A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE. 201 



holding their own, empty-handed, against hunger and 

 frost and their fiercer brute embodiments — do I rec- 

 ognize a hardihood and a ferity whose wet-nurse, ages 

 back, may well have been this gray slut of the woods. 



It is this fierce, untamable core that gives the point 

 and the splendid audacity to French literature and art 

 — its vehemence and impatience of restraint. It is 

 the salt of their speech, the nitre of their wit. When 

 morbid, it gives that rabid and epileptic tendency 

 which sometimes shows itself in Victor Hugo. In this 

 great writer, however, it more frequently takes the form 

 of an aboriginal fierceness and hunger that glares and 

 bristles, and is insatiable and omnivorous. 



And how many times has Paris, that boudoir of 

 beauty and fashion, proved to be a wolf's lair, swarm- 

 ing with jaws athirst for human throats ! — the lust for 

 blood and the greed for plunder, sleeping, biding their 

 time, never extinguished. 



I do not contemn it. To the natural historian, it is 

 good. It is a return to first principles again after so 

 much art, and culture, and lying, and chauvinisme, and 

 shows these old civilizations in no danger of becoming 

 effete yet. It is like the hell of fire beneath our feet, 

 which the geologists tell us is the life of the globe. 

 Were it not for it, who would not at times despair of 

 the French character ? As long as this fiery core re- 

 mains, I shall believe France capable of recovering 

 from any disaster to her arms. The "mortal ripening" 

 of the nation is stayed. 



