se breakfasts have not been renewed, but I met at tea there a
number of the political women. One of these was Madame Ribot, wife of
the present Premier. She is a very tall, thin, fashionable looking
woman, and before she had finished the formalities with her hostess
(and these formalities do take so long!) I knew her to be an American.
She spoke French as fluently as Madame Lyon, but the accent, however
faint--or was it a mere intonation,--was unmistakable. She told me
afterward that she had come to France as a child and had not been in
the United States for fifty-two years!

One day Madame Lyon took me to see the ateliers of Madame Viviani--in
other words, the workshops where the convalescents who must become
reformes are learning new trades and industries under the patronage of
the wife of the cabinet minister now best known to us. Madame Viviani
has something like ten or twelve of these ateliers, but after I had
seen one or two of the same sort of anything in Paris, and listened to
long conscientious explanations, and walked miles in those enormous
hospitals (originally, for the most part, Lycees) I felt that
duplication could not enhance my knowledge, and might, indeed, have
the sad effect of blunting it.

Madame Lyon said to me more than once: "Ma chere, you are without
exception, the most impatient woman I have ever seen in my life. You
no sooner enter a place than you want to leave it." She was referring
at the moment to the hospitals in the War Zone, where she would lean
on the foot of every bed and have a long gossip with the delighted
inmate, extract the history of his wound, and relate the tale of
similar wounds, healed by surgery, time and patience--while I, having
made the tour of the cots, either opened and shut the door
significantly, or walked up and down impatiently, occasionally
muttering in her ear.

The truth of the matter was that I had long since cultivated the habit
of registering definite impressions in a flash, and after a tour of
the cots, which took about seven minutes, could have told her the
nature of every wound. Moreover, I knew the men did not want to talk
to me, and I felt impertinent hanging round.

But all this was incomprehensible to a Frenchwoman, to whom time is
nothing, and who knows how the French in any conditions love to talk.

However, to return to Madame Viviani.

After one futile attempt, when I got lost, I met Madame Lyon and her
distinguished but patient friend out i