ty. To-day the Duchesse de
Courville-Hautevine came to call upon me--mounted all the stairs without
even a wheeze--(the lift gave out again this morning!)--What a
personality!--How I respect her! She has worked magnificently since the
war began, her hospital is a wonder, her only son was killed fighting
gloriously at Verdun.

"You look as melancholy as a sick cat," she told me.

She likes to speak her English--"Of what good _Jeune homme_! We are not
done yet--I have cut some of my relatives who ran away from
Paris--Imbeciles! Bertha is our diversion now, and the raids at
night--jolly loud things!"--and she chuckled, detaching her scissors
which had got caught in the purple woolen jersey she wore over her Red
Cross uniform. She is quite indifferent to coquetry, this grande dame of
the _ancien regime_!

"My _blesses_ rejoice in them--_Que voulez vous?_--War is war--and there
is no use in looking blue--Cheer up, young man!"

Then we talked of other things. She is witty and downright, and her
every thought and action is kindly. I love la Duchesse--My mother was
her dearest friend.

When she had stayed twenty minutes--she came over close to my chair.

"I knew you would be bitter at not being in the fight, my son," she
said, patting me with her once beautiful hand, now red and hardened with
work, "So I snatched the moments to come to see you. On your one leg
you'll defend if the moment should come,--but it won't! And you--you
wounded ones, spared--can keep the courage up. _Tiens!_ you can at least
pray, you have the time--I have not--_Mais le Bon Dieu_ understands--."

And with that she left me, stopping to arrange her tightly curled fringe
(she sticks to all old styles) at the lac mirror by the door. I felt
better after she had gone--yes, it is that--God--why can't I fight!

III

Is some nerve being touched by the new treatment? I seem alternately to
be numb and perfectly indifferent to how the war is going, and then
madly interested. But I am too sensitive to leave my flat for any
meals--I drive whenever one of the "fluffies" (this is what Maurice
calls the widow, the divorcee and other rejoicers of men's war hearts)
can take me in her motor--No one else has a motor--There is no petrol
for ordinary people.

"It reminds one of Louis XV's supposed reply to his daughters"--I said
to Maurice yesterday. "When they asked him to make them a good road to
the Chateau of their dear _Gouvernante_, the Duchesse de l