanesque building in France, one sees the
crude efforts of the ill-trained sculptors to copy
the ornament of the buildings that lay around them
ruined or gutted. In many of the capitals that

200 FRANCE

were carved in these early centuries of Christian
times, the volutes are half-hearted attempts to
reproduce the Ionic order, with a tendency to
stray into Corinthian foliation. From such very
early buildings as the church of St. Pierre at
Vienne, onwards to St. Trophime at Aries, the
crypts of Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-
Ferrand and of St. Denis, Paris, until one reaches
the great churches of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, such as the cathedral of Angouleme
and the church of Notre Dame la Grande at
Poitiers, one can see the steady development
of a curious mixture of bastard Roman with
the Byzantine style, upon which was growing
a new individuality which burst into flower
with the introduction of the pointed arch.
In France this abandonment of the Roman
semicircular arch came very gradually. Be-
longing to the transition stage are many fine
buildings, in which group are the fine church at
Poitiers just mentioned and the cathedral at
Le Puy-en-Velay. The sculpture of this period
reveals the very strong Byzantine influence
prevailing, and if no other evidence existed
this alone would demonstrate the debt western
Europe owes to the rearguard of its civilisation.

ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 201

The architecture of Normandy had its own
pecuHarities during the Romanesque period, but
while these differences have entitled it to a
separate name and classification, it is Roman-
esque influenced by the Northmen, and all
through England the strong Byzantine influence
was felt until the great expansion of new ideas
began to outgrow the forms and ornament of the
preceding centuries.

Two of the finest Norman Romanesque build-
ings are the great abbey churches built at Caen
by William the Conqueror and his queen Matilda.
The Abbaye aux Hommes, William's work, is
not quite as it was when consecrated, but it is
almost entirely a work of the Norman period.
That there was a simplicity in the style at this
period almost amounting to plainness is shown
in the west front of William's church ; while the
Abbaye aux Dames, built about a quarter of a
century later, shows a very great advance in the
distribution and application of ornament both
within and without. Another abbey church,
that of St. Georges de Boscherville, built in the
eleventh century by Raoul de Tancarville, is a
more perfect and complete work of that period
than any other in Normandy. With the excep-

26

202 FRANCE

tion of the upper portions of the western turrets
and the broach spire, the whole church stands
to-day as it was originally erected. In these
large and not always very beautiful buildings,
it is their association with a romantic period
and the evidences they show of architectural
evolution that provides the chief satisfaction to
the informed visitor and the student.

A considerable portion of the abbey buildings
that engirdle the summit of the rocky islet of
Mont St. Michel belong to the Norman period,
although much of the work is Gothic.

At St. Denis, outside Paris, one sees the
beginnings of French Gothic. Clearly the
builders regarded the new style as empirical, for
there was obvious hesitation to plunge too far
into a field of such considerable possibilities
when the west front was designed. A little later
than St. Denis is the cathedral of Noyon, another
extremely interesting example of this period.
Almost simultaneously came Chartres, but a
disastrous fire in 1194 left little besides the
towers and the west front. The rebuilding, how-
ever, which proceeded almost at once, was to a
considerable extent completed by 1210, and this
later work shows the Gothic style grown to all

ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 203

the splendour which has perpetually satisfied and
enthralled the minds of succeeding generations.

At this time building was proceeding all over
Europe with wonderful vigour. The new style
gripped the imaginations of all the western
nations, and wherever sufficient funds were
obtainable the monkish architects were enthusi-
astically producing designs which were steadily
cari'ied out in stone. In Paris Notre Dame was
building all through the closing years of the
twelfth century and the opening of the next ;
at Rouen, the cathedral having been burnt in
1200, half a century of building followed ; the
glories of Rheims and Amiens were materialising
during the same period, and almost coeval is the
vast cathedral of Beauvais, which was planned
to eclipse that of Amiens in every respect. The
ambitious intent of the designers of Beauvais
was never consummated, and in the unfinished
pile standing to-day one sees the failure to
build a Titan among cathedrals.

