around them are lower than the brutes. In England and in Ireland I have seen men and women of this sort, persons of diseased selfishness, who, in their homes, surrounded by others, live only for themselves, and whose sole mission in life apparently is to render those same victims of their proximity as wretched as possible.
Frenchwomen are not perfect, we know, since they are human. They have their meannesses, their spites, their pettinesses, and jealousies, like others; they are largely tainted with the vice of avarice, and it cannot be said that they are, in general, capable of climbing the heights of disinterestedness. They love money, and they save it. But, whatever their faults, I dare to say that no race of women can show a smaller percentage of shrews and reckless mischief-makers. Their discretion is extraordinary, and no less extraordinary is the equable, dignified nature of their domestic rule. They have their tantrums like other women, but they are surprisingly free from the vice of scolding. The word "termagant" was never invented for the pleasing and tactful Frenchwoman. She will blight your life by other means should she have that fancy. Economy is her great and unlovable virtue. If she clips the wings of romance so ruthlessly, it is always in the interests of economy. I do not give her ideal as the highest or the noblest; it is even lower, perhaps, than that
