“Oh, no! it would be history. You know her name is Ellen—Ellen Brotcher. She was a Miss Gatt. I’m sure she always has wished that she was a Louise-Florence-Petronille-Tardien d’Escavelles or a Julie-Jeanne-Eléonore de Lespinasse. She was very ambitious. That is to say, she thought she was—coaxed herself to believe that she was. It all began by her taking up French; perhaps I should say, taking up a little French professor, a funny little man who looked like a waiter and talked like the man at the silk-counter. I don’t want to be mean about him, either, for he is a nice enough man, I understand; but he began to seem very funny somehow, after Mrs. Brotcher took him up. First they organized a Cercle Français, at which they started out to talk nothing but French, but at which they presently settled down to hearing the Professor read La Fontaine, which, as you might fancy, began to seem like a tepid form of dissipation after a while. Nothing but the splendid enthusiasm of Mrs. Brotcher kept the thing going as long as it did go. When the Cercle melted away, Mrs. Brotcher seems to have made her great resolve, which was to have a _salon_. Now, I know that that sort of thing has been tried before, but really no one that you ever heard of ever went into the business as desperately as Mrs. Brotcher. She trained for it in every way that a woman could train for such a thing, and I haven’t the least doubt but that she saw a refulgent success very clearly outlined before her. Other people have started Americanized versions of the _salon_ idea. Mrs. Brotcher believed that the idea would go if it was done more closely after the true French pattern. She had studied the whole matter and knew what she was about. She knew all the traditions of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and of the Hôtel de Scudéry. She knew all about the methods of Mme. de Sévigné, of the Grande Mademoiselle and the Duchesse de Longueville. And she made up her mind to have Samedis. That night seemed about the best night on which to hope for busy men, and the men she would have to depend upon would be so much busier than any that ever had filled the Salon Helvétique. She wanted to have Sunday nights—are you listening?” “Listening? Can’t you see that I am absorbed?” “She wanted to have Sunday nights, but her mother is an anti-Briggs Presbyterian, and she thought it would be best not to tempt Providence—her sister-in-law afterward told me this herself.” “Just like a sister-in-law.”