at this moment.

[D] Naturally this should have been the first chapter, both on
account of the importance of the work and the position of Madame
d'Haussonville among the women of France, but unfortunately the
necessary details did not come until the book was almost ready
for press.

Madame d'Haussonville is President of the first, or noblesse, division
of the Red Cross, which, like the two others, has a title as distinct
as the social status of the ladies who command, with diminishing
degrees of pomp and power.

Societe Francaise de Secours aux Blesses Militaires is the name of the
crack regiment.

The second division, presided over by Madame Carnot, leader of the
grande bourgeoisie, calls itself Association des Dames Francaises, and
embraces all the charitably disposed of that haughty and powerful
body.

The third, operated by Madame Perouse, and composed of able and useful
women whom fate has planted in a somewhat inferior social sphere--in
many social spheres, for that matter--has been named (note the
significance of the differentiating noun) Union des Femmes de France.

Between these three useful and admirable organizations there is no
love lost whatever. That is to say, in reasonably normal conditions.
No doubt in that terrible region just behind the lines they sink all
differences and pull together for the common purpose.

The Red Cross was too old and too taken-for-granted an organization,
and too like our own, for all I knew to the contrary, to tempt me to
give it any of the limited time at my disposal in France; so, as it
happened, of these three distinguished chiefs the only one I met was
Madame d'Haussonville.

She interested me intensely, not only because she stood at the head of
the greatest relief organization in the world, but because she is one
of the very few women, of her age, at least, who not only is a great
lady but looks the role.

European women tend to coarseness, not to say commonness, as they
advance in age, no matter what their rank; their cheeks sag and
broaden, and their stomachs contract a fatal and permanent entente
with their busts. Too busy or too indifferent to charge spiteful
nature with the daily counter-attacks of art, they put on a red-brown
wig (generally sideways) and let it go at that. Sometimes they smudge
their eyebrows with a pomade which gives that extinct member the look
of being neither hair, skin, nor art, but they contemptuously reje