The Living Present | Page 9

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 in a really beautiful voice.
The other two, young entertainers of the vaudeville stage, were not so
accomplished but were applauded politely, and as they possessed a
liberal share of the grace and charm of the Frenchwoman and were
exquisitely dressed, no doubt men still recall them on dreary nights in
trenches.
I sat on the platform and watched at close range the faces of these
soldiers of France. They were all from the people, of course, but there
was not a face that was not alive with quick intelligence, and it struck
me anew--as it always did when I had an opportunity to see a large
number of Frenchmen together at close range--how little one face
resembled the other. The French are a race of individuals. There is no
type. It occurred to me that if during my lifetime the reins of all the

Governments, my own included, were seized by the people, I should
move over and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France. Their
lively minds and quick sympathies would make their rule tolerable at
least. As I have said before, the race has genius.
After we had distributed the usual gifts, I concluded to drive home in
the car of the youngest of the vaudeville artists, as taxis in that region
were nonexistent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black would be
detained for another hour. Mademoiselle Berty was with us, and in the
midst of the rapid conversation--which never slackened!--she made
some allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimed
involuntarily:
"You married? I never should have imagined it."
Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a French vaudevilliste,
whose clothes, jewels, and automobile represented an income as
incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot imagine.
Automatic Americanism, no doubt.
Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hortense is not married,"
she merely remarked. "But she has a splendid son--twelve years old."
Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assure
the girl that I had thought she was about eighteen and was astonished to
hear that she had a child of any age. But twelve! She turned to me with
a gentle and deprecatory smile.
"I loved very young," she explained.
VII
Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame Balli's hospitals. I
believe she visits others, carrying gifts to both the men and the kitchens,
but the only other of her works that I came into personal contact with
was an oeuvre she had organized to teach convalescent soldiers,
mutilated or otherwise, how to make bead necklaces. These are really
beautiful and are another of her own inventions.

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in the Avenue Henri
Martin is a table covered with boxes filled with glass beads of every
color. Here Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all her
spare hours and begins the necklaces which the soldiers come for and
take back to the hospital to finish. I sat in the background and watched
the men come in--many of them with the Croix de Guerre, the Croix de
la Legion d'Honneur, or the Medaille Militaire pinned on their faded
jackets. I listened to brief definite instructions of Madame Balli, who
may have the sweetest smile in the world, but who knows what she
wants people to do and invariably makes them do it. I saw no evidence
of stupidity or slackness in these young soldiers; they might have been
doing bead-work all their lives, they combined the different colors and
sizes so deftly and with such true artistic feeling.
Madame Balli has sold hundreds of these necklaces. She has a case at
the Ritz Hotel, and she has constant orders from friends and their
friends, and even from dressmakers; for these trinkets are as nearly
works of art as anything so light may be. The men receive a certain
percentage of the profits and will have an ample purse when they leave
the hospital. Another portion goes to buy delicacies for their less
fortunate comrades--and this idea appeals to them immensely--the rest
goes to buy more beads at the