About ten o'clock I was starting to go down to the telegraph office, to send the messages, when the Spanish Minister drove up in his big green car with the Spanish flag flying at the fore. We told him our story, whereupon he announced that he also had telegrams to send and that he would go with us. We drove in state to the telegraph office, and found that the entrance which had been indicated to us was the alley through which the mail wagons drive in the good days when there are any. Before an admiring crowd, we descended and made our way among Prussian troopers through the noisome alley to a small side door, where we were stopped by a sentry who stuck a bayonet in our general direction and said we could go no further. I was immediately thrust into the foreground as the brilliant German scholar; and, limbering up my heavy German artillery, I attacked him. The sentry blanched, but stood his ground. An officer came up as reinforcements, but was also limited to the German tongue; so I had to keep it up, with two full-grown Ministers behind me thinking up impossible things to be translated into the hopeless tongue. The officer, who was a genial soul, announced as though there were no use ever again to appear at that particular place, that the instruments had all been removed, and that there was absolutely no way of sending any messages--no matter from whom they came. We told him that we had come at the special request of the General himself. He replied that that made no difference whatever; that if there were no wires and no instruments, there was no possible way of sending the messages. After three or four repetitions, the Minister and I began to understand that there was no use haggling about it; but the Spanish Minister was not so lightly to be turned aside and took up the cudgels, himself bursting into the German language. He stood his ground valiantly in the face of a volley of long words, but he did not get any forrader. Prince Ernst de Ligne came in with a permit from the General to send his messages, and joined forces with the Spanish Minister; but the poor officer could only shrug his shoulders and smile and repeat what he had already said a score of times. Mr. Whitlock and I began to laugh, and had a hard time to control ourselves. Finally we prevailed upon them to return to the Hotel de Ville. The Minister was beginning to get even madder than he was yesterday, when I got back with my story of the way I had spent the afternoon, going from one wild goose chase to another. We got the Burgomaster in his private office and placed our troubles before him. He understood the importance of the matter and sent for the General. He appeared in short order, clicked his heels, and inquired whether we had come in regard to the matter of telegrams. The old fox knew perfectly well that we had, and was ready for us. We had come to the conclusion--which I had reached yesterday afternoon and held all by myself--that the old man was jockeying.