hours of sweating travail, can he feel other than contempt of the highly remunerative and windy profession of the politician? The superiority of the lord of the soil to whom he pays tribute, he will readily acknowledge, but none other. In the west he will speak of his family as "my sons and the creatures," meaning his daughters. In the land of the Cévennes, his children are les droles[*drôles], and the same unquestioning obedience is expected from both sexes by this rough and silent tyrant of the soil. Outside his farm he has little esteem to waste upon his fellows; within, is far from prodigal of tenderness to his women-folk. These he expects to stand at meals in a corner of the kitchen, while he and his sons sit to eat. He governs haughtily, with few words; but in his rude heart he knows that the real, the silent, and unobtrusive government lies in the hands of his wife, who, with the tact and watchfulness of affection, corrects the errors of his harsh temper, and smooths out the asperities of home-life. It would be difficult to find a people to whom modern femininism is more repugnant than the French, and hard to name one that owes more to the intelligence, good-will, and incessant labour of women. Frenchmen object to women in the liberal professions, and make a desperate hue and cry the day a talented lady seeks leave to wear the lawyer's toque and gown. Yet the fields are tended by women;
