Madame Olivier, ruling all this force, giantesses included, with a rod of iron, stood there in the entrance of the immaculate kitchen looking dainty and out of place, with her thin proud profile, her clear dark skin, beautifully tinted in the cheeks, her seductive infirmiere uniform.  But she has accomplished one of the minor miracles of the war.

I wonder if all these remarkable women of France will be decorated one of these days?  They have earned the highest citations, but perhaps they have merely done their duty as Frenchwomen.  C’est la guerre.

VIII

VALENTINE THOMPSON

I

Fortunate are those women who not only are able to take care of themselves but of their dependents during this long period of financial depression; still more fortunate are those who, either wealthy or merely independent, are able both to stand between the great mass of unfortunates and starvation and to serve their country in old ways and new.

More fortunate still are the few who, having made for themselves by their talents and energy a position of leadership before the war, were immediately able to carry their patriotic plans into effect.

In March, 1914, Mlle. Valentine Thompson, already known as one of the most active of the younger feminists, and distinctly the most brilliant, established a weekly newspaper which she called La Vie Feminine.  The little journal had a twofold purpose:  to offer every sort of news and encouragement to the by-no-means-flourishing party and to give advice, assistance, and situations to women out of work.

Mlle. Thompson’s father at the moment was in the Cabinet, holding the portfolio of Ministre du Commerce.  Her forefathers on either side had for generations been in public life.  She and her grandmother had both won a position with their pen and therefore moved not only in the best political but the best literary society of Paris.  Moreover Mlle. Thompson had a special penchant for Americans and knew more or less intimately all of any importance who lived in Paris or visited it regularly.  Mrs. Tuck, the wealthiest American living in France—­it has been her home for thirty years and she and her husband have spent a fortune on charities—­was one of her closest friends.  All Americans who went to Paris with any higher purpose than buying clothes or entertaining duchesses at the Ritz, took letters to her.  Moreover, she is by common consent, and without the aid of widow’s bonnet or Red Cross uniform, one of the handsomest women in Paris.  She is of the Amazon type, with dark eyes and hair, a fine complexion, regular features, any expression she chooses to put on, and she is always the well-dressed Parisienne in detail as well as in effect.  Her carriage is haughty and dashing, her volubility racial, her enthusiasm, while it lasts, bears down every obstacle, and her nature is imperious.  She must hold the center of the stage and the reins of power.  I should say that she was the most ambitious woman in France.