All through the period known in England as
Early English there is much similarity in design,
as well as in ornament, on both sides of the
Channel, but signs of divergence begin to appear
with the development of decorative skill during

204 FRANCE

the English Decorated Period, and when the
French architect had reached his highest achieve-
ment in the subtly beautiful lines of the Flam-
boyant style, the English craftsmen, after a
few brief moments in the same direction, turned
about and produced their unique development in
the style known as Perpendicular. Here and
there in France there are suggestions of the
restraint of the last phase of English Gothic,
but they are almost as rare as the Flamboyant
style in England. At Evreux and at Gisors one
sees remarkable examples of the work of the
Renaissance in the reconstruction of the west
ends of these Gothic churches. The contrast of
styles is, however, too marked to allow even the
hand of Time to remove the challenge which the
two styles fling at one another.

CHAPTER XI

THE NATIONAL DEFENCES

About the year 1909 the administration of the
French navy had fallen into a scandalous state
of chaos. Battleships were so long in building
that the type was beginning to be superseded
before the vessels were commissioned. There
was a story circulated not long ago to the effect
that some one who enquired of the widow of a
workman at Cherbourg what her son was going
to do for a livelihood received the reply that he
would work on the Henri IV, as his father had
done. The story may not be quite true, but it
indicates what people were thinking at the time.
British ships are not infrequently completed
within a year of their launch, but the Dupetit
Thouars which took the water in 1901 was only
completed in 1905.

205

206 FRANCE

It was during the period of office of M. Pelletan
that the various departments of the navy lost
cohesion and their productive capacity was
greatly diminished. This minister was respons-
ible for a species of socialistic propaganda which
brought about the most deplorable results in so
far as the efficiency of the navy was concerned.
Le Journal, in its summary of the conclusions of
the commission of enquiry into the state of naval
administration, admitted that money had been
wasted in petty errors and foolish blunders, in
orders and counter- orders, on untried guns, on
worthless boilers, on white powder which turned
green, on shells which destroyed the gunners, on
16-centimetre turrets in which 19-centimetre guns
had been placed. " The money," said this news-
paper, " has passed through ignorant hands, and
slipped through fools' fingers."

Drastic changes were necessary to stop the
alarming deterioration that was taking place,
for the nation had not, for fully ten years, been
getting anything near the full measure of sea-
power to which it was entitled by the annual
sums voted. Between 1900 and 1909 France
expended 129 millions sterling on her navy, and
in the same period Germany devoted 121 millions

THE NATIONAL DEFENCES 207

to that branch of national defence, and at the
end of the decade it was found that the country
spending the larger sum had dropped down to a
fifth place in the scale of world sea-power, while
with her smaller outlay Germany had risen to
the second place. In other words, the French had
paid for the second place and only realised the
fifth!

In this crisis Admiral Boue de Lapeyrere was
appointed Minister of Marine, and was provided
with a civilian Under-Secretary of State to act as
assistant and be responsible with him for civil
administration. Since this appointment much
leeway has been made up, although the nation
has had to mourn the loss of the Liberie,
which blew up in the crowded naval harbour
of Toulon, and has been alarmed more than
once on account of the unstable quality of
the powder with which the ships have been
supplied. At last this danger appears to have
been rectified.

The French naval officer receives his training
at the naval schools at Brest and Toulon and
is generally very keen and capable. He does not
enjoy hard conditions from the sporting instinct
after the fashion so usual in the British navy, but

208 FRANCE

his devotion to his work produces very efficient
gunnery and admirable handling of submarine
craft. For the lower deck the supply of the
suitable class of bluejacket might be sadly
deficient were it not for the seafaring populations
of Brittany and Normandy. At Bologne there
was living recently a wrinkled old grandmother
who had forty grandchildren, of whom all the
males were sailors or fishermen, while several of
the girls had become fishwives or had married
fishermen or sailors. France owes much to
her little weather-beaten grandmothers of this
type.

The manning of the fleet is partially carried
out by voluntary enlistment, but the main supply
is gained by means of the inscription maritime,
a system established in the latter part of the
seventeenth century by Colbert. This method
requires all sailors between eighteen and fifty to
be enrolled in " the Army of the Sea." They begin
their term of seven years of obligatory service at
about twenty, two years of the period being
furlough. Any man earning his livelihood on
inland waters, provided they are tidal or capable
of carrying sea-going vessels, is included in the
term " sailor." A further supply of men is

SOLDIERS OF FRANCE IX PARIS.

THE NATIONAL DEFENCES 209

obtained by transferring a certain number of the
year's army recruits to the sea service.

Cherbourg, Brest, and Toulon are the chief
naval ports, Lorient and Rochefort being of
lesser importance. Shipbuilding, however, takes
place at each of the five.

