utterly misunderstood except in Meccania." CHAPTER X CONVERSATIONS It must have been more than a week after my long talk with Conductor Lickrod that I was sitting one evening in the hotel with Mr. Johnson and a certain Francarian gentleman to whom he had introduced me, when the latter made a suggestion that has since proved very useful to me. Mr. Villele the Francarian is a short and rather stout man of middle age, with a pair of merry black eyes, a swarthy complexion, and dark hair beginning to turn grey. He professes to find Meccania and the Meccanians amusing, but I suspect from the nature of his sarcasms that he entertains a deep hatred of them. We were talking of my journal when he said, "And what is the use of it?" "Well," I said, "I do not flatter myself that I can produce a great literary work, but the facts I have been able to place on record are so interesting in themselves that I believe my countrymen would welcome a plain straightforward account of my visit to this most extraordinary country." "I have heard," he said, "that the Chinese have very good verbal memories. Have you committed your record to memory in its entirety?" "Why should I?" I replied; "it is to save my memory that I am taking the trouble of making such full notes, even of such things as conversations." "And how do you propose to get your journal out of the country?" "I propose to take it with me when I return," I said. At this he turned to Johnson and laughed, but immediately apologised for his apparent rudeness. "And what about the Censor?" he asked. "Surely," I replied, "these people take such precautions not to let us foreigners see anything they do not want us to see, that they cannot object to a faithful record being made of what they do permit us to see!" "Then you have not even read Regulation 79 of the Law concerning Foreign Observers." "What is that?" I asked. "Simply that foreigners are not allowed to take out of the country anything they have not been permitted to bring in, except with the consent of the Chief Inspector of Foreign Observers." "And you think they will object?" "I have not the slightest doubt." "But it is written partly in Chinese; they would have to translate it." "All the more reason for detaining it. If you ever get it again, it will be in a few years, after it has been translated for the benefit of the Sociological Section of the Ministry of Culture." "What do you advise me to do, then?" I asked. "Have you any friends at the Chinese Embassy?" he asked. "I have no personal friends. At least I have not troubled to inquire. I have had no business at the Embassy; there seemed no reason why I should trouble them." "There is a fellow-countryman of yours here in Mecco who is _persona grata_ with the Authorities," said Villele, "but he is rather a dark horse." "A dark horse?" I said.