THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 353 



Photograph by H. C. Ellis 



A TRELLIS BUILT BY NAPOLEON I EOR HIS EMPRESS, MARIE LOUISE '. COMPIEGNE 



Like the Babylonian monarch who erected the famous Hanging Gardens to delight the 

 eye of his princess, who amid the flat plains of Mesopotamia pined for her mountain home, 

 so the first Bonaparte built this beautiful arbor to remind his homesick Austrian princess of 

 her favorite trellis at Schonbrunn. 



league concerning the troubles or the 

 happiness about his hearthstone or the 

 relationships existing behind the closed 

 doors of his family residence. 



What the Frenchman lacks, however, in 

 talkativeness about his personal affairs he 

 more than compensates for in his startling 

 loquacity on things of a general nature ; 

 for in France intelligence is universal. 



This does not mean that every French- 

 man is well educated; it does not mean 

 that he is widely traveled, but it does 

 mean that mentally he is generally on tip- 

 toes. As far as city and town life is con- 

 cerned, it has been truly observed that 

 "the sensation which France produces on 

 the impressionable foreigner is, first of 

 all, that of mental exhilaration." 



And, be it remembered, this intellectual 

 enthusiasm must not be classified as loose 

 thinking. The French are astonishingly 

 precise. Their intellectual precision is 



such that I am afraid it discourages their 

 imagination. I cannot imagine a Parisian 

 of the cultivated class indulging before 

 his fireplace in those loose, wandering 

 dreams in which so many Americans de- 

 light. * 



INTELLECTUAL CANDOR A NATIONAL 

 TRAIT 



Intimately connected with this attitude 

 is the Frenchman's intellectual candor. 

 Long accused by the Americans and the 

 British of lacking this very quality simply 

 because he does not make a public dissec- 

 tion of his personal inner life, he pos- 

 sesses, I believe, far greater intellectual 

 frankness than either of his two allies, 

 when dealing with the deeper problems 

 of existence. 



If he is an atheist, he is frankly one ; 

 if he is a believer in the necessity of some 

 supposedly immoral tendency in man- 



