Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/70

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Foreigners in Paris seem to be very much swayed in their judgments and adoption of French politics by the mental and moral atmosphere they breathe, as well as by their own natural tendencies. The average Briton far too rarely stoops to consider the question of Republicanism, but condemns it beforehand on aristocratic principles. Mr. Bodley, who wrote a singularly pretentious work on France, frequented Bonapartist circles, and sat at the feet of the Comte de Mun, and sundry other political noblemen of the same mind; and the consequence is two tomes to prove that what France wants is another Napoleon—the very thing that nearly ruined her. The daughter of a sister Republic carries her millions into France by marriage with some needy nobleman, who has already figured in no estimable light in the pages of contemporary history written by fashionable romancers, under the guise of fiction, and she perhaps brandishes her parasol at the head of a band of miscreants, called La Jeunesse Royaliste, in enthusiastic admiration of its mission to batter the hat of a guest, an old man, the Head of the State, the Representative of France before the world. Mr. Bodley's ideal appears to be not the good of France, but the triumph of the ideal of the archbishops and owners of castles. The Republic is bad form, and he would fain see it overthrown for the pleasure of his good friend, the Comte de