The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-13 00:00:00

A NOVEL TABLE D'HOTE.

There was nothing particularly to be admired in
the company ; indeed I have now forgotten them all
but two people—the only French, I fancy, among the
number. They were seemingly a new-married couple.
He must have been somewhere about 35, with a fine,
clear-cut, clever face, or rather less merely " clever"
than intellectual—of the savant kind, I should say.
He bad also a look of simplicity and goodness, be-
sides a certain largeness and nobility of outline—
Norman-French, after the type of the man in Mil-
lais's picture of the Huguenots. Indeed, there was
an air of gentle blood about him down to his very
hands, which were handsomer than one usually sees
in a Frenchman. For her—she was lovely ; small,
delicate, large-eyed ; scarcely out of her teens, and
as timid-looking as a young hare of the wood. She
might never have been across her convent gate, or
out of her mother's sight till now, and she seemed to
creep to her husband for protection against this ter-
rible unknown outside world. Though she was a
little frightened of him too ; stole at him glances of
shy strangeness, and coloured sensitively almost
every time he addressed her.

Obviously, one of those marriages, essentially
French, which we English regard with such holy
horror, theoretically ; though practically, many of
ours are not a whit better; a marriage arranged by
parents and friends, in which the bride has no voice
whatever, nor dreams of having one. The pair
were exceedingly courteous to one another, but had
by no means that air of complete content, even silly
content, which our English honeymoon couples show
perhaps a little too plainly. Yet there was something
very touching in the quiet, protecting gravity of the
bridegroom, the shy sweet look of the bride. She
did not dislike him evidently—the gentle, honest-
looking man, with twice her years, and probably
twice her cleverness ; whom, in all probability, she
had scarcely seen more than a few formal times be-
fore she was married to him. Poor little girl! I
wondered what sort of woman she would grow up
to, whether presently her shrinking shyness would
all drop off, and she would blossom out into the
married woman, the married Frenchwoman, accord-
ing to our English ideal of the species, which may
be rather different from the reality: lively, brilliant,
entirely self possessed ; charming, and conscious of
her charms ; clever, and making the utmost use of
her cleverness, and especially of those qualities in
which she surpasses all civilised women—tact, savoir
faire, and perfect knowledge of the world. A
character—you may like it or not—there is much
to be said for and against it ; which we quiet Eng-
lishwomen are prone to believe the natural outcome
of that state of society in which marriages de con-
venance are the rule, and not, as we hope with us,
the melancholy exception. The French argue that
their system has its advantages. " Oh, I am sure
to be married; we have no old maids in France,"
said to me a lively damsel of fifteen. Plain or
pretty, all take their turn, and fulfil what is regarded
as the natural destiny of women, without any of
the bitter jealousies and souring disappointments
which deteriorate the weaker sort of what are se-
verely called our "surplus females." Also those
plain, outspoken, matrimonial bargains, arranged
by parents or friends, avoid at least the personal
struggle after husbands, which makes young women
often the mock of the other sex and the humiliation
of their own.

Heaven forbid I should be supposed to defend
these " arranged" marriages ; but before we blame
our neighbours we should take care that our own
hands are clean. I have seen many a sham sen-
timental, but in reality most mercenary union, in
England, in which the women seemed to have,
and deserved to have, far less chance of hap-
piness than the gentle little French bride. And
however unwise and dangerous may be the system
of seclusion practised towards young girls in France,
taking them direct from the school-room to the
altar, still, when .1 think of this young creature and
other demoiselles I know, and compare them with
certain "fast" young English ladies I have at times
met, I confess it feels like turning from a bed of wild
garlic in full flowers—country readers will appre-
ciate the force of the simile—to a bank of primroses,
or a uooky hollow of blue and white violets.—" La
Belle France," in Good Words.

ACCIDENT TO A MAIL STEAMER.—lnformation
has been received that the steamship Surat, belonging to
the Peninsular and Oriental Company, having on board the
mails and passengers for India, China, and Australia, and
which left Suez on the 4th instant, grounded on a reef 90
miles from that port, at 2 a.m. on the sth. Operations are
in progress for lightening the ship, and in the meantime
the mails and passengers have been transferred to the
Nubia, which vessel was to have left Suez at midnight on
WeduesdaY•