er 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.

Behind the hotel is the usual beautiful garden, very large and shaded
with splendid trees. During fine weather there are cots or long chairs
under every tree, out in the sun, on the veranda; and, after the War
Zone, these men seemed to me very fortunate. The duchess takes in any
one sent to her, the Government paying her one-franc-fifty a day for
each. The greater part of her own fortune was invested in Brussels.

She and her daughters and a few of her friends do all of the nursing,
even the most menial. They wait on the table, because it cheers the
poilus--who, by the way, all beg, as soon as they have been there a
few days, to be put in the red and gold salon. It keeps up their
spirits! Her friends and their friends, if they have any in Paris,
call constantly and bring them cigarettes. Fortunately I was given the
hint by the Marquise de Talleyrand, who took me the first time, and
armed myself with one of those long boxes that may be carried most
conveniently under the arm. Otherwise, I should have felt like a
superfluous intruder, standing about those big rooms looking at the
men. In the War Zone where there were often no cigarettes, or anything
else, to be bought, it was different. The men were only too glad to
see a new face.

The duchess trots about indefatigably, assists at every