The frequent changes make it impossible to
discuss the strength of the fleets in the Mediter-
ranean and the Atlantic, or those stationed in
colonial waters, but collectively the fighting force
of the navy has for the last few years numbered
roughly 25 battleships, 15 large armoured cruisers,
16 protected cruisers, 80 or 90 destroyers, 180
torpedo-boats, and about 90 submarines and
submersibles. Under the new administration
larger ships are being built, and the destroyer is
taking the place of the torpedo-boat.

On account of its superiority as a fighting
machine the army of France ranks above the
navy, and it should have been placed before the
navy in the short notes which constitute this
chapter. The author has felt, however, that the
subject is too complex to deal with in such a
book as this. He confesses to blank ignorance as
to the efficiency of the French artillery material,
although from English sources he gathers that it

27

210 FRANCE

is superior to that possessed by almost any other
nation. It would be extremely interesting if
one could state how far the army is prepared for
" the real thing," how much it has learned in
recent years, to what extent its very efficient
army of the air is a source of strength, and
whether the rifle at present in use is as perfect
a weapon as those of other countries. These are
subjects much discussed by the inexpert, and the
author does not feel competent to deal with
them.

In the present year (1913) the period of service
for the conscripts who form the army was raised
from two to three years, and by this means the
numbers of the peace strength were enormously
increased from the former establishment of a
little over half a million men. The new law did
not add, as might perhaps be imagined, another
quarter of a million to the total. France has not
a sufficiently large population to provide such a
number of men of the required age and physical
fitness. The numbers are, however, considered
sufficient to meet the imaginary dangers which
threaten her national existence, and the country
has now to divert much of its energy to meeting
the cost of this regrettable lengthening and

THE NATIONAL DEFENCES 211

thickening of her big stick. Incidentally the
world's prosperity must suffer, and social reforms
generations overdue must be postponed ! With
Ebenezer Elliott one asks again :

When wilt Thou save the people ?
O God of mercy, when ?

27 a

SKETCH MAP OF FRANCE

INDEX

Ablutions, pjersonal, 34

Academies, the, 75

Adour, the, 144, 168

Agnosticism, 80, 83

Agriculture, 116

Agrippa, 161

Aigues-Mortes, 127, 163

Aix-en-Provence, 164

Algerian wine, 125

AUier, the, 147

Alms - giving in churches,

44
Alps, 123, 124
Amboise, 150
Amiens, 203
Andely, Le Petit, 154
Angers, Chateau d', 150
Anglo-Norman horses, 123
AngoulSme, 200
Apache, the, 96, 97
Aries, 130, 162, 164, 195, 196,

200
Armoricans, the, 7
Army, the, 209
Arrondissement, the, 60
Asses, 123

Assize, Courts of, 63
Aube, the, 152
Augustus Caesar, 161, 181
Auvergnes, the, 146
Aversier, the, 131
Avignon, 162, 164
Ay, 126

BaccalauTiat de Venseignement,

74'
Bacheher, Nicholas, 167
Bacteriology, science of, 18
Bagehot, Walter, 53
Banns, announcement of, 42
Barker, Mr. E. H., 106, 116
Bastille, the. 111
Bath, the itinerant, 34
Battle of Flowers at Nice, 171
Bayonne, 168
Beauce, La, plain of, 115, 116,

119
Beaugency, 148
Beauvais, 203

Bedroom, the typical, 26, 28
Bergerac, 167
Bernese Alps, 143, 159
Betham-Edwards, Miss, 31
Beziers, 126
Biarritz, 184, 190, 191
Birth-rate, the, 36
Blessington, Lady, 172
Blois, 148

Blois, Chateau de, 149
Bonne-h-toui-faire, the, 13, 14,

101, 102
commissions of the, 30
Bordeaux, 167
Bore on the Seine, 155
Boue de Lapeyrere, Admiral,

207
Boulanger, 139

213

214

FRANCE

Boulevards, the, 88

Boulogne, 189, 208

Boulogne, Bois de, Paris, 110

Bourseul, Charles, 18

Boy Scouts in France, 72

Bread, French, 87

Brest, 207, 209

Brieg, 158

Brittany, 11, 12, 122, 123, 131,

189, 208
megalithic remains, 7
Brougham and Vaux, Lord

Chancellor, 170
Brunei, Isambard, 18
Buckwheat, 115
Butcher, the French, 32
Byron, Lord, 159
Byzantine architecture, 193,

