—'I suppose the people are happy.'
—'Well, I may say so. We have no very rich classes, but at the same time we have no extreme poverty as yet. Only the other evening a compatriot of mine who had travelled in the country near Tours told me that the common people there lived in small caves in the cliffs, or on the slopes of the hills, and they were all barefooted when they were at home, or were at work in the vintage. I hear there are many such in Britain also. It sounds rather odd for France. And more! Paris is a wonderful town. It is a place of the agglomeration of everything extreme. A little time ago, accompanied by a few Frenchmen, I made a round of visits to all sorts of places through the whole night in order to see Paris by night. I saw many night shows to begin with: I saw many gay places: I saw several dens of the poor. Among the shows, that of Niente struck me most. It seemed so strange to entertain visitors with beer at tables which are coffins, and in a room lighted by a chandelier constructed of human bones. A small cave tavern made right in the ground, where the poor were enjoying bocks of beer, and listening to some indifferent musical performance, was also interesting. I asked from where they got the air into the place. The answer was "nowhere." But what impressed me most was a den of the destitute, where the poor get permission to sleep for one night, and to receive a basin of soup, at a total cost of twopence. When I visited the dens, it was far on in the night. I saw some four or five hundred men, clad in rags most of them, leaning on tables, asleep, in different cellars connected by narrow passages, right deep in the ground. Naturally also many were lying on the ground, and several on the stone staircases. These cellars could not have been made for such a purpose, and I was unable to divine for what they had been originally used. Perhaps they had been the cellars of some great wine merchant. I don't think you yourself can have seen such a place, but you can imagine the awfulness of the sight. Indeed, the French gentleman who was with me said he began to feel upset. I am happy to say that we have not such extreme cases of poverty in our country up to the present generation.'
—'I am afraid it is such cases as these that give good pretext to the socialistic movement,' said the duchess. 'It is a great problem. But to return to our subject, you have no embassy in Europe, as all other great powers have. You have only legations, with ordinary ministers, like secondary powers. It might have been one cause why ordinary people think Japan is such a small country.'
—'It may be so,' I answered, 'in one way; but you see we have not had any particular reason to make ourselves ostentatious, and besides, the matter does not rest with one side only.'
—'It is rather singular,' said the duchess, 'that the world has not discovered the real character of the Japanese for so long a time. But yet there was at least one man who realised it ninety years ago. I have read an account about him in a recent issue of the English press. It was in the year 1813, and, therefore, at the time when Java was under English occupation. Lord Minto (ancestor of the new viceroy) was then Viceroy of India, and it seems Sir Stamford Raffles was the chief representative of the British East India Company out in the East. The latter sent in that year an Englishman, Dr. Daniel Ainslie, to whom was attached a Dutchman, Wardenaar by name, to Nagasaki on a mission to look after English interests, and to make a confidential report on the situation in Japan. The mission was a failure; the time was not ripe enough. But the impression Sir Stamford obtained through Dr. Ainslie is interesting. It reads as fresh as though it had been brought back from Japan only yesterday, and speaks for itself:
'The refusal of the Japanese, instigated by the prejudiced and stiff-necked Dutchman, Hendrik Doeff, to trade with the English, did not bias Sir Stamford's mind against them. Dr. Ainslie, in whom he had implicit confidence, sent him voluminous reports, and on them he formed a judgment most favourable to the Japanese in every respect. Expression was given to these opinions in Sir Stamford's presidential address to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences on September 11, 1815. The following extracts are those of the most direct importance; "I need only offer a few notices on the character which they appeared to Dr. Ainslie to display during a residence of four months, and as far as he had the opportunity of judging. They are represented to be a nervous, vigorous people, whose bodily and mental powers assimilate much nearer to those of Europe than what is attributed to Asiatics in general. Their features are masculine and perfectly European, with the exception of the small, lengthened Tartar eye, which almost universally prevails, and is the only feature of resemblance between them and the Chinese. The complexion is perfectly fair, and indeed blooming, the women of the higher classes being equally fair with Europeans, and having the bloom of health more generally prevalent among them than is usually found in Europe. For a people who have had very few, if any, external aids, the Japanese cannot but rank high in the scale of civilisation....
'"The Chinese have been stationary, at least as long as we have known them, but the slightest impulse seems sufficient to give a determination to the Japanese character which would progressively improve until it attained the same height of civilisation with the European....
'"The Japanese, with an apparent coldness like the stillness of the Spanish character, and derived nearly from the same causes—that system of espionage and that principle of disunion dictated by the principles of both Governments—are represented to be eager of novelty and warm in their attachments, open to strangers, and, hating the restrictions of their political institutions, a people who seem inclined to throw themselves into the hands of any nation of superior intelligence. They have, at the same time, a great contempt and disregard of everything below their own standard of morals and habits, as instanced in the case of the Chinese."
'These remarks, uttered ninety years ago, show that at least one discerning mind had appreciated all the difference between the Japanese and other Asiatics, judged according to the accepted views among Europeans. It was the apathy of the home authorities that alone prevented the establishment nearly a century ago of an entente cordiale between England and Japan as the consequence of the strenuous effort of Sir Stamford Raffles to promote commercial relations at Nagasaki.'
At this juncture the duke returned with his two daughters; joining us very soon, he said to me:
—'Have you noticed the controversy about French patriotism waging in the papers just now? I wish all Frenchmen were as patriotic as your countrymen.'
—'I have noticed,' I said, 'but I believe that whatever opinion one may entertain, or whatever views one may express, in the innermost shrine of the heart of every Frenchman there is treasured a phrase, "La France: c'est le pays de mon cœur." It cannot be otherwise.'
—'I hope so,' rejoined the duke. 'To love one's own country, which is patriotism, is almost a natural instinct. The only difference is the degree of intensity.'