This Trifling Incident Reminded Me Afresh That France Is A Democratic Country.

I think I re- ceived an admonition to the same effect from the free, familiar way in which the game of whist was going on just behind me.

It was attended with a great deal of noisy pleasantry, flavored every now and then with a dash of irritation. There was a young man of whom I made a note; he was such a beautiful specimen of his class. Sometimes he was very facetious, chatter- ing, joking, punning, showing off; then, as the game went on and he lost, and had to pay the _consomma- tion_, he dropped his amiability, slanged his partner, declared he wouldn't play any more, and went away in a fury. Nothing could be more perfect or more amusing than the contrast. The manner of the whole affair was such as, I apprehend, one would not have seen among our English-speaking people; both the jauntiness of the first phase and the petulance of the second. To hold the balance straight, however, I may remark that if the men were all fearful "cads," they were, with their cigarettes and their inconsistency, less heavy, less brutal, than our dear English-speaking cad; just as the bright little cafe where a robust mater- familias, doling out sugar and darning a stocking, sat in her place under the mirror behind the _comptoir_, was a much more civilized spot than a British public- house, or a "commercial room," with pipes and whiskey, or even than an American saloon.

XIII.

It is very certain that when I left Tours for Le Mans it was a journey and not an excursion; for I had no intention of coming back. The question, in- deed, was to get away, - no easy matter in France, in the early days of October, when the whole _jeunesse_ of the country is going back to school. It is accom- panied, apparently, with parents and grandparents, and it fills the trains with little pale-faced _lyceens_, who gaze out of the windows with a longing, lingering air, not unnatural on the part of small members of a race in which life is intense, who are about to be restored to those big educative barracks that do such violence to our American appreciation of the oppor- tunities of boyhood. The train stopped every five minutes; but, fortunately, the country was charming, - hilly and bosky, eminently good-humored, and dotted here and there with a smart little chateau. The old capital of the province of the Maine, which has given its name to a great American State, is a fairly interest- ing town, but I confess that I found in it less than I expected to admire. My expectations had doubtless been my own fault; there is no particular reason why Le Mans should fascinate. It stands upon a hill, indeed, - a much better hill than the gentle swell of Bourges. This hill, however, is not steep in all direc- tions; from the railway, as I arrived, it was not even perceptible.

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