What will to-morrow bring forth? This expectation of the unforeseen is, after all, very charming. Everything is possible in France, even the most wildly improbable drolleries, and the most tragic adventures.
What could surprise them? When a country has produced a Joan of Arc, and a Napoleon, it may well be considered miraculous ground.
And then the French love women: they love them well, with passion and with airy grace, and with respect.
Their gallantry cannot be compared to anything in any other country.
He who has preserved in his heart, the flame of gallantry which burned in the last centuries, surrounds women with a tenderness at once profound, gentle, sensitive and vigilant. He loves everything that belongs to them; everything that comes from them, everything that they are; everything they do. He loves their toilette, their knick-knacks, their adornments, their artifices, their naïvetés, their little perfidies, their lies and their dainty ways. He loves them all, rich as well as poor, the young and even the old, the dark, the fair, the fat, the thin. He feels himself at his ease with them, and amongst them. There he could remain indefinitely, without fatigue, without ennui, happy in the mere fact of being in their presence.
He knows how, from the very first word, by a look, by a smile, to show them that he adores them, to arouse their attention, to sharpen their wish to please, to display for his benefit all their powers of seduction. Between them and him there is established at once, a quick sympathy, a fellowship of instincts, almost a relationship through similarity of character and nature.
Then begins between them and him a combat of coquetry, and gallantry; a mysterious, and skirmishing sort of friendship is cemented, and an obscure affinity of heart and mind is drawn closer.
He knows how to say what will please them, how to make them understand what he thinks; how to make known, without ever shocking them, without offending their delicate and watchful modesty, the admiration, discreet yet ardent, always burning in his eyes, always trembling on his lips, always alight in his veins. He is their friend and their slave, the humble servitor of their caprices, and the admirer of their persons. He is ever at their beck and call, ready to help them, to defend them, as secret allies. He would love to devote himself to them, not only to those he knows slightly, but to those he knows not at all, to those he has never even seen.
He asks nothing of them but a little pretty affection, a little confidence, or a little interest, a little graceful friendliness or even, sly malice.
He loves, in the street the woman who passes by, and whose glance falls upon him. He loves the young girl with hair streaming down her shoulders, who, a blue bow on her head, a flower in her bosom, moves with slow or hurried step, timid or bold eye, through the throng on the pavements. He loves the unknown ones he elbows, the little shopwoman who dreams on her doorstep, the fine lady who lazily reclines in her open carriage.