BUSINESS HABITS OF FRENCH WOMEN.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1802, 12 October 1874, Page 3

BUSINESS HABITS OF FRENCH WOMEN.

In the trading class, the business world of the French, the women exercise a directing and demanding despotism over men not to he met with in any other country in the world. They manage all branches of the business, buy, sell, fir prices, receive customers, give orders to; the workmen, hare all bills addressed <to them, invest gains in their favourite securities, say they will only have two children, tell the husband what he is to do, from morning till night. Is it not Mr. Tennyson who has written " Woman is the lessor man P " Not im Fiance among the industrious and agricultural classes. The French bourgeoise woman is a hardworking, sharp, calculating, domineering animal, who keeps the husband in a state of awe, does not allow him to have any opinion of his own, and treatsjhim with' less consideration than domestic servants

Set from their masters and mistresses, 'he French husband of the middle and lower classes is at home a timid, retiring, subdued being, whose very voice has lost all accent and decision. We had a striking example of this the other day. "We were commissioned by an English lady to purchase for her some imitation jewellery at a shop in the Boulevards. The wife, as usual, presided at the counter. Whilst looking at the sham gems (which appeared all real excepting the.diamonds) the exclaimed, " Pardon, Monsieur," and called, her husband from the back, dark regions of the shop, and said, " Harry, you will take the children aut into the gardens of the Tuileries for an hour; I expect you back at four o'clock to help me make out that invoice for the Brazilian order." Henry obeyed, and carried the younger child in his arms. A French, woman of this class will even order her husband's clothes, and give him as much money as h« ought to spend in the cafe; they are all strong-minded, and entertain a profound contempt for the femme dv monde. There is another female monde now in Paris inspired with all the worst passions of.the Great Revolution. They would guillotine the rich and finish the burning work of the Commune. They are the women who have lost husbands and friends by the entrance of the Versailles troops into Paris and the transporation of thousands who escaped death. They aTe now in a state of great poverty, and ready for any desperate work.—Correspondent of an EpoV-'i paper.

Cupped Talons.—The following clevei^i trick v. as recently played upon an avaricious FreaOh landlord by a,poor, wretched: engraver Who had got into arrears with his rent. " Give me a little time," said the tenant —" I have discovered a means of paying you soon." " Bah! " returned the landlord, incredulously. "How, I should like to know P" " Look here," replied the engraver, taking a hundred-franc note mysteriously from a drawer—" that's my last piece of work." "Did you do it P" " Certainly.?, (\ Yvn yourself—: and not the Bank of France?" " No, it's my work." " Will you trust me with it for halt-an-hour P " And the.landlord took the note, and hurried off to the Bank. There they assured him that it was perfectly good, and finally changed it for him. As he hurried back to his lodger the wretched man's head fairly swam with visions of untold wealth. "My good fellow ' he cried, on reaching the house, all out of breath, "how clever you are! Why don't you make thousand-franc notes ? " " For the very good reason that 1 have never seen one." " That need be no obstacle's—here is one. Copy it, and I will be back in a week's time. We will share it." At the end of the week the landlord duly made his appearance. "How doe 3 the note get on?" was his anxious inquiry. "Your note! Why, I have spent it with two; or three friends, you vagabond" ! majestically replied the engraver. "Spent it! But " "No noise, or I'll split!" And the man explained to his landlord that he had outrageously taken him in, and that the hundred-franc note Iras perfectly good. He wound up by advising him to turn his j avariciousness in another direction.