Madame Pertat is one of the twenty-five women doctors in Paris.  All are flourishing.  When the doctors return for leave of absence etiquette forbids them to visit their old patients while their brothers are still at the Front; and the same rule applies to doctors who are stationed in Paris but are in Government service.  The women are having a magnificent inning, and whether they will be as magnanimous as Madame Pertat and take a back seat when the men return remains to be seen.  The point is, however, that they are but another example of the advantage of technical training combined with courage and energy.

III

On the other hand, I heard of many women who, thrown suddenly out of work, or upon their own resources, developed their little accomplishments and earned a bare living.  One daughter of an avocat, who had just managed to keep and educate his large family and was promptly mobilized, left the Beaux Arts where she had studied for several years, and after some floundering turned her knowledge of designing to the practical art of dress.  She goes from house to house designing and cutting out gowns for women no longer able to afford dressmakers but still anxious to please.  She hopes in time to be employed in one of the great dressmakers’ establishments, having renounced all thought of being an artist in a more grandiose sense.  Meanwhile she keeps the family from starving while her mother and sisters do the housework.  Her brothers are in the military colleges and will be called out in due course if the war continues long enough to absorb all the youth of France.

Mlle. E., the woman who told me her story, was suffering from the effects of the war herself.  I climbed five flights to talk to her, and found her in a pleasant little apartment looking out over the roofs and trees of Passy.  Formerly she had taken a certain number of American girls to board and finish off in the politest tongue in Europe.  The few American girls in Paris to-day (barring the anachronisms that paint and plume for the Ritz Hotel) are working with the American Ambulance, the American Fund for French Wounded, or Le Bien-Etre du Blesse, and she sits in her high flat alone.

But she too has adapted herself, and kept her little home.  She illuminates for a Bible house, and paints exquisite Christmas and Easter cards.  Of course she had saved something, for she was the frugal type and restaurants and the cabaret could have no call for her.

But alas! said she, there were the taxes, and ever more taxes.  And who could say how long the war would last?  I cheerfully suggested that we might have entered upon one of those war cycles so familiar in history and that the world might not know peace again for thirty years.  Although the French are very optimistic about the duration of this war (and, no doubt prompted by hope, I am myself) she agreed with me, and reiterated that one must not relax effort for a moment.