Now war correspondents were regarded with the utmost distrust in Turkey, while Osman Pasha positively hated them, and strict instructions were given that no stranger should be allowed into Plevna without a special firman from the Sultan. It was characteristic of the audacity of Olivier Pain that he should have made his way from Constantinople unprovided with the necessary firman, and should have "bluffed" himself into Plevna, in the belief that among the hundreds of departing wounded men and arriving reinforcements his presence would not at first be noticed. As a matter of fact, however, he was noted at once, and eventually had to leave the town temporarily; but for a fortnight he continued to inhabit my old quarters, and I saw a good deal of him. Little skirmishes between our pickets and the Russian vedettes used to occur from day to day, and Pain began to exercise his _métier_ as war correspondent at once, writing the most picturesque descriptive articles to his Geneva newspaper. I was shown afterwards a copy of that journal, in which a long account appeared written by him, and purporting to be a description of some heroic exploits performed by myself. Upon the slender foundation of my participation in one of the trifling cavalry skirmishes which were constantly taking place, he had built up a remarkable narrative, in which he portrayed me, I am afraid with more vividness than veracity, cutting down Russian troopers by the score. However, fortunately for himself, Pain was an enthusiastic admirer of everything Turkish, and he found in Osman Pasha a model of all the military virtues. It was fortunate for him that he adopted this view in his letters, for unknown to him they were all opened and read by Tewfik Bey before being despatched from Plevna. Of course Tewfik Bey apprised his superior officer of the contents of the letters, and the result was that Osman Pasha's antipathy to war correspondents was mollified in this particular case. War correspondents are not usually thin-skinned; and when at last it became necessary absolutely to turn Pain out of Plevna because he had no authority to be there, Osman Pasha himself gave him a letter to the executive in Constantinople recommending that the necessary permission should be given to him to return to Plevna. He was unable to return at once as the road was blocked; but Chefket Pasha, coming up in October with fresh troops, reopened it, and with him came back Olivier Pain. He survived all the horrors of the fall of Plevna, and lived to seek for new adventures in the service of the Mahdi in the Soudan. The quixotism of Pain's politics was well revealed in his conduct in going to the Soudan as a colleague of Rochefort's, with the idea that he could assist the Mahdi against England, and so injure the traditional antagonist of France. In that book of fascinating interest _Fire and Sword in the Sudan_, Slatin Bey tells the story of Olivier