At eleven o'clock she is back at the big house which is the official
residence of her husband, close to the Invalides, and is presiding over
a committee meeting. She lunches in about a quarter of an hour, and
plunges into more committee work, which usually lasts until well after
four o'clock.

The latter part of the afternoon is taken up in another tour of
inspection, dinner is a movable feast to be observed if there happens to
be time for it, and then there is another pile of letters and telegrams
a foot high to be gone through and answered; and so to bed, very late.




_Thursday, August 13._


Twelfth day of mobilization. Hot, sultry weather with faint
northeasterly wind. Thermometer at five P.M. 30 degrees centigrade.

Breakfasted to-day at the restaurant Paillard and met there M. Arthur
Meyer, M. Max-Lyon, Maitre Charles Philippe of the French Bar, and Mr.
Slade, manager of the Paris branch of the Equitable Trust Company. War!
War! War! was the subject of the conversation, but no real news from the
front except of outpost fighting, with success for the French and the
Belgians. Gabriele d'Annunzio's flaming "Ode for the Latin
Resurrection," published to-day in the _Figaro_, is evidently
intended to excite Italians to seize an opportunity to abandon
neutrality and join France and the Allied Powers against Austria, and
thereby win back the "Italia Irredenta." D'Annunzio invokes the Austrian