The Lexington intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1901-1949, 1902-06-28
NEVER SEEN BY pLEBEIANs,
Poverty Keeps High Society People
in France from Being seen
in Public.

Few foreigners who visit France
ever obtain even a passing glimpse
of the real a~ristocracy of the coun
try. This is the averment of Hughes
lie Roux, on a visit to this country,
made to the students of Columbia
college recently. "These people of
the genuine a~ristocracy," he said,
ARE in financial poverty because OF
the industrial expansion of the times,
which has destroyed their former
means OF support. They T inac-
cessible to foreigners because real
French society is sensitive to its lack
of funds and realizes its inability to
entertain foreign guests in the style
to which they have been accustomed.
Visitors to Paris meet the 'bour-
g~eoisie' and the cosmopolitan people
who come there from all countries
but France, and they believe this rep
resents real French society"
This was the keynote of the adj
dress by the French lecturer, who,
before an audience of 600 persons,
four-ffths of whom were women,
gave the first of a series of lectures
on "The French Family" His special
topic on this occasion was 1.-THE
French Family of To-day and Yester-
day." During his address M. lie
Roux attacked the conceptions of
French society held by the average
foreigner and those depicted in
French novels of the day.
ut is impossible" said M. lie Roux
at the start of his address, Ito judge
fairly of French society to-day; it is
too complex. 1t was possible to do
so, however, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, when there was
a common ideal of living and loving.
For society at that time the example
was set by the court, and society
was its own object. Since the days
of the revolution this state of affairs
has vanished. France is in a process
of perpetual change and is in a state
of evolution. What the result will
be cannot be foretold. The middle
class people of the present day are
following the ideals Of the seven
teenth century a~ristocracy. They
try to set the pace, and it is thus
the stability of modern French so
ciety is shaken. 1t is difficult for
foreigners to meet the represents
tives of real French society to-day
as they keep to themselves.
"The great mistake of the foreign
world to-day is that it judges French
society by the conception of it given
in the novels Of modern French nov
elists especially in those of Paul
Bourget and Guy De Maupassant.
These two novelists not only fail to
describe the true characteristics OF
French society, but they describe So
cial conditions as found nowhere on
the globe. They take individual
psychological cases and special in.
stances for their delineation of char.
acter that foreign readers natural
ly suppose representative of France
but in reality are typical either Of
some other country or of cosmopoli
tan life in Paris, which is not rea.
French life.
81 have in mind a case where botf
Bourget and De Maupassant took fol-
the subject of their novels a certain
notorious woman of Paris, who final
ly died in al insane asylum. Though
this woman was of a foreign coun
try, the novelists labeled her with
French name and the natural impress
sion got abroad that she was typica
Of French life"