Duke.

This part of the opera had no sooner been acted, than the old gentleman, who now looked radiant, rose from his seat, put on his hat, and, shaking his fist at the dead hero, to the great amusement of the public, cried at the top of his voice:

"You donkey, it serves you right, you have been singing out of tune the whole evening."

And indignantly he left the theater.

⁂

In a beautifully appointed English house, afternoon tea, served in costly china, had just been brought to the drawing-room, when the mistress of the house inadvertently overturned the tea-table. Without the slightest show of vexation, without oh! or ah! Lady R—— calmly touched the bell, and, on the appearance of the domestic, merely said:

"Take this away, and bring more tea."

"My dear," whispered Lady P—— to a friend, "she won't match that china for $500."

⁂

Another illustration of the latter:

A fearful railway accident has taken place. The first car, with its human contents, is reduced to atoms.

An Englishman, who was in one of the first-class cars at the rear, examines the débris.

"Oh!" he says to an official, pointing to a piece of flesh wrapped up in a piece of tweed cloth. "Pick that up, that's the piece of my butler that has got the keys of my trunks."

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLISH PHARISEES AND FRENCH CROCODILES.

The French and the English have this very characteristic feature in common: they can stand any amount of incense; you may burn all the perfumes of Arabia under their noses, without incommoding them in the slightest degree.

With this difference, however, in the extremes.

The French boaster is noisy and talkative. With his mustache twirled defiantly upward, his hat on one side, he will shout at you, at the top of his voice that,[1] "La France, Monsieur, sera toujours la Fr-r-rance, les Français seront toujours les Fr-r-rançais." As you listen to him, you are almost tempted to believe, with Thackeray, "that the poor fellow has a lurking doubt in his own mind that he is not the wonder he professes to be."

But allow me to say that the British specimen is far more provoking. He is so sure that all his geese are swans; so thoroughly persuaded of his superiority over the rest of the human race; it is, in his eyes, such an incontested and incontestable fact, that he does not think it worth his while to raise his voice in asserting it, and that is what makes him so awfully irritating, "don't you know?" He has not a doubt that the whole world was made for him; not only this one, but the next. In the meantime—for he is in no hurry to put on the angel plumage that awaits him—he congratulates himself on his position here below. Everything is done to add to his comfort and happiness: the Italians give him concerts, the French dig the Suez Canal for him, the Germans sweep out his offices and do his errands in the City of London for $200 a year, the Greeks grow the principal ingredient in his plum pudding. The Americans supply his aristocracy with rich heiresses, so that they may get their coats of arms out of pawn. His face beams with gratitude and complacency, as he quietly rubs his hands together, and calmly thanks Heaven that he is not as other men are. And it is true enough; he is not.

"Dear brother reader," says Thackeray, "answer as a man of honor. Do you think a Frenchman your equal? You don't, you gallant British snob, you know you don't.... Oh, my country! if I were a Frenchman, how I would hate you!"

⁂

There is one great difference between our two boasters: the Englishman will seek, on all occasions, to appear a trifle better than he really is—he never runs himself down; if he has a defect or two, he will let you find them out; but the Frenchman, on the contrary, is a braggart of vice. To hear him joke about matrimony, for instance, you would take him for a libertine. To listen to some of the plays that he will applaud, to see the caricatures that amuse him, you might come to the conclusion that, in his eyes, marriage was not a sacred tie. But do not form your conclusions too hastily. Those jokes, that delight him, are often in very doubtful taste, I admit; but they are jokes and nothing more, and if you were to take the plays and caricatures for real pictures of French life, you would be making as great a mistake as you could well make.

Now, a Frenchman, who had given an appointment to his wife, would be apt to take on a little look of mystery as he hurried away from a friend in the street, with the words: "Excuse my haste, I must leave you; I have an appointment." And if you heard the response, "Ah! you rascal, I'll tell your wife," accompanied by a knowing shake of the head, you might rashly take the pair for a couple of reprobates. But once more you would be wrong. Such harmless trivialities—for trivialities they must be called—are indulged in by men who are the honor and joy of their homes.

Let me tell you this: Whenever you hear a Frenchman speak ill of himself, do not believe him, he is merely boasting. Be sure that nothing is more true. I shall never say anything more true so long as I live.

We French hide our virtues and do not like to be reproached with them. On this subject I might tell an anecdote which, if venerable, is none the less amusing.

The Athenæum, a paper written by the élite of the literary, scientific, and artistic worlds, was at a loss to know, not long since, why almost all the heroes of French novels were engineers. The reason is that French engineers are all ex-pupils of the Polytechnic School. I mean the engineers of mines, roads, and bridges. These young men, having passed their youth in study, in order to prepare for the most difficult examination we have, naturally have the reputation of being steady. The anecdote is this: Edmond About one day wrote: "Virtuous as a Polytechnician." The sentence displeased the young mathematicians, and they promptly took the author of it to task.

I forget the exact words of their reply, but it ran, as nearly as I can recollect: