As I have shown above, the responsibility of organising these measures on the occasion of the Tsar's journey in 1901 was entrusted to M. Cavard, the head of the French political police; but the honour of ensuring their proper performance was due above all to M. Hennion, his chief lieutenant, who has now succeeded him. In point of fact, M. Cavard's long and brilliant administrative career had not prepared him for such rough and tiring tasks. An excellent official, this honest man, whose high integrity it is a pleasure to me to recognise, had a better grasp of the sedentary work of the offices. Hennion, on the contrary, "knew his business" and possessed its special qualities. Endowed with a remarkable spirit of initiative and an invariable coolness, eager, indefatigable and shrewd, fond of fighting, with a quick scent for danger, he was always seen in the breach and he knew how to be everywhere at one time. This was an indispensable quality when the zone to be protected extended, as it did in this case, over a length of several hundred miles and embraced almost half France. In what did these measures consist? First of all, in doubling the watch kept on foreigners living in France and notably on the Russian anarchists. The copious information which we possessed about their antecedents and their movements made our task an easy one. Paris, like every other large city in Europe, contains a pretty active focus of nihilism. This consists mainly of students and of young women, who are generally more formidable than the men. Still, these revolutionary spirits always prefer theory to action and were, consequently, less to be feared than those who, on the pretext of seeing the festivities, might come from abroad charged with a criminal mission. We had, therefore, established observation-posts in all the frontier stations, posts composed of officers who lost no time in fastening on the steps of any suspicious traveller. But, however minute our investigations might be, it was still possible for the threads of a plot to escape us; and we had to prepare ourselves against possible surprises at places where it was known that the sovereigns were likely to be. A special watch had to be kept along the railways over which the imperial train would travel and in the streets through which the procession would pass. For this purpose, we divided, as usual, the line from Dunkerque to Compiègne and from Compiègne to the frontier into sections and sub-sections, each placed under the command of the district commissary of police, who had under his orders the local police-force and gendarmery, reinforced by the troops stationed in the department. Posted at intervals on either side of the line, at the entrance and issue of the tunnels, on and under the bridges, sentries, with loaded rifles, prevented anyone from approaching and had orders to raise an alarm if they saw that the least suspicious object had, unknown to them, been laid on or near the rails.