efore. She
is more independent, feels more confidence in herself, knows more of
life than before, and the consequence is that she is better able to
provoke the love which she desires to inspire in a man of her choice.

There may also be an economical reason which incites young Frenchmen to
seek love in matrimony instead of outside of it. They have been
observing their elders, and come to the right conclusion that real love
and respectable women are much more within their means than sham love
and disreputable women. A charming companion, who is at the same time a
sweet mistress and counsellor, a careful housekeeper and a devoted wife,
appears to them in her true light--the best article in the market.
Besides, they realize that the man who is married has a social advantage
over the one who is not. The man who marries a girl of his own society
can now explain that he married her simply because he loved her, without
thinking that he has to apologize for his action by mentioning what a
good stroke of business he has made.

Most men of the preceding generation avoided matrimony as they would
have avoided ridicule. The part of husband and father struck them as
unpleasant and too _petit bourgeois_. Literature and the drama helped to
fill them with this notion; but now literature and the drama are getting
optimistic. We are getting over the period of problem novels and plays,
in which all the morbid diseases of the heart were dissected. The heroes
of novels and plays begin to get married without ceasing to be
interesting, and the result is that the present generation of France is
getting more healthy and more cheerful. This is most hopeful for France,
for the regeneration seems to take place in every class of society. The
friends of France will rejoice in this evolution. I have always
maintained, and still maintain, that it is the educational system that
explains the prosperity of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that absolute
freedom for men to marry the women they love explains its strength and
its marvellous vitality.

CHAPTER XVII

LOVE WITH WHITE HAIR

Don't smile. If there is a love absolutely beautiful, almost holy, it is
love with white hair. If conjugal tenderness deserves at all the name of
love, it is at that time of life when it becomes idealized and purified.
If two hearts can, in this world, beat in perfect unison, it is the two
hearts of old married couples united by a whole life of tender intimacy.
Love, i