199, 200, 201

Cabourg, 184

Caen, 88, 201

Caesar, Gains Julius, 10

Cafes, the, 86, 87, 88, 113

Calvaries, roadside, 122

Cannes, 170, 174

Canton, the, 60

Carcassonne, 198

Carmargue, the, 163

Carnac, prehistoric remains at,

194
Carnavalet, Mus^e, Paris, 109
Carts, coimtry, 118
Casino, the, 171, 176, 178
Cassation, Cour de, 63
Catherine de Medici, 150
Cattle, 123
Caudebec, 155, 156
Cevennes, the, 115, 123, 145,

146
peasants of, 128-130
Charente, the, 144
Chartres, 202
Chateau Gaillard, 153
Chateau hie, 133-137
ChatiUon, 152
Chaumont, Chateau de, 150

Chenonceaux, Chateau de, 150
Cherbourg, 205, 209
Chestnuts, 115
Children, training of, 38, 39
Churches, 78

attendance at, 78
decorations in, 79, 80
irreverent behaviour in, 78
Church-going, women and, 79
Cimbri, 157
Civil Code, the, 14, 42, 47,

66
Cleanliness, 33
Clermont-Ferrand, 200
Cluny, Hotel, Paris, 110
Coal consumption, 29
Concierge, the, 38, 97, 98, 99
Conciergerie, the, Paris, 110
Conscription, 210
Constantine, Emperor, 196
Constitution, the French, 50,

51, 52, 53
Conversation in the chdteau,

139
Cooking, French, 2, 3
Corniche Roads, the, 179, 180,

181
Corrfeze, 115
Costebelle, 173
Crau, La, 163, 164
Critical faculty of the French,

20
Cur6, the, 83, 84, 85

Deauville, 183

Declaration of the Rights of

Man and of the Citizen,

the, 50, 51, 52
Demolins, M., 71
Deputies, Chamber of, 55

salaries of, 59
Diane de Poitiers, 150
Dieppe, 187
Dinard, 189
Discipline, lack of, 47
Dive, the, 184
Divorce laws, 44, 45

INDEX

215

Doctors, fees of, 131, 132
d'Or, lies, 173
Dordogne, the, 167
Dot, the, 47

Dreyfus, Captain A., 63
DueUing, 139-142
Dumas, the elder, 139
Durance, the, 164

Ebro, the, 151

Economies of the French, 21

Education, expenditure on, 67,

68
Education and social status, 75
Educational system, 72
Edward the Confessor, 156
Edward VII., King, 190
English Channel, the, 6
fipernay, 126
Esplanade, on the Riviera, the,

176, 177
Essonne, the, 152
Esterel Mountains, 173, 174
fitaples, 189

fitoile district of Paris, 89
fitretat, 153, 184, 185
Eu, 187
Euric, king of the Visigoths,

166
Evreux, 204

Faculties, the State, 75

Family Council, the, 34, 35

Farms, 119, 120

Fecamp, 186

Five 0"" clock, le, 135

Flail, use of, 118

Flamboyant style, 204

Fontainebleau, forest of, 124

Food, high cost of, 105

Forests of France, 124

Forez, plain of, 146

France as a colonising nation,

48
Franchise, the, 56
Franks, the, 10
Frejus, 173

French enterprise, 65

French people, origin of, 11, 12,

32
Frenchwomen, dress of, 2
Fimerals, 79
Furnishing of the chdteau, 135,

136
Furniture, household, 28

Galatia, 10
Gallia Comata, 161
Games at Lycees, 72
Garavan, 170, 182
Gard, the, 162, 195
Garde ripvblicaine, the, 64, 93
Garonne, the, 144, 164-167
Gascons, the, 11
Gaul, early tribes of, 7, 8
Gauls, the, 9
Gendarmerie, the, 64
G^eneva, Lake of, 159, 164
George, Mr. W. L., 81
Gironde, the, 167
Gisors, 204
Golf-courses, 171, 188
Grievances, endurance of, 49,
50
redress of, 19
Gris Nez, Cape, 6, 153
Guise, Due de, 150

Habeas Corpus, the right of,

52
Hannibal, 157
Hardelot, 189
Harfleur, 156

Hausmann, the architect, 113
Havre, Le, 156
Hedges, lack of, 121
Holdings, average size of, 116
Holmes, Mr. T. Rice, 33
Home life, 25
Home-sur-Mer, Le, 184
Honfleur, 156,
Hope, Sir John, 168
Horses, breeding of, 122, 123
Hotels, 3

216

FRANCE

Hotels, French and English,

contrasted, 32, 33
Household furnishing, 26

repairs, 26
Housemaid's work done by

men, 25
Housing, 37

in Paris, 104
Huguenots, 150
Hunting parties, 136
Husbandry, primitive, 117
Hyeres, 172

Ideas, the great, of the French,

17, 18
Inscription maritime, 208
Institut de France, 75
Irreligion, 82, 83

Jeunefille, the, 39, 40, 46, 69
Jewish communities, 81
Juge d' instruction, 63
Juge de paix, 35, 61, 62, 63
Jumieges, Abbey of, 156
Jura, the, 123, 143

Lamartine, 139

Landais, the, 11

Landes, Les, 123, 124

Langeais, Chateau de, 150

Language, the French, 8, 11

Langres, Plateau de, 152

Lannemezan, plateau of, 165

Lauzan, Hotel de, Paris, 110

Le Pare, 160

Le Puy-en-Velay, 76, 146, 200

Liberie, destruction of the, 207

Libourne, 167

Lillebonne, 156, 198

Locke, Mr. J. W., 113

Loing, the, 152

Loire, the, 144-150, 156

Lorient, 209

Louis XIV., 110

Louvre, Palais du, Paris, 110

Lugdunum, 161

Lutetia Parisiorum, 110

Lycies, the, 39, 68, 69, 70, 72,

74
Lycdes for girls, 69
Lyons, 61, 160, 161, 162, 198

Madeleine, the, 44
Maeterlinck, 156
Mairie, the, 43
Maison patemelle, la, 35, 38
Maladetta Chain, 165
Mariage dHnclination, the, 40
Marie Antoinette, 110
Maritime Alps, 164
Marketing, 30, 103
Marne, the, 152
Marriage, enquiries before, 24
parental control of, 40, 41,

42
Martin, Cap, 181
Martiniere, La, 148
Mary Stuart, 150
Maure Mountains, 173
Meals, 31

Meat, the cutting of, 32
Medical services in the covmtry,

131
Megalithic remains of Brittany,

7
Mentone, 181, 182
Merovingian architecture, 198,

199, 200
Mdtayage system, the, 117
Mitayers, 117
Meudon Woods, 141
Midi, the, 118
Midinette, the, 13, 33, 94, 95,

96
Ministry, the, 56
Misconceptions concerning

France, 13
Mistral, the, 163
Monaco, 177

Prince of, 178
Monopolies, State, 60
Montaigne, 140
Monte Bego, 118
Monte Carlo, 177, 178, 179

INDEX

217

Montmartre, 107
Mont St. Michel, 202
Morals of the French, 16, 17
Moselle, the, 151
Mules, 122

Nantes, 148
Napoleon, 67, 140

modern France the work of,

65
Napoleon III., 55
Napoule, La, 171, 174
Narbonne, 10, 126, 198
National debt, 60
Navy, the, 205-209
Neste, the, 165
Nevers, 147
Nice, 171, 176, 177
Nimes, 162, 194
Normandy, 115, 116, 118, 119,

122, 123, 126, 208
architecture of, 201
people of, 12
Notre Dame, Paris, 203
Noyon, 202
Nuns as medical practitioners,

132

Odours of France, 5
Oiseaux, Montagues des, 173
Olive, the, 162
Omnibuses of Paris, 91, 101
Orange, 162, 196
Orleans, Foret d', 124
Orne, the, 184
Orthez, 168
Oxen, draught, 118, 124

Pare Monceaux, Paris, 108
Paris, cab-drivers of, 1, 2

compared with London, 110,
111, 112

;^toile district, 107

fortifications of, 112

high prices in, 29

high rents of, 29

home life in, 25

Paris, Plage, 189

prisons, 65

Roman, 110

St. Antoine District, 109

Sainte Chapelle, 109

St. fitienne-du-Mont, 109

St. Germain, 109

St. Jacques, 109

smoke of, 107

streets of, 86, 87, 107, 108,
109
Pau, 191, 192
Pau, Gave de, 168, 192
Peasant, costume of, 126

life, 114-131

ownership of land, 114,
115

women, 130
Pelletan, M., 206
Pennine Alps, 143, 159
Percheron horses, 123
Perdu, Mont, 165
Perigueux, 197, 198
Philippe Auguste, 150
Phoenician traders, 164
Phylloxera, the, 125
Pigs, 123
Pinay, 145

