CHAPTER XX

THE FRENCH WIFE

Her keenness and common-sense--Her power of observation and her native adaptability--Her graceful ways--Her tact--Her artistic refinement--Monsieur et Madame--'Did I hear you knock at my door, dear?'

The wealthy classes of society in every civilized nation in the world are so much alike in their manners, habits, and customs, that they offer very little food to the observer of national characteristics. The men follow the London fashions, the women the Paris ones. They all cultivate sport, art, and literature; they all enjoy the same luxuries of life, they all have good cooks, they all have discovered the same way of living. If you want to see how differently people live in France, in England, in Germany, in Italy, in America, wherever you like, live among the middle and lower classes. Once, in South Africa, I spent a whole day in a Zulu kraal, living with the natives and like the natives, and I found that day spent in a far more interesting manner than if I had spent it among the hosts of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Mayfair, or Fifth Avenue.

France is the only country that I know where, outside of the aristocracy and the wealthy classes, you can find people who live daintily. The French labourer eats a more appetizing dinner than English and German well-to-do shopkeepers eat and than is served in the hotels of the small American towns. That French labourer would refuse to swallow, and even to look at, that wretched meal which I have seen English working-men eat at noon, when resting their backs against a wall or fence on the road--bread and pickles, or a slice of something looking very much like cat's-meat, and stale beer that had been stewing for hours in the sun in a badly-corked can.

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The French wife, immensely superior to her husband in intelligence, in shrewdness, in _savoir vivre_ and _savoir faire_, thanks to her common-sense, her knowledge of financial matters, her instinct for good order and management, her artistic refinement, her keen power of observation, her native adaptability, her talent for cookery, makes a husband enjoying but a small income lead the life that a rich foreigner might envy.

She may have two dresses and one hat only to her name, but, by constant skilful changes, the little humbug will make you believe that she possesses a well-furnished wardrobe. It is not the cowl that makes the monk any more than it is the dress that makes the woman. A woman is stylish or not, according to the manner she puts her clothes on, and that is where the French woman is irresistible. To lift her dress modestly, gracefully, and daintily as she crosses a muddy street, she has not her equal in the world. She has a little bustling, fluttering way about her that will always keep your interest in her alive. She is always tidy and smart, her hair well dressed, her hands well gloved, her stockings well drawn, and her dainty little feet well shod. When she speaks to you, you can seldom guess, from the way she is dressed, from the way she behaves, from the language she uses, whether she is the wife of what society calls a gentleman or not.

She has the knack, the inborn genius, for getting twenty sou worth out of every franc she spends. She is no snob, does not play at At Homes, and saves her tea and sugar, which in France are expensive luxuries. She does not play the piano, and saves her husband's ears. She makes her own frocks, and saves dressmakers' bills; she eats light, healthy meals of her own make, and saves cooks' wages; she goes to bed early, and saves her candles. She is rich, as most of us might be, not in what she actually possesses, but in what she knows how to do without. Thanks to that woman, a Frenchman who has L100 to spend in the year lives like an Englishman who has an income of L500.

In the most modest little flat she has her dressing-room, out of which she issues in the morning neatly trimmed, a perfect transformation. She will do without a drawing-room, but never without a dressing-room, for she understands to a supreme degree that poetry of matrimony which has not two years to live if the apartment does not possess a dressing-room.

Better than that, the French wife of that class will play at being an aristocrat, if you please. She will insist on having Monsieur's apartment and Madame's apartment quite separate, so that they shall not be compelled to impose their society on each other if they don't feel in the mood.

And in that very humble class of French society I know men who are trained to knock at the door of their wives' apartments in good Faubourg Saint-Germain style, when they wish for the company of Madame.

And if Monsieur should fail to knock at Madame's door when the latter would be pleased to receive his attentions and enjoy the pleasure of his company, it is just possible that she would go to her husband's _appartements_, knock at his door gently and discreetly, and whisper: 'Did I hear you knock at my door just now, dear?'

'Silly nonsense!' some people will say.

Well, my dear friends, let me tell you that happiness is made up of thousands of little foolish trifles of that sort.