But nursing then involved standing all day on one’s feet and sometimes all night as well, and her pampered body was far from strong enough for such a tax in spite of her now glowing spirit.  While she was casting about for some work in which she might really play a useful and beneficent role a friend invited her to drive out to the environs of Paris and visit the wretched eclopes, to whom several charitable ladies occasionally took little gifts of cigarettes and chocolate.

Then, at last, Mlle. Javal found herself; and from a halting apprehensive seeker, still weary in mind and limb, she became almost abruptly one of the most original and executive women in France—­incidentally one of the healthiest.  When I met her, some twenty months later, she had red cheeks and was the only one of all those women of all classes slaving for France who told me she never felt tired; in fact felt stronger every day.

III

The eclopes, in the new adaptation of the word, are men who are not ill enough for the military hospitals and not well enough to fight.  They may have slight wounds, or temporary affections of the sight or hearing, the effect of heavy colds; or rheumatism, debilitating sore throat, or furiously aching teeth; or they may be suffering too severely from shock to be of any use in the trenches.

There are between six and seven thousand hospitals in France to-day (possibly more:  the French never will give you any exact military figures; but certainly not less); but their beds are for the severely wounded or for those suffering from dysentery, fevers, pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis.  In those first days of war before France, caught unprepared in so many ways, had found herself and settled down to the business of war; in that trying interval while she was ill equipped to care for men brought in hourly to the base hospitals, shattered by new and hideous wounds; there was no place for the merely ailing.  Men with organic affections, suddenly developed under the terrific strain, were dismissed as Reformes Numero II—­unmutilated in the service of their country; in other words, dismissed from the army and, for nearly two years, without pension.  But the large number of those temporarily out of condition were sent back of the lines, or to a sort of camp outside of Paris, to rest until they were in a condition to fight again.

If it had not been for Mlle. Javal it is possible that more men than one cares to estimate would never have fought again.  The eclopes at that time were the most abject victims of the war.  They remained together under military discipline, either behind the lines or on the outskirts of Paris, herded in barns, empty factories, thousands sleeping without shelter of any sort.  Straw for the most part composed their beds, food was coarse and scanty; they were so wretched and uncomfortable, so exposed to the elements, and without care of any sort, that their slight ailments developed not infrequently into serious and sometimes fatal cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and even tuberculosis.