Paris looked out-of-seasonish and full of Americans as we drove through.  I am sitting in the little salon now, waiting for her to come in, and I have got awfully tired just looking out of the window.  Everything is covered up with brown holland, but I dare say it is nice when they are here.  The tapestries are beautiful, so is the furniture, judging by the piece I have lifted the coverings from.  If she does not come in soon I shall go for a walk with Agnes.

[Sidenote:  Paris in August]

9 p.m.—­Heloise came in just as I was writing this morning, and we had a scrappy kind of dejeuner on the corner of the dining-room table.  Then she said we had better go to her couturier in the Rue de la Paix.  She seemed all right now, and said M. Adam had not hurt her much, and that she was to go to him again to-morrow morning.  I always like Paris even out of the season, don’t you, Mamma? it is so gay.  We had a little victoria and rushed along, not minding who we ran into, as is always the way with French cabs.  When we got to Paquin’s there were nobody but Americans there, and every one looked tired.  Heloise tried on her things, and we went to Caroline’s for some hats.  They were too lovely, and Heloise gave me a dream; it’s an owl lighting on a cornfield, which perhaps is a little incongruous as they only come out at night, but the effect is good.

After that she said she felt she should like to go and see her confesseur at the Madeleine, and we started there on the chance of finding him.  She kept looking at her watch, so I suppose she was afraid he would be gone.  We stopped at the bottom of the big steps, and she said if I would not mind waiting a minute she would go in and see.  I always thought one only confessed in the morning, but she seemed so anxious about it that perhaps if you have anything particular on your mind you can get it off in the afternoon; it might have been the stories she told about Victorine’s liking flowers.  I thought she would never come back, she was such a time, quite three-quarters of an hour; and it was horrid sitting there alone, with every creature staring as they passed.

Directly after she went in I caught a glimpse of “Antoine” in a coupe, going at a great pace, but I could not make him see me before he had turned down the street that goes to the back of the Madeleine.  I wish he had seen me, for, although I never like him very much, he would have been better than nobody to talk to.  I believe I should have even been glad to see Lord Valmond.  At last I got so cross, what with the people staring, and the heat and the smells, that I jumped out and went to look for Heloise in the church.  She was nowhere to be seen, and I did not like to peer into every box I came to, so at last I was going back to the cab again, when from the end door that leads out into the other street at the back, the rue Tronchet, she came tearing along completely essoufflee.  So I suppose there must be some confessing place beyond.  She seemed quite cross with me for having come to find her, and said it was not at all proper to walk about a church alone, which does seem odd, doesn’t it, Mamma?  As one would have thought if there was any place really respectable to stroll in, it would have been a church.