Historians always and novelists never forget that statesmen's worries are not exclusively those of the commonweal. Last week there came from France the story of a private tragedy which was nothing to the national tragedy but which touched French hearts.
Some years ago the plain daughter of a wealthy Marseille dock contractor caught an engineer Count, married him, moved to Paris and set up a salon for journalists and politicians. Helene de Fortes was short, homely, plain, dark, nervous, jealous and not very bright; but she apparently had something for which Frenchmen would trade every grace. Widowed two years ago, she set...
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