I sat on the platform and watched at close range the faces of these soldiers of France.  They were all from the people, of course, but there was not a face that was not alive with quick intelligence, and it struck me anew—­as it always did when I had an opportunity to see a large number of Frenchmen together at close range—­how little one face resembled the other.  The French are a race of individuals.  There is no type.  It occurred to me that if during my lifetime the reins of all the Governments, my own included, were seized by the people, I should move over and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France.  Their lively minds and quick sympathies would make their rule tolerable at least.  As I have said before, the race has genius.

After we had distributed the usual gifts, I concluded to drive home in the car of the youngest of the vaudeville artists, as taxis in that region were nonexistent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black would be detained for another hour.  Mademoiselle Berty was with us, and in the midst of the rapid conversation—­which never slackened!—­she made some allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimed involuntarily: 

“You married?  I never should have imagined it.”

Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a French vaudevilliste, whose clothes, jewels, and automobile represented an income as incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot imagine.  Automatic Americanism, no doubt.

Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me.  “Oh, Hortense is not married,” she merely remarked.  “But she has a splendid son—­twelve years old.”

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assure the girl that I had thought she was about eighteen and was astonished to hear that she had a child of any age.  But twelve!  She turned to me with a gentle and deprecatory smile.

“I loved very young,” she explained.

VII

Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame Balli’s hospitals.  I believe she visits others, carrying gifts to both the men and the kitchens, but the only other of her works that I came into personal contact with was an oeuvre she had organized to teach convalescent soldiers, mutilated or otherwise, how to make bead necklaces.  These are really beautiful and are another of her own inventions.

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in the Avenue Henri Martin is a table covered with boxes filled with glass beads of every color.  Here Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all her spare hours and begins the necklaces which the soldiers come for and take back to the hospital to finish.  I sat in the background and watched the men come in—­many of them with the Croix de Guerre, the Croix de la Legion d’Honneur, or the Medaille Militaire pinned on their faded jackets.  I listened to brief definite instructions of Madame Balli, who may have the sweetest smile in the world, but who knows what she wants people to do and invariably makes them do it.  I saw no evidence of stupidity or slackness in these young soldiers; they might have been doing bead-work all their lives, they combined the different colors and sizes so deftly and with such true artistic feeling.