Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/31

 *ble, and avid for information, and walked me up and down a delightful berceau to obtain my views of the woman's question and the relative positions of the young French and English girl. He even pressed me to contrast the French and English novel, and said he greatly preferred Scott to Zola—an opinion I endorsed with fervour. People drove over from neighbouring places, and we were quite a large party at lunch. The talk was capital—local, but interesting; no cheap gossip, but plenty of genial wit, anecdote, and repartee. The women were dowdily dressed, as provincial Frenchwomen frequently are. I judged them as dense, impervious to ideas, utterly uncultivated, never, in all probability, having read anything except the thin religious literature on which the virtuous ladies of France nourish their minds; but they could well hold their own in conversation, could cap a phrase with elegant neatness, and the hostess deserved well of her kind for the evidence she furnished of a perfectly ordered household. It would, however, be a mistake to credit them with grace because they are Frenchwomen. Nothing comes with such a shock upon the traveller in France, used to the feminine grace and charm and witchery of dress in Paris, as the dowdiness and want of ease, the total lack of taste in dress, the heavy figures and unexpressive faces of many of the women of the pro