WHEN the war broke out, Madeleine Brismantier was
the very type and epitome of all which up to that time
had been considered "normal" for a modern woman, a
nice, modern woman. She had been put through the
severe and excellent system of French public education
in her native town of Amiens, and had done so well with
her classes that when she was nineteen her family were
thinking of feeding her into the hopper of the system
of training for primary teachers. But just then, when
on a visit in a smallish Seine-et-Marne town, she met
the fine, upstanding young fellow who was to be her
husband. He was young too, not then quite through the
long formidable course of study for pharmacists, so
that it was not until two years later, when Madeleine
was twenty-one and he twenty-five, that they were mar-
ried, and Madeleine left Amiens to live in Mandriné, the
town where they had met.

Jules Brismantier's father had been the principal phar-
macist there all his life, and Jules stepped comfortably
into his father's shoes, his business, and the lodgings over
the pharmacy. If this sounds common and "working-
class" to your American ears, disabuse yourself; the
habitation over the pharmacy was as well ordered and
well furnished a little apartment as ever existed in a

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