He won quite easily, and then he stood us all lunch at the Club. I did my best to pump him about the revolution, but he kicked me hard under the table, so I didn’t say any more about it. The mids. had a grand time, hardly uttered a word, but simply ate steadily through course after course, not even the excitement of hearing regiments of infantry tramping past every now and again, with their bands playing, putting them off their feed. ’Come along,’ Gerald said presently, ’I’ve got a window from which we can see everything; there’ll be room for all of you.’ But Mr. Macdonald wasn’t coming, so we left him. ’Be here by three o’clock,’ he said, ’not a minute later, and I’ll drive you back.’ As we left the gate I noticed that the sentries looked rather puzzled at Gerald and myself. ’I couldn’t say anything in there,’ Gerald began, when we’d got out into the crowded street; ’you never know who may be listening. We’re going to have a revolution, and I’m rather mixed up in it. You saw that little plain-clothes chap at the gate, he’s one of the President’s secret police, and has been shadowing me for the last four days.’ I had seen him, the one who’d been so startled when I went in. ’Don’t you carry a revolver or anything?’ I asked nervously. ’My dear old Billums, I’ve never thought of it.’ I bothered him to get one in case anything happened. ’All right, old chap, I’ll think about it.’ There was too great a crush in the narrow streets to do much talking, and we had a lot of trouble to push our way along. There were quite a lot of people wearing the horizontal black and green stripes in these streets, and you could tell they were strangers by their weird-looking clothes and by the way they flocked along with their eyes and mouths open. We presently passed a lot of officers standing outside a doorway. ’That’s the Officers’ Club,’ Gerald told me, as he took his hat off, and they all clicked their heels and saluted, looking from Gerald to myself with that same puzzled look—they seemed very unfriendly. We waited a minute or two to let a battery of field artillery rumble past—the guns were ’horsed’ with mules—turned down another side street, and entered a cool courtyard with more fountains splashing. There were any number of people in it; they nearly all had black and green rosettes with horizontal stripes, and all bowed very cordially to Gerald. He spoke to several, looked as if he had heard bad news, and took us into the back of the Hotel de L’Europe, up some narrow wooden stairs, opened a door on a narrow landing, and there we were in a corner room with a large French window opening on to an iron balcony and overlooking the great square. The cathedral tower, with its arched entrance and broad steps, wasn’t fifty yards away.