"Late one afternoon last April I was crossing the Piazza di Spagna in Rome when I was stopped by two police agents who asked me to accompany them to the Questura, where, to my speechless amazement, a cruel and wicked charge was made against me. I was accused of robbing a commercial traveller of Milan of a portfolio containing eighteen thousand francs! At first I laughed in the Commissary's face, but when, an hour later, the Italian, a man whom I had never before seen in my life, was brought and identified me, I was stupefied. The charge was infamous. It was against my honour! The man, a loudly dressed person of Hebrew type, stated that on the previous evening he was in the Cafe Colonna and spoke to me. He afterwards invited me to dinner at Bordoni's, in the Via Nazionale, and after we parted he found that his portfolio had been stolen. A waiter at Bordoni's also identified me, and an agent of police also declared that I was known to them. The whole charge was false, and I stood speechless when I heard their disgraceful accusations. I had never been in either the Colonna or in Bordoni's in all my life. Yet there was still something more extraordinary to follow. The detectives went to our apartments, and, having searched, found the empty portfolio concealed at the bottom of a drawer in my room. I saw at once that it was the work of some secret enemy. Yet who had done it was, to me, a complete enigma. "I at once wrote a line of appeal to His Excellency explaining that the police had made a terrible mistake. At first he regretted that he could not assist me, but after a second appeal he sent a line to the Questore, or chief of police, giving me my liberty until my trial, which is to take place at the assizes next November. I at once went to Nardini and asked him to speak the truth--namely, that on the evening in question I was at the Villa Verde at Tivoli, where I had gone on a message to him from my father and had found him there alone. But he refused to make this statement, ostensibly because he did not wish the fact known that he had received a lady visitor alone, but in reality because he himself had trumped up the whole of the infamous charge against me.