My collection of papers, which has proved a source of such interest to so many distinguished and highly placed people in this country, was minutely examined, and certain maps and other important documents, whose interest is rather military than journalistic, were temporarily taken from me. I was in a panic of anxiety. The minutes were passing, and the time for the Paris train to start was drawing near. I implored the authorities to telephone to Paris, and then it was that they played their trump card. They intimated that seeing I had come through Austria, and understanding that the Plague was prevalent in Hungary, they felt obliged to detain me for medical examination next morning. It was then midnight. Neither my expostulations nor my entreaties produced the least effect upon the impassively polite Frenchman. I verily believe that had there been no Plague in Hungary as an excuse for my detention, that they would have had me examined for foot-and-mouth disease, glanders, or rinderpest. One of the most anguishing moments of my life was when I heard the Paris express slowly moving out of the station. I, of all the passengers, being the only one left behind, and I of all the passengers the one in the greatest hurry to get to Paris. Soon philosophy came to my aid, and I argued that how like life it was. After the many risks that I had run in enemy countries, where I had never been even detained by the officials, here was I, immediately on getting to what should have been friendly soil, being examined and cross-examined and re-examined again and again by officials whose every word spoke suspicion. I had been equal to every previous examination to which I had been subjected, and here was I stranded at the very moment of success in the country of one of the Allies for whom I had so great an admiration. “_Gott im Himmel!_” I muttered, “spare me from my friends.” Within a few minutes of the departure of the train there came a reply by telephone from Paris guaranteeing my integrity, accompanied by a request that every possible facility should be given to me. This produced an official _volte face_. The courtesy remained the same, but there were full and adequate apologies. The French authorities seemed genuinely distressed at the inconvenience they had caused me. Indeed, nothing could be more kindly and courteous than the treatment I received at Pontarlier. In spite of the delay that these men had caused me, I respected them for their thoroughness. It is better in war time to err, if error there must be, on the side of caution. I doubt if I could have written these friendly words at the time. I was feeling too irritated to recognise virtue in anyone, least of all in a French official. There was no train until five o’clock the next afternoon, and that, I was informed, was an omnibus train, stopping at every station between Pontarlier and Dijon.