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[46]

Page [46]

LXXXV

The Frenchman is a farmyard animal, so well
domesticated that he dares not jump over any fence.
Witness his tastes in art and literature.

He is an animal of the Latin race; he does not
object to filth in his place of abode; and in literature
he is scatophagous. He dotes on excrements. That is
what pothouse men of letters call the Gallic salt.

A choice example of French depravity: of the nation
which pretends to be independent above all others.

(Here a paragraph cut out from a newspaper is
fastened to the manuscript.)

The following extract from M. de Vaulabelle's fine book
will suffice to give an idea of the impression made by Lavalette's
escape upon the least enlightened section of the Royalist party:

`The tide of Royalism, at this period of the Second Restoration,
was rising almost to the point of madness. The young
Josephine de Lavalette was receiving her education at one of
the principal convents of Paris
(l'Abbaye-au-Bois). She had
left it merely to come to kiss her father. When she returned
after the escape, and when the very modest part she had played
in it was known, an immense outcry was raised against the
child; the nuns and her companions avoided her and a number
of the parents declared that they would remove their daughters
if she were allowed to remain there. They did not wish, they
said, to allow their daughters to come into contact with a
young person who had been guilty of such conduct and such
an example. When Madame de Lavalette recovered her liberty,
six weeks later, she was obliged to take away her daughter.'