the stalls, where he can study his future wife without committing himself.  The difference of dress between the jeune fille and the jeune femme is very strongly marked in France.  The French girl never wears lace or jewels or feathers or heavy material of any kind, quite unlike her English or American contemporaries, who wear what they like.  The wedding-dress is classic, a simple, very long dress of white satin, and generally a tulle veil over the face.  When there is a handsome lace veil in the family, the bride sometimes wears it, but no lace on her dress.  The first thing the young married woman does is to wear a very long velvet dress with feathers in her hair.

I think on the whole the arranged marriages turn out as well as any others.  They are generally made by people of the same monde, accustomed to the same way of living, and the fortunes as nearly alike as possible.  Everything is calculated.  The young couple usually spend the summer with parents or parents-in-law, in the chateau, and I know some cases where there are curious details about the number of lamps that can be lighted in their rooms, and the use of the carriage on certain days.  I am speaking of course of purely French marriages.  To my American ideas it seemed very strange when I first came to Europe, but a long residence in a foreign country certainly modifies one’s impressions.  Years ago, when we were living in Rome, four sisters, before any of us were married, a charming Frenchwoman, Duchesse de B., who came often to the house, was very worried about this family of girls, all very happy at home and contented with their lives.  It was quite true we danced and hunted and made a great deal of music, without ever troubling ourselves about the future.  The duchesse couldn’t understand it, used often to talk to mother very seriously.  She came one day with a proposal of marriage—­a charming man, a Frenchman, not too young, with a good fortune, a title, and a chateau, had seen Madam King’s daughters in the ballroom and hunting-field, and would very much like to be presented and make his cour.  “Which one?” we naturally asked, but the answer was vague.  It sounded so curiously impersonal that we could hardly take it seriously.  However, we suggested that the young man should come and each one of the four would show off her particular talent.  One would play and one would sing (rather like the song in the children’s book, “one could dance and one could sing, and one could play the violin"), and the third, the polyglot of the family, could speak several languages.  We were rather puzzled as to what my eldest sister could do, as she was not very sociable and never spoke to strangers if she could help it, so we decided she must be very well dressed and preside at the tea-table behind an old-fashioned silver urn that we always used—­looking like a stately maitresse de maison receiving her guests.  We confided all these plans to the duchesse, but she was quite put out with us, wouldn’t bring the