Monsieur."_ ["'Tis very possible, Sir."] Now an English Boniface, even
though he had already made his fortune, would have been mortified at such
an incident, and all his eloquence would scarcely have produced an
unfaultering apology.

Whether this national indifference originate in a physical or a moral
cause, from an obtuseness in their corporeal formation or a perfection in
their intellectual one, I do not pretend to decide; but whatever be the
cause, the effect is enjoyed with great modesty. So little do the French
pique themselves on this valuable stoicism, that they acknowledge being
more subject to that human weakness called feeling, than any other people
in the world. All their writers abound in pathetic exclamations,
sentimental phrases, and allusions to "la sensibilite Francaise," as
though they imagined it proverbial. You can scarcely hold a conversation
with a Frenchman without hearing him detail, with an expression of
feature not always analogous, many very affecting sentences. He is
_desole, desespere, or afflige_--he has _le coeur trop sensible, le coeur
serre, or le coeur navre;_ [Afflicted--in despair--too feeling a heart--
his heart is wrung or wounded.] and the well-placing of these dolorous
assertions depends rather upon the judgement and eloquence of the
speaker, than the seriousness of the case which gives rise to them. For
instance, the despair and desolation of him who has lost his money, and
of him whose head is ill drest, are of different degrees, but the
expressions are usually the same. The debates of the Convention, the
debates of the Jacobins, and all the public prints, are fraught with
proofs of this appropriated susceptibility, and it is often attributed to
persons and occasions where we should not much expect to find it. A
quarrel between the legislators as to who was most concerned in promoting
the massacres of September, is reconciled with a "sweet and enthusiastic
excess of fraternal tenderness." When the clubs dispute on the