Pistonnage, 58 /

Plato, 183
Poitiers, 200
Poitou, plain of, 144
Police, 64

Policemen of Paris, 90, 91
Politeness of the French, 99
Pont du Gard, 157, 195
Pont du Roi, 165
Pratz, Mdlle. de, 95, 105
Premikre Instance, Court of,

61
President, the, 57, 58
Prison system, 64
Protective tariffs, 104
Protestants in France, 81
Provence, scenery of, 163
Public Instruction, Minister of,
68

218

FRANCE

Pyrenees, the, 123, 124, 165,

191, 192
Pyrimont, 160

Rapidity of speech, 15
Reason, Festival of, 197
Religion of the French, 76, 77
Rents in Paris, 103, 104
Revolution, the, 50, 62, 197
Rheims, 203
Rhone, the, 127, 143, 157, 160,

161-165
Rhone Glacier, 144, 158
Richard Cceur-de-Lion, 153
Riviera, the, 169-183
Road, rule of the, 90
Roanne, 145, 147
Robespierre, 110
Rochefort, 139, 209
Roman architecture in France,

193-199
Roman Catholicism, 81
Rouen, 154, 155, 203

Sabatier, Paul, 84

St. Bartholomew, Massacre of,

150
St. Ben^zet, 157
Ste. Beuve, 139
St. Denis, Paris, 78, 200, 202
St. fitienne, 145, 146
St. Gaudens, 166
St. Georges de Boscherville, 201
St. Germain, Faubourg, Paris,

106, 111
St. Gilles, 163
St. Jean de Luz, 190, 191
St. Martory, 166
St. Maurice, 158
St. Michel, Mont, 202
St. Raphael, 173
St. Remy, 197
St. Valery-en-Caux, 186
St. Wandrille, 156
Sand, George, 128-130
Sanitation, imperfection of, 88,

89

Saone, the, 160, 161
Scholarships, State, 69
School-boy, the, 73
Schoolmistress, the lay, 69, 70
Schools, 85
Segusiani, the, 161
Seine, the, 11, 150-157
Senate, the, 55
Servants, female, 26
Sevigne, Marquise de, 110
Sheep, 123

Sherard, Mr. Robert, 141
Shooting parties, 136
Shop assistants, 100
Sologne, the, 148
Soult, Marshal, 168
Strabo, 164
Strong, Rowland, 92
Submarine, France and the, 18
Superstitions among the
peasantry, 131

Tancarville Castle, 156
Tancarville, Raoul de, 201
Taine, H. A., 65
Tarascon, 162
Tarbais horses, 123
Tarbes, 123
Taxation, 59

indirect, 60
Taxis, horse-drawn, in Paris,

92
Telephone, inventor of, 18
Tenda, Col di, 172
Teutones, 157
Thiers, 139

Thrift, the need for, 24
Thriftiness of the French, 14, 21
Toques, the, 183
Toulon, 207, 209
Toulouse, 166

plain of, 124
Touquet, Le, 188
Tours, 144

Town planning in France, 112
Traffic of Paris, 90, 91, 92,
93,94

INDEX

219

Trees, roadside, 121

Treport, 187

Tribunal correctionnel de Var-

rondissement, 61
Trou du Taureau, 165
TrouviUe, 183
Tuileries, the, Paris, 110
Turbie, La, 181

Universities, the, 74

Valence, 162
Valeseure, 173
Vallais, the, 159
Veuillot, 139
Venles, 186
Vienne, 162, 197, 200
Vikings, the, 154
Villages, 120
Villefranche, 177
Vine, the, 163
Vines, American, 125

Virgin, representations of the,

76
Visigothic architecture, 199
Vosges, the, 123, 143
Vulgarity in illustrated papers,

15, 16

Waddington, Mary K., 136
Washing days, 138
Wedding ceremonies, 43, 44
Wellington, Duke of, 168, 191
William the Conqueror, 156,

184, 201
Wine-grower, the, 125
Woman in business, the, 46
Women, position of, among the

peasants, 128

Yonne, the, 152
Yoimg, Arthur, 166

Zola, fimile, 128

THE END

Printed i^ R. & R. Clark, Limited, Editiburgh.

DATE DUE

t

CAYLORD

PRINTED IN U S A.

A 000 643 68