taken a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book.
He wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated with
several of Madame Balli's oeuvres.


VI


A few days later Madame Balli took me to another hospital--Hôpital
Militaire Villemin--where she gives a concert once a week. Practically
all the men that gathered in the large room to hear the music, or
crowded before the windows, were well and would leave shortly for the
front, but a few were brought in on stretchers and lay just below the
platform. This hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those I
had visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It was also an
extremely cheerful afternoon, for not only was the sun shining, but
the four artists Madame Balli had brought gave of their best and their
efforts to amuse were greeted with shouts of laughter.

Lyse Berty--the most distinguished vaudeville artist in France and who
is certainly funnier than any woman on earth--had got herself up in
horizon blue, and was the hit of the afternoon. The men forgot war and
the horrors of war and surrendered to her art and her selections with
an abandon which betrayed their superior intelligence, for she is a
very plain woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent her life
in Paris and looks like the pictures in some old Book of
Beauty--immense blue eyes, tiny regular features, small oval face,
chestnut hair, pink-and-white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure--was
second in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve their
monotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, sweet or stirring songs