Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/261

 paid the Czar, the Pope, and the Emperor of Germany. I was used to an excellent, witty, and extravagant lecture on the intricacies of the Affair every Tuesday which delighted me, as she always had some ineffable monstrosity on the part of the Jews, the English, the Germans, or the crowned heads of Europe to impart; and took my joking with such delicious good humour that I did not know how to fill up the gap after the verdict of Rennes, for she is a very seemly, dignified little woman, my Parisian washerwoman. She stands upon her manners, and says nothing more than "Good morning, mademoiselle," if you give her eloquence no opening. And what an eloquence it is! What a flow of admirably chosen words, so expressively enunciated, with fitting gesticulations and the most wonderful grimaces of the wittiest and ugliest face I have ever seen! Then came the Transvaal War, and here she shone. Indeed, I have repeatedly begged her to abandon the obscure calling of a washerwoman, and betake herself to public speaking. I have never known a woman more astonishingly fitted for the part.

With her, too, as with the peasant, the distinctive characteristic is an indomitable spirit of independence. I have never seen her anything else but gay and charming, but two Englishwomen to whom I recommended her complained of her insolence, because, being the soul of