We are accustomed to give Gyp—­Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville—­little credit for seriousness or morality, associating her with the average brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the knack of writing in a brilliant style.  Her object is to show that man, in a civilized state in society, is vain, coarse, and ridiculous.  She paints Parisian society to demonstrate that the apparently fortunate ones of the world are not to be envied, that they are miserable in their so-called joys and ridiculous in their pleasures and their elegance.  She has described the most risque situations and the most delightful women, but she gives us to understand that the latter are not to be loved.  The vanity of the social world might be called her text.

Mme. Blanc—­Therese de Solms—­is known to us to-day as the first woman to reveal English and American authors and habits to her contemporaries.  By advocating American customs she has done much to ameliorate the condition of French girls, by giving them a freer intercourse with young men and permitting them to see more of the world before entering upon married life.

Mme. Greville, who died recently, deserves a place among the prominent women writers of France.  No femme de lettres ever received more honors, prizes, and decorations than she; a number of her writings were crowned by the Academy.  A member of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, with all her literary work she was a domestic woman, keeping aloof from all feminist movements.  Her husband, Professor Durand, to show his esteem and admiration for her, adopted her name—­a wise act, for it may preserve his name with that of his talented wife.

Many other names might be cited, but, as the list of prominent women is practically without end, owing to the indefiniteness of the term “prominent,” we shall close with these names, which have become familiar in both continents.