[86] In any case a French officer cannot marry without an authorisation emanating from the Ministry of War. A military friend told me that the following mishap occurred to an officer in his regiment who thought he would like to marry a certain girl in a certain town. He applied for permission, which was refused. The regiment was sent elsewhere, and the sensitive officer was smitten a second time, so he applied for permission again. It came in the form of an authorisation to marry not the second, but the first young lady. The officer did so, and discovered, when too late, that she was one of those governing women who order about their husbands like children, so he has leisure to deplore the decision of the authorities.

[87] French carelessness in correcting is especially lamentable in school-books. I have before me a French school edition of Childe Harold, abounding in gross typographic blunders that must be most puzzling to French boys. M. Taine’s Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise is very faulty in this respect.

[88] “Mr. Arnold’s studies of other nations, other ages, and other creeds would, I should have thought, have led him to regard Nonconformity as an universal power in societies, which has, in our time and country, its particular embodiment, but which is to be understood only when contemplated in all its other embodiments; the thing is one in spirit and tendency, whether shown amongst the Jews or the Greeks—whether in Catholic Europe or Protestant England. Wherever there is disagreement with a current belief, no matter what its nature, there is Nonconformity. The open expression of difference and avowed opposition to that which is authoritatively established constitutes Dissent, whether the religion be Pagan or Christian, Monotheistic or Polytheistic. The relative attitudes of the Dissenter, and of those in power, are essentially the same in all cases, and in all cases lead to vituperation and persecution.”—The Study of Sociology, ninth edition, p. 234.

[89] The French in Shakespeare has been said (never by French critics) to prove that he knew the language. It proves just the contrary.

[90] Lady Scott was of French extraction, yet Scott could not speak French.

[91] The place on the steep on the right bank of the Saône, behind the cathedral. Since Michelet wrote, a gorgeous new church has been built there for the miracle-working Virgin.

INDEX

THE END

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