This
Is A Species Of Perfidy Which One Would Think Should Render Them
Odious And Detestable To The Whole Sex; But The Case Is
Otherwise.
I beg your pardon, Madam; but women are never better
pleased, than when they see one another exposed; and every
individual has such confidence in her own superior charms and
discretion, that she thinks she can fix the most volatile, and
reform the most treacherous lover.
If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by
repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he
makes for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is
handsome; if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he
suffers a repulse from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch
your sister, or your daughter, or your niece, he will, rather
than not play the traitor with his gallantry, make his addresses
to your grandmother; and ten to one, but in one shape or another,
he will find means to ruin the peace of a family, in which he has
been so kindly entertained. What he cannot accomplish by dint of
compliment, and personal attendance, he will endeavour to effect,
by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and verses, of
which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he is
detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his
ingratitude, he impudently declares, that what he had done was no
more than simple gallantry, considered in France as an
indispensible duty on every man who pretended to good breeding.
Nay, he will even affirm, that his endeavours to corrupt your
wife, or your daughter, were the most genuine proofs he could
give of his particular regard for your family.
If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly
be the most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of
a true English character, You know, Madam, we are naturally
taciturn, soon tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of
disgust. Your French friend intrudes upon you at all hours: he
stuns you with his loquacity: he teases you with impertinent
questions about your domestic and private affairs: he attempts to
meddle in all your concerns; and forces his advice upon you with
the most unwearied importunity: he asks the price of every thing
you wear, and, so sure as you tell him undervalues it, without
hesitation: he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill-contrived, ill-made;
that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the
fashion and the price; that the marquise of this, or the countess
of that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton,
and yet it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that
nobody would wear.
If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat
of all of them, and then complain he has no appetite. This I have
several times remarked. A friend of mine gained a considerable
wager upon an experiment of this kind: the petit maitre ate of
fourteen different plats, besides the dessert; then disparaged
the cook, declaring he was no better than a marmiton, or
turnspit.
The French have the most ridiculous fondness for their hair, and
this I believe they inherit from their remote ancestors. The
first race of French kings were distinguished by their long hair,
and certainly the people of this country consider it as an
indispensible ornament. A Frenchman will sooner part with his
religion than with his hair, which, indeed, no consideration will
induce him to forego. I know a gentleman afflicted with a
continual head-ach, and a defluxion on his eyes, who was told by
his physician that the best chance he had for being cured, would
be to have his head close shaved, and bathed every day in cold
water. "How (cried he) cut my hair? Mr. Doctor, your most humble
servant!" He dismissed his physician, lost his eye-sight, and
almost his senses, and is now led about with his hair in a bag,
and a piece of green silk hanging like a screen before his face.
Count Saxe, and other military writers have demonstrated the
absurdity of a soldier's wearing a long head of hair;
nevertheless, every soldier in this country wears a long queue,
which makes a delicate mark on his white cloathing; and this
ridiculous foppery has descended even to the lowest class of
people. The decrotteur, who cleans your shoes at the corner of
the Pont Neuf, has a tail of this kind hanging down to his rump,
and even the peasant who drives an ass loaded with dung, wears
his hair en queue, though, perhaps, he has neither shirt nor
breeches. This is the ornament upon which he bestows much time
and pains, and in the exhibition of which he finds full
gratification for his vanity. Considering the harsh features of
the common people in this country, their diminutive stature,
their grimaces, and that long appendage, they have no small
resemblance to large baboons walking upright; and perhaps this
similitude has helped to entail upon them the ridicule of their
neighbours.
A French friend tires out your patience with long visits; and,
far from taking the most palpable hints to withdraw, when he
perceives you uneasy he observes you are low-spirited, and
therefore he will keep you company. This perseverance shews that
he must either be void of penetration, or that his disposition
must be truly diabolical. Rather than be tormented with such a
fiend, a man had better turn him out of doors, even though at the
hazard of being run thro' the body.
The French are generally counted insincere, and taxed with want
of generosity. But I think these reproaches are not well founded.
High-flown professions of friendship and attachment constitute
the language of common compliment in this country, and are never
supposed to be understood in the literal acceptation of the
words; and, if their acts of generosity are but very rare, we
ought to ascribe that rarity, not so much to a deficiency of
generous sentiments, as to their vanity and ostentation, which
engrossing all their funds, utterly disable them from exerting
the virtues of beneficence.
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