This chapter has been occupied more with actions than with ideals, but it would not be complete without some reference to ideals. The English idea takes the form of moral pride, of belief in one’s own moral superiority. This is offensive to other nations because it expresses itself unpleasantly, not in words only but in manners. But however offensive it may be to Frenchmen (and it irritates them to the supreme degree), it is most valuable to the English themselves as a strength and a support. The intense soldierly pride of the military caste in Prussia was offensive, but it enabled the army to endure the discipline that led to all success. No amount of divorce-court evidence, no amount of medical evidence, no amount of ocular evidence, even in the public streets, will ever convince the English that they are not moral, and therefore their moral standard is maintained, at least ideally. It is well for them to have this opinion about themselves so long as they make the feeblest effort to justify it. To have national pride on the side of morality is to give morality a mighty ally.

The French, unfortunately for them, have never associated national pride with morality. They have associated it with generosity, with courage, and with the externals of civilisation, but never with sexual purity. The French never think that they are purer than other people, they imagine that the weakness of humanity is the same everywhere, and as Paris is the pleasure city of Europe they have ample opportunities for observing how foreigners conduct themselves there, which only confirms them in their opinion. Still, it cannot be truly said that the entire French nation is without an ideal, even in this matter. The goddess of French maidenhood is not the goddess of Lubricity, but her precise opposite, the Holy Virgin. It has been written, with slight exaggeration, that every French girl is called Marie; it is not an exaggeration to say that every French girl brought up in the Catholic religion is taught to look to the Holy Virgin as her ideal. It may be answered that the Virgin Mary is not unknown in England either; certainly the Virgin Mary is known there, but La Sainte Vierge is not. The Virgin Mary is partly ideal, but there is much everyday reality about her, and Protestantism insists upon that reality which French Catholicism conceals. The Virgin Mary is also an ordinary mother; she had a family by Joseph, the carpenter. In La Sainte Vierge there is nothing to diminish the purity of the ideal; her marriage with Joseph was merely nominal, and Joseph himself was a great saint above the common lot of humanity. La Sainte Vierge had but one child, and that one by the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit. The Virgin Mary is in heaven, La Sainte Vierge reigns for ever as the crowned Queen of Heaven and the royal patroness and special protectress of France. Her statue is on a hundred hills, it looks down benignantly from a thousand towers, she herself, the mystical Tower of Ivory, has preserved many a French city from invasion. Every French girl, at her première communion, is robed in white from head to foot in emulation of her purity; during her month, le mois de Marie, her hundred thousand altars are covered with flowers in memory of her sweetness, and all the terms of love and praise are exhausted in her litanies.

There is no ideal for the male sex comparable to this. We have read of Sir Galahad, who could say—

But who is Sir Galahad? In England only a poetical creation, in France unheard of and unknown. Were he known he would encounter a danger that even the bravest knight might dread. It might be decided, in France, that he was ridiculous. I have been represented as holding the opinion that France and England are exactly on the same level in morals; but that is not my view. Justice consists in giving everybody his due, it does not consist in believing that nations are exactly alike. I have no doubt that England is the more moral country of the two, even in practice, and much more in principle and feeling. The great difference (and it is most profound) is that the English are still capable of stern and austere feeling about these matters, which they have derived from Puritan ancestors; whereas the French, even when practically chaste in their own lives, regard adultery, in the male sex at least, with a sort of amusement not always unmingled with admiration for the address and audacity of the sinner. A witty word may save him. I knew a marble-cutter who was accused of some illicit passion, and who saved himself by the reply, “Pour être marbrier, on n’est pas de marbre.” A certain incident in the life of a former prime minister of Egypt may be taken as a test of the feeling of the two countries. In England he is looked upon with serious respect as an example of chastity in youth, and wisdom in maturity; but in France all the ability of his administration cannot efface the recollection of his “niaiserie” in the well-known interview with “Madame Putiphar,” and shamefaced youths are called after him to this day.