A worshiper of grace and beauty, the Frenchman has given to woman a place which she occupies in no other nation.
Since the days when Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.
The Frenchman is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, physiological, or psychological point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted.
It is a case of woman worship. Parodying Terence's lines, he says:
"I am a man, and all that concerns woman interests me."
Nothing is more absurd in the eyes of the English than this ever-present idea of woman in the mind of the Frenchman, and as our dear neighbors do not know us any better than if an ocean, instead of a silver streak, separated us and them, they indulge in a thousand and one commentaries upon the puerility of our character.
However, it is to our education, and to that alone, that this weak but charming side of our national character must be attributed.
If, from the tenderest age, we were used to liberty and the companionship of children of the other sex, we should grow up thinking very little about liberty and women, and we should succeed in acquiring that sangfroid which is the foundation-stone of the prosperity and the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon race.
When we were schoolboys, and a rumor spread through the class rooms that the sister of So-and-So was in the parlor, do you remember, my dear compatriots, what a commotion it created throughout the whole establishment? Do you remember how we climbed on tables and chairs, and how happy we were if we could but catch sight of the corner of a petticoat at the other end of the courtyard? No wonder, for, to us, a girl was quite an extraordinary being, something almost supernatural. The scream of the young ladies of Miss Tomkins' Seminary, on hearing that "a man is behind the door!" is nothing, compared to the magic cry, "Une fille!" in a French school.
Is not the object of man's worship always something unknown, extraordinary, ideal? Is it not always clothed in mystery? Have we ever bestowed unlimited admiration upon those whose society we frequent every day? Habit kills admiration,[2] as it kills all sentiments that live upon illusions. If, from our childhood, woman were the companion of our daily games and walks, should we not look upon her with different eyes?