Thereupon he took up the card, and, affecting the "Marat" style, said, "Does the _citoyenne_ wish to leave Paris? _Pourquoi?_" I answered that I was obliged to leave Paris for different reasons. He replied, with what he thought a seductive smile, "I should think Paris would be a very attractive place for a pretty woman like yourself." How could I make him understand that I had come for a passport and not for conversation? At this moment I confess I began to feel dreadfully nervous, seeing the powerless situation in which I was placed, and I saw in imagination visions of prison-cells, handcuffs, and all the horrors which belong to revolutions. I heard the sonorous clock in the tower strike the hour, and realized that only minutes, not hours, had passed since I had been waiting in this dreadful place. "Monsieur," I began once more, "I am rather in haste, and would thank you if you would give me my passport." Upon which he took Mr. Washburn's so-much-looked-at card, scrutinized it, and then scrutinized me. "Are you La Citoyenne Moulton?" I answered, "Yes." "American?" I replied I was, and _in petto_--mighty glad I was to be so. "Does the American Minister know you personally?" "Yes, very well." "Why do you wish to deprive us of your presence in Paris?" I repeated that my affairs required my presence elsewhere. I saw he was taking no steps toward making out my passport, and I became more agitated and unnerved and said, "If it is impossible for you, Monsieur, to give me the passport, I will inform Mr. Washburn of the fact, and he will no doubt come to you himself for it." This seemed to arouse him, for he opened a drawer and took out a blank to be filled for a passport, with an impatient shrug of his shoulders, as it he was bored to death. Now followed the most hateful and trying _quart d'heure_ I ever passed in my life. I fancy Raoul Rigault had never been in the society of a lady (perhaps he had never seen one), and his innate coarseness seemed to make him gloat over the present situation, and as a true republican, whose motto is _Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté_, he flattered himself he was on an equality with me, therefore he could take any amount of liberty. He took advantage of the unavoidable questions that belong to the making out of a passport, and showed a diabolical pleasure in tormenting _la citoyenne_ who stood helplessly before him. When it came to the description and the enumerating of my features, he was more obnoxious than I can express. Peering across the table to see whether my eyes were brown or black, or my hair black or brown, he never lost an opportunity to make a fawning remark before writing it down. He described my _teint_ as _pâle_; I felt pale, and think I must have looked very pale, for he said: "Vous êtes bien pâle, Madame. Voudriez-vous quelque chose à boire?" Possibly he may have meant to be kind; but I saw BORGIA written all over him. I refused his offer with effusion.