A very sensible man, who arrived yesterday from Madras, told me in a two hours' conversation what I reduce to the following few lines:—
This gloom, which from an unknown cause depresses the English character, penetrates so deeply into their hearts, that at the end of the world, at Madras, no sooner does an Englishman get a few days' holiday, than he quickly leaves rich and flourishing Madras and comes to revive his spirits in the little French town of Pondicherry, which, without wealth and almost without commerce, flourishes under the paternal administration of M. Dupuy. At Madras you drink Burgundy that costs thirty-six francs a bottle; the poverty of the French in Pondicherry is such that, in the most distinguished circles, the refreshments consist of large glasses of water. But in Pondicherry they laugh.
At present there is more liberty in England than in Prussia. The climate is the same as that of Koenigsberg, Berlin or Warsaw, cities which are far from being famous for their gloom. The working classes in these towns have less security and drink quite as little wine as in England; and they are much worse clothed.
The aristocracies of Venice and Vienna are not gloomy.
I can see only one point of difference: in gay countries the Bible is little read, and there is gallantry. I am sorry to have to come back so often to a demonstration with which I am unsatisfied. I suppress a score of facts pointing in the same direction.
XCVII
I have just seen, in a fine country-house near Paris, a very good-looking, very clever, and very rich young man of less than twenty; he has been left there by chance almost alone, for a long time too, with a most beautiful girl of eighteen, full of talent, of a most distinguished mind, and also very rich. Who wouldn't have expected a passionate love-affair? Not a bit of it—such was the affectation of these two charming creatures that both were occupied solely with themselves and the effect they were to produce.
XCVIII
I am ready to agree that on the morrow of a great action a savage pride has made this people fall into all the faults and follies that lay open to it. But you will see what prevents me from effacing my previous praises of this representative of the Middle Ages.
The prettiest woman in Narbonne is a young Spaniard, scarcely twenty years old, who lives there very retired with her husband, a Spaniard also, and an officer on half-pay. Some time ago there was a fool whom this officer was obliged to insult. The next day, on the field of combat, the fool sees the young Spanish woman arrive. He begins a renewed flow of affected nothings:—