arrow, traditional,
curiously intensive way. They detest travel, although at least once in
their lives they visit Switzerland and Italy; possibly, but with no
such alarming frequency as to suggest an invasion, England.

The most aspiring read the literature of the day, see the new plays
(leaving the _jeune fille_ at home), take an intelligent interest in
the politics of their own country, visit the annual salons, and if
really advanced discuss with all the national animation such violent
eruptions upon the surface of the delicately poised art life, which
owes its very being to France, as impressionism, cubism, etc. Except
among the very rich, where, as elsewhere, temptations are many and
pressing, they have few scandals to discuss, but much gossip, and
there is the ever recurrent flutter over births, marriages, deaths.
They have no snobbery in the climber's sense. When a bourgeois,
however humble in origin, graduates as an "intellectual" he is
received with enthusiasm (if his table manners will pass muster) by
the noblesse; but it is far more difficult for a nobleman to enter the
house of a bourgeois. It is seldom that he wants to, but sometimes
there are sound financial reasons for forming this almost illegitimate
connection, and then his motives are penetrated by the keen French
mind--a mind born without illusions--and interest alone dictates the
issue. The only climbers in our sense are the wives of politicians
suddenly risen to eminence, and even then the social ambitions of
these ladies are generally confined to arriving in the exclusive
circles of the haute bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie are as proud of their class as the noblesse of theirs,
and its top stratum regards itself as the real aristocracy of the
Republique Francaise, the families bearing ancient titles as
anachronistic; although oddly enough they and the ancient noblesse are
quite harmonious in their opinion of the Napoleonic aristocracy! One
of the leaders in the grande bourgeoisie wrote me at a critical moment
in the affairs of Greece: "It looks as if Briand would succeed in
placing the lovely Princess George of Greece on the throne, and
assuredly it is better for France to have a Bonaparte there than no
one at all!"

It is only when war comes and the men and women of the noblesse rise
to the call of their country as automatically as a reservist answers
the tocsin or the printed order of mobilization, that the bourgeoisie
is forced to concede that