44 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
were naturally those which had most to suffer from the ravages of 
the evil, they have been replaced by coarser plants, and the vine- 
grower, ruined by the frosts — ruined by direct taxes — ruined by 
indirect taxes — has renounced quality for quantity ; and the exqui- 
site game of the vineyards of France has lost its flavor, and the 
French wine its renown. Then the artificers of the great cities, 
the manufacturers of Normandy, where the vine does not grow, 
have fabricated wine, out and out, to poison the people ; and the 
treasury, seeing here a means of collecting taxes on water as well 
as wine, has associated itself in this ignoble traffic — associating the 
shame of the administration with that of patented poisoners. 
Of all the precious gifts that Heaven made to France, one only, 
the most precious, has remained to it, the Blonde Woman, a charm- 
ing creation, with which the supreme ordainer of things has gifted 
the pale countries of the north to compensate them for the absence 
of the Sun. I do not slander the Brunette, but she is of all climates. 
I know that the selfishness of the age has not yet falsified the 
divine nature of the woman of France; that she alone among us 
has not sacrificed to the golden calf, that she alone still conse- 
crates to the worship of true passion the privileged altars of her 
heart, and that she faithfully keeps her soul for the poet and the 
artist, when paternal tyranny delivers her body to the banker or 
the lawyer. This is enough to save the world. 
If besides in truth, the gifts most beloved of Heaven, the 
Blonde woman and Wine, have the defect of disarming the intelli- 
gence of man, and of mystifying his thought ; the woman and the 
wine of France have, on the other hand, the privilege of giving spirit 
to beasts and of galvanizing inertia. It is an age since European 
society would have died of the Britannic spleen, if the French 
soul had not been there to preserve nations from the disastrous 
influence of constitutionalism, and to revive fallen courage — the 
French spirit, adorable gayety of good sense aromatized with fra- 
ternal expansion by the bouquet of Chambertin, shaded with deli- 
cacy and modesty by the reflection of chivalry. If the Fi-ench 
spirit has conquered the world, it is because it has through all 
times translated the influence of woman, it is because woman has 
never ceased to reign among us. Courtesy, gallantry, loyalty. 
