My first impression was a joyful one, and I clapped my hands with delight as I entered the drawing-room which I had not yet seen. The busts of Racine, Molière, and Victor Hugo were on pedestals surrounded with flowers. All around the large room were sofas laden with cushions and to remind me of my home in Paris there were tall palms stretching out their branches over the sofas. Jarrett introduced Knoedler to me, who had suggested this piece of gallantry. He was a very charming man. I shook hands with him and we were friends from that time forth. The visitors soon went away, but the reporters remained. They were all seated, some of them on the arms of the chairs, others on the cushions. One of them had crouched down tailor fashion on a bearskin and was leaning back against the steam heater. He was pale and thin and coughed a great deal. I went toward him and had just opened my lips to speak to him, although I was rather horrified that he did not rise, when he addressed me in a bass voice: “Which is your favorite rôle, madame?” he asked. “That is no concern of yours,” I answered, turning my back on him. In doing so I knocked against another reporter, who was more polite. “What do you eat as soon as you wake in the morning, madame?” he inquired. I was about to reply to him as I had done to the first one, but Jarrett, who had had difficulty in appeasing the anger of the crouching man, answered quickly for me: “Oatmeal.” I did not know what that dish was, but the ferocious reporter continued his questions: “And what do you eat during the day?” “Mussels.” He wrote down phlegmatically: “Mussels through the day.” I moved toward the door and a reporter in a tailor-made skirt, with her hair cut short, asked me in a clear, sweet voice: “Are you a Jewcatholicprotestantmahometanbuddhistatheistzoroastertheistordeist?” I stood still, rooted to the spot in bewilderment. She had said all that in a breath, accenting the syllables haphazard, and making of the whole one word, so wildly incoherent that my impression was it was not safe to remain near this strange, gentle person. I must have looked uneasy, and as my eyes fell on an elderly lady who was talking gayly to a little group of people she came to my rescue, saying in very good French: “This young lady is asking you, madame, whether you are of the Jewish religion or whether you are a Catholic, a Protestant, a Mahometan, a Buddhist, an atheist, a Zoroaster, a theist, or a deist?” I sank down on a couch. “Oh, heavens!” I exclaimed, “will it be like this in all the cities I visit?” “Oh, no,” answered Jarrett, placidly, “your interviews will be wired throughout America.” “What about the mussels?” I thought to myself, and then in an absent-minded way I answered, “I am a Catholic, mademoiselle.” “A Roman Catholic, or do you belong to the Orthodox church?” she asked. I jumped up from my seat, for she bored me beyond endurance, and a very young man then approached timidly.