to last
three months, and like the rest of her countrywomen who immediately
offered their services to the state she has no intention of resigning
until what is left of the armies are in barracks once more. She lives
in a charming old house in Bourg, roomy and well furnished and with a
wild and classic garden below the terrace at the back. (Some day I
shall write a story about that house and garden.) Here she rests when
she may, and here she gave us tea.

One wonders if these devoted Frenchwomen will have anything left of
their fortunes if the war continues a few years longer. Madame Dugas
made no complaint, but as an example of the increase in her necessary
expenditures since 1914 she mentioned the steadily rising price of
chickens. They had cost two francs at the beginning of the war and
were now ten. I assumed that she gave her grands blesses chicken
broth, which is more than they get in most hospitals.

Many of the girls who had danced in her salons two years before, and
even their younger sisters, who had had no chance to "come out," are
helping Madame Dugas, both as nurses and in many practical ways;
washing and doing other work of menials as cheerfully as they ever
played tennis or rode in la chasse.

II

Curiously enough, the next woman whose work has made her notable, that
Madame Goujon took me to see, was very much like Madame Dugas in
appearance, certainly of the same type.

Val de Grace is the oldest military hospital in Paris. It covers
several acres and was begun by Louis XIII and finished by Napoleon.
Before the war it was run entirely by men, but one by one or group by
group these men, all reservists, were called out and it became a
serious problem how to keep it up to its standard. Of course women
were all very well as nurses, but it took strong men and many of them
to cook for thousands of wounded, and there was the problem of keeping
the immense establishment of many buildings well swept and generally
clean. But the men had to go, reformes were not strong enough for the
work, every bed was occupied--one entire building by tuberculars--and
they must both eat and suffer in sanitary conditions.

Once more they were obliged to have recourse to Woman.

Madame Olivier, like Madame Dugas a _dame du monde_ and an infirmiere
major, went to one of the hospitals at the Front on the day war broke
out, nursed under fire, of course, but displayed so much original
executive ability as well as willingness