第17章

I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage,in consequence of my German nationality,had proved completely unfounded.No one seems to know or to care what my nationality is,and I am treated,on the contrary,with the civility which is the portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly.This,I confess,has been something of a surprise to me,and I have not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly.My determination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates.I wished to observe the different forms taken by the irritation that I should naturally produce;for it is under the influence of irritation that the French character most completely expresses itself.My presence,however,does not appear to operate as a stimulus,and in this respect I am materially disappointed.They treat me as they treat every one else;whereas,in order to be treated differently,I was resigned in advance to be treated worse.I have not,as I say,fully explained to myself this logical contradiction;but this is the explanation to which I tend.The French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves,that in spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870,they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence.They are not very sure that there are any Germans;they have already forgotten the convincing proofs of the fact that were presented to them nine years ago.A German was something disagreeable,which they determined to keep out of their conception of things.I therefore think that we are wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the revanche;the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom in it.

The English-speaking specimens,too,I have not been willing to neglect the opportunity to examine;and among these I have paid special attention to the American varieties,of which I find here several singular examples.The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics of a period of national decadence;reminding me strongly of some diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century.He is an illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility,and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog.I learn from him that there is an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him,and that the city of Boston,indeed,is almost exclusively composed of them.(He communicated this fact very proudly,as if it were greatly to the credit of his native country;little perceiving the truly sinister impression it made upon me.)

What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge--and you know what my knowledge is--unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind;the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one;the passage of the fruit,in other words,from crudity to rottenness,without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental)ripeness.With the Americans,indeed,the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous;it is impossible to say,as in the conversation of this deplorable young man,which is one and which is the other;they are inextricably mingled.I prefer the talk of the French homunculus;it is at least more amusing.

It is interesting in this manner to perceive,so largely developed,the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family.

I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of Maine,in the province of New England,with whom I have had a good deal of conversation.She differs somewhat from the young man I just mentioned,in that the faculty of production,of action,is,in her,less inanimate;she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation.But unfortunately she produces nothing but evil,and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower Empire.She makes no secret of them,and has,in fact,elaborated a complete system of licentious behaviour.As the opportunities she finds in her own country do not satisfy her,she has come to Europe "to try,"as she says,"for herself."It is the doctrine of universal experience professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary,and which,presenting itself in a young woman of considerable education,appears to me to be the judgment of a society.

Another observation which pushes me to the same induction--that of the premature vitiation of the American population--is the attitude of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other.

There is another young lady here,who is less abnormally developed than the one I have just described,but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of incompleteness and effeteness.These three persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other;and each has repeatedly taken me apart and assured me,secretly,that he or she only is the real,the genuine,the typical American.A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed--what can you look for from this?

Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house,who hate all the Americans in a lump,making between them none of the distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist upon,and you will,I think,hold me warranted in believing that,between precipitate decay and internecine enmities,the English-speaking family is destined to consume itself;and that with its decline the prospect of general pervasiveness,to which I alluded above,will brighten for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!