“The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegible) affair, and he was buried twice, then caught by the stifling gases, his mask having been torn off.  He insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of the fact that he was spitting blood.  Fortunately a lieutenant passed by and saw him.  He gave orders to have him carried away.  As soon as he reached the ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to himself with the greatest difficulty.  His lungs are better, thank God, but his heart is very weak, and even his limbs are affected by the poison.  Many weeks will be required to cure him.  I don’t know yet where he will be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall accompany him....  The duc is always in the Somme, where the bombardment is something dreadful.  He sleeps in a hut infested with rats.  Really it is a beautiful thing to see so much courage and patience among men of all ages in this country.”

In the same letter she writes:  “I am just about to finish my new Front hospital according to the desiderata expressed by our President of the Hygiene Commission.  I hope it will be accepted as a type of the surgical movable ambulances.”

Before it was generally known that Roumania was “coming in” she had doctors and nurses for several months in France in the summer of 1916 studying all the latest devices developed by the French throughout this most demanding of all wars.  The officials sent with them adopted several of the Duchesse d’Uzes’ inventions for the movable field hospital.

She has never sent me the many specific details of her work that she promised me, or this article would be longer.  But, no wonder!  What time have those women to sit down and write?  I often wonder they gave me as much time as they did when I was on the spot.

THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN

Before the war society used to dance once a week in the red and gold salon of the historic “hotel” of the Rohans’ in the Faubourg St. Germain, just behind the Hotel des Invalides.  Here the duchess entertained when she took up her residence there as a bride; and, as her love of “the world” never waned, she danced on with the inevitable pauses for birth and mourning, until her daughters grew up and brought to the salon a new generation.  But the duchess and her own friends continued to dance on a night set apart for themselves, and in time all of her daughters, but one, married and entertained in their own hotels.  Her son, who, in due course, became the Duc de Rohan, also married; but mothers are not dispossessed in France, and the duchess still remained the center of attraction at the Hotel de Rohan.

Until August second, 1914.

The duchess immediately turned the hotel into a hospital.  When I arrived last summer it looked as if it had been a hospital for ever.  All the furniture of the first floor had been stored and the immense dining-room, the red and gold salon, the reception rooms, all the rooms large and small on this floor, in fact, were lined with cots.  The pictures and tapestries have been covered with white linen, four bathrooms have been installed, and a large operating and surgical-dressing room built as an annex.  The hall has been turned into a “bureau,” with a row of offices presided over by Maurice Rostand.