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 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.