ccording to
M. Jules Lemaitre, she possessed the gift of _ecriture artiste_ to
a remarkable degree. According to him, sureness and exactness and a
striking truth of impressions are her characteristics as a writer. She
exercised a most wholesome power over Alphonse Daudet, taking him away
from bad influences, giving him a home, dignity, and happiness, and
saving him from brutality and pessimism; she was his guardian and
censor; she preserved his grace and noble sentiments. The nature of
her relations to him should ensure the preservation of her name to
posterity.

We are accustomed to give Gyp--Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de
Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville--little credit
for seriousness or morality, associating her with the average
brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the
knack of writing in a brilliant style. Her object is to show that man,
in a civilized state in society, is vain, coarse, and ridiculous. She
paints Parisian society to demonstrate that the apparently fortunate
ones of the world are not to be envied, that they are miserable in
their so-called joys and ridiculous in their pleasures and their
elegance. She has described the most _risque_ situations and the most
delightful women, but she gives us to understand that the latter are
not to be loved. The vanity of the social world might be called her
text.

Mme. Blanc--Therese de Solms--is known to us to-day as the first
woman to reveal English and American authors and habits to her
contemporaries. By advocating American customs she has done much
to ameliorate the condition of French girls, by giving them a freer
intercourse with young men and permitting them to see more of the
world before entering upon married life.

Mme. Greville, who died recently, deserves a place among the prominent
women writers of France. No _femme de lettres_ ever received more
honors, prizes, and decorations than she; a number of her writings
were crowned by the Academy. A member of the Societe des Gens de
Lettres, with all her literary work she was a domestic woman, keeping
aloof from all feminist movements. Her husband, Professor Durand, to
show his esteem and admiration for her, adopted her name--a wise act,
for it may preserve his name with that of his talented wife.

Many other names might be cited, but, as the list of prominent women
is practically without end, owing to the indefiniteness of the term
"prominent," we shal