Of course she has her filleul (godson) at the Front, a poor poilu who has no family; and when he goes out the captain finds her another.  She knits him socks and vests, and sends him such little luxuries as he asks for, always tobacco, and often chocolate.

The French bourgeoisie—­or French women of any class for that matter—­do not take kindly to clubs.  For this reason their organizations limped somewhat in the earlier days and only their natural financial genius, combined with the national practice of economy, enabled them to develop that orderly team work so natural to the Englishwoman.  Mlle. E. told me with a wry face that she detested the new clubs formed for knitting and sewing and rolling bandages.  “It is only old maids like myself,” she added, “who go regularly.  After marriage French women hate to leave their homes.  Of course they go daily to the ouvroirs, where they have their imperative duties, but they don’t like it.  I shall belong to no club when the war is over and my American girls have returned to Paris.”

VI

MADAME PIERRE GOUJON

I

Madame Pierre Goujon is another young Frenchwoman who led not only a life of ease and careless happiness up to the Great War, but also, and from childhood, an uncommonly interesting one, owing to the kind fate that made her the daughter of the famous Joseph Reinach.

M. Reinach, it is hardly worth while to state even for the benefit of American readers, is one of the foremost “Intellectuals” of France.  Born to great wealth, he determined in his early youth to live a life of active usefulness, and began his career as private secretary to Gambetta.  His life of that remarkable Gascon is the standard work.  He was conspicuously instrumental in securing justice for Dreyfus, championing him in a fashion that would have wrecked the public career of a man less endowed with courage and personality:  twin gifts that have carried him through the stormy seas of public life in France.

His history of the Dreyfus case in seven volumes is accepted as an authoritative however partisan report of one of the momentous crises in the French Republic.  He also has written on alcoholism and election reforms, and he has been for many years a Member of the Chamber of Deputies, standing for democracy and humanitarianism.

On a memorable night in Paris, in June, 1916, it was my good fortune to sit next to Monsieur Reinach at a dinner given by Mr. Whitney Warren to the American newspaper men in Paris, an equal number of French journalists, and several “Intellectuals” more or less connected with the press.  The scene was the private banquet room of the Hotel de Crillon, a fine old palace on the Place de la Concorde; and in that ornate red and gold room where we dined so cheerfully, grim despots had crowded not so many years before to watch from its long windows the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.