We also identified the tenants of all the houses situated either along the railway-line or in the streets through which our guests were to drive. As a matter of fact, what we most feared was the traditional outrage perpetrated or attempted from a window. On the other hand, we refused (contrary to what has been stated) to adopt the system employed by the Spanish, German and Italian police on the occasion of any visit from a sovereign, the system which consists in arresting all the "suspects" during the period of the royal guest's stay. This proceeding not only appeared to us needlessly vexatious, for it constitutes a flagrant attempt upon the liberty of the individual, but we thought that, with our democracy, there was a danger of its alienating the sympathy of our population from our august visitors. We had, therefore, to be content to forestall any possible catastrophes by other and less arbitrary means. 2. Our vigilance was naturally concentrated with the greatest attention upon Compiègne. We sent swarms of police to beat the forest and search every copse and thicket; and the château itself was inspected from garret to basement by our most trusted detectives. These precautions, however, seemed insufficient to our colleagues of the Russian police. A fortnight before the arrival of the sovereigns, one of them, taking us aside, said: "The cellars must be watched." "But it seems to us," we replied, "that we cannot very well do more than we are doing: they are visited every evening; and there are men posted at all the doors." "Very good; but how do you know that your men will not be bribed and that the 'terrorists' will not succeed, unknown to you, in placing an explosive machine in some dark corner?" "But what do you suggest, then?" "Put men upon whom you can rely, here and now, in each cellar, with instructions to remain there night and day until Their Majesties' departure. And, above all, see that they hold no communication with the outside. They must prepare their own meals." The solution may have been ingenious, but we declined to entertain it; we considered, in point of fact, that it was unnecessary two weeks before the coming of the Emperor and Empress, to condemn a number of decent men to underground imprisonment, a form of torture which had not been inflicted on even the worst criminals for more than a century past.