And so we had been arrested as house-linen thieves! It was too humiliating. I was then interviewed as to my companion's refusal to give her name, etc., which argued very much against her. I explained as well as I could the extreme annoyance and brutal treatment to which she had been subjected, her horror of having anything to do with a police-court, and how the disgrace of being suspected of a crime was aggravated by intense nervous excitement brought on by the insolence of the police. After considerable pleading on my part in her behalf--for I felt that I was the sole cause of the trouble--it was agreed upon that she should be relieved from coming to the court upon condition that she would sign a paper giving her name, nationality, etc., and I was dismissed without the slightest apology for the trouble to which I had been subjected. At that point the affair ceased to be funny, and, turning back after I had reached the door of exit, I made a short and as effective a speech as the polite language of the French would allow, in which I conveyed a frank idea of my opinion of Austrian courtesy. I succeeded well enough to convince my examiner of something--probably that he had caught a Tartar--and I left him tugging furiously at his moustache. My official escort led the way back to the hotel with a very crestfallen air, savage and sullen. I found Miss Barton in a worse condition than ever, the persecutions of the guarding policeman having continued with increased ferocity. He had dogged every movement she made, until the poor girl had nearly gone mad; and it was only after long persuasion that I induced her to sign the paper, such a one as most travellers without passports in Austria are obliged to fill out. She finally wrote her name in a great scrawl which nobody could decipher, and gave as her country "Cape Town, Africa;" which again confounded the men, as they had no idea how a "Hottentot" could be an English subject. But they swallowed their ignorance, and finally went away.