Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/78

 married the daughter of a Hebrew millionaire, and to console themselves for the obligation of profiting by their noble comrade's good fortune, his friends summed up the young lady's qualities in three amusing lines:—

"Belle comme Vénus, Riche comme Crœsus, Innocente comme Dreyfus."

The raillery did not prevent "tout Paris" from being present at the splendid marriage ceremony, and inscribing its best names upon the wedding gifts. It could not do less, seeing that its king and master, Philip of Orleans, the digne (for alas! there is no English equivalent of that indescribable French word as applied to a man) representative of the House of France, is said to have accepted a million from the bride's anti-Semitic Hebrew mother.

There is another side, less known, of aristocratic Paris. This is the quiet, exclusive, genuinely religious side, that of old-fashioned, rigid noblewomen, who live apart in their dull, old houses of the Faubourg, given up to prayer and good works. There is a charming distinction about them, a musty, conventual odour, as you enter the halls of their faded hotels. They preside over ouvroirs, where ladies of their like meet to make church articles and decorate altar pieces. Sometimes they carry piety and good