le, and I
wondered then, as I wondered many times, if all the young French
widows really were beautiful or only created the complete illusion in
that close black-hung toque with its band of white crepe just above
the eyebrows and another from ear to ear beneath the chin. When the
eyes are dark, the eyebrows heavily marked, no hair visible, and the
profile regular, the effect is one of poignant almost sensational
beauty. Madame Goujon looks like a young abbess.

I do not wish to be cynical but it occurred to me that few of these
young widows failed to be consoled when they stood before their
mirrors arrayed for public view, however empty their hearts. Before I
had left Paris I had concluded that it was the mothers who were to be
pitied in this accursed war. Life is long and the future holds many
mysteries for handsome young widows. Nevertheless the higher happiness
is sometimes found in living with a sacred memory and I have an idea
that one or two of these young widows I met will be faithful to their
dead.

Smooth as this oeuvre appeared on the surface it had not been easy to
establish and every day brought its frictions and obstacles. The
French temperament is perhaps the most difficult in the world to deal
with, even by the French themselves. Our boasted individuality is
merely in the primal stage compared with the finished production in
France. Even the children are far more complex and intractable than
ours. They have definite opinions on the subject of life, character,
and the disposition of themselves at the age of six.

Madame Goujon told me that every widow in need of help, no matter how
tormented or however worthy, had to be approached with far more tact
than possible donors, and her idiosyncrasies studied and accepted
before anything could be done with her, much less for her.

Moreover there was the great problem of the women who would not work.
These were either of the industrial class, or of that petite
bourgeoisie whose husbands, called to the colors, had been small
clerks and had made just enough to keep their usually childless wives
in a certain smug comfort.

These women, whose economical parents had married them into their own
class, or possibly boosted them one step higher, with the aid of the
indispensable dot, never had done any work to speak of, and many of
them manifested the strongest possible aversion from working, even
under the spur of necessity. They had one-franc-twenty-five a day from