all artists.  Whenever a letter came asking for money, she had the case investigated, and if the story was true, gave practical help at once.  I was dismayed at first with the number of letters received from all over France asking my intercession with the minister on every possible subject from a “monument historique” to be restored, to a pension given to an old schoolmaster no longer able to work, with a large family to support.  It was perfectly impossible for me to answer them.  Being a foreigner and never having lived in France, I didn’t really know anything about the various questions.  W. was too busy to attend to such small matters, so I consulted M. de L., chef de cabinet, and we agreed that I should send all the correspondence which was not strictly personal to him, and he would have it examined in the “bureau.”  The first few weeks of W.’s ministry were very trying to me—­I went to see so many people,—­so many people came to see me,—­all strangers with whom I had nothing in common.  Such dreary conversations, never getting beyond the most ordinary commonplace phrases,—­such an absolutely different world from any I had ever lived in.

It is very difficult at first for any woman who marries a foreigner to make her life in her new country.  There must be so many things that are different—­better perhaps sometimes—­but not what one has been accustomed to,—­and I think more difficult in France than in any other country.  French people are set in their ways, and there is so little sympathy with anything that is not French.  I was struck with that absence of sympathy at some of the first dinners I went to.  The talk was exclusively French, almost Parisian, very personal, with stories and allusions to people and things I knew nothing about.  No one dreamed of talking to me about my past life—­or America, or any of my early associations—­yet I was a stranger—­one would have thought they might have taken a little more trouble to find some topics of general interest.  Even now, after all these years, the difference of nationality counts.  Sometimes when I am discussing with very intimate friends some question and I find that I cannot understand their views and they cannot understand mine, they always come back to the real difficulty:  “Ecoutez, chere amie, vous etes d’une autre race.”  I rather complained to W. after the first three or four dinners—­it seemed to me bad manners, but he said no, I was the wife of a French political man, and every one took for granted I was interested in the conversation—­certainly no one intended any rudeness.  The first big dinner I went to that year was at the Elysee—­the regular official dinner for the diplomatic corps and the Government.  I had Baron von Zuylen, the Dutch minister, one of our great friends, on one side of me, Leon Renault, prefet de police, on the other.  Leon Renault was very interesting, very clever—­an excellent prefet de police.  Some of his stories were most amusing.  The dinner was very good (always were