There were seven passengers in the automobile, however, of which the
anxious driver, feeling his way through the crowded streets and
apprehensive that his car might be impressed at any moment, had not a
suspicion. They were in hat boxes, hastily perforated portmanteaux, up
the coat sleeves of Madame Balli and her maid, and they did not begin
to yelp until so far on the road to the north that it was not worth
while to throw them out.


III


At Dinard, where wounded soldiers were brought in on every train,
Madame Balli was turned over to friends, and in a day or two, being
bored and lonely, she concluded to go with these friends to the
hospitals and take cigarettes and smiles into the barren wards. From
that day until I left Paris on the seventeenth of August, 1916, Madame
Balli had labored unceasingly; she is known to the Government as one
of its most valuable and resourceful aids; and she works until two in
the morning, during the quieter hours, with her correspondence and
books (the police descend at frequent and irregular intervals to
examine the books of all oeuvres, and one mistake means being haled to
court), and she had not up to that time taken a day's rest. I have
seen her so tired she could hardly go on, and she said once quite
pathetically, "I am not even well-groomed any more." I frequently
straightened her dress in the back, for her maids work almost as hard
as she does. When her husband died, a year after the war broke out,
and she found herself no longer a rich woman, her maids offered to
stay with her on reduced wages and work for her oeuvres, being so