I knew a colonial functionary who had travelled around the globe, and who spent years in our various colonies in Africa, Asia and America. Once in a while I am tempted to question him. But he is at a loss for reply. Occupied only with his advancement and with his family affairs, he really saw nothing. Of Singapore, the strange city whence a young writer, M. Cassel, has brought us such dazzling, magic impressions, this fine fellow said to me: "Pretty place; a few houses in the European style." I have asked many a question in my life, but never have I received so stupid an answer. But I understand that questions are always indiscreet. To ask anybody what he has seen is to subject him to torture. He sinks a fishing-line into his memory and brings up nothing. Then he tries to invent, and the result is wretched. Hence, for tourists, the great usefulness of the guide-books. Without these books they would have seen nothing, and without them they would recall nothing. "What did I see at Rome?" They open to the marked page. "Rome, Rome?" said a hosier whom his wife had dragged off to Italy. "Ah! I remember! That's the place where I purchased this miserable flannel waistcoat." In company of those who see nothing or almost nothing are those who see crooked or inversely altogether,--those who allow themselves to be guided far less by their eyes than by their sensibility, who believe that a thing exists because it seems to them that they have received such an impression. Whoever has a department under him, said a telegraph inspector, has been able to prove how inexact the reports he receives often are, and how necessary it is to verify the assertions of agents as to events in which they have been actors or spectators. The account of an event that has just taken place is founded upon the impressions received rather than upon direct observation. At the end of several days the imagination has come into play and it adds the finishing touch to the crystallization of one's conviction. At this moment, if there was an initial error, it has become ineradicable. This explains all those disputes between the public and administrative agents. Each one is actuated by good faith, but each has beheld the event in a different light,--that of his own particular interest,--the one intent upon upholding respect for law or rule, the other eager only to violate it or circumvent it. If the case is taken to court, the judge, whose authoritarian tendency is very marked, almost always finds the agent of the law in the right. It is nevertheless quite certain that the agent is not to be believed more than once out of two times on the average. Even this proportion is perhaps highly exaggerated.