street is forbidden." I checked myself just in time, and in chastened
spirit made my way back to the Metropole.

Three times I was offered the prohibited Antwerp papers that had
been smuggled into the city and once the London Times for
twenty-five cents. The war price for this is said often to have run up
to as many dollars.

An English, woman, or at any rate a woman with a beautiful
English accent, opened a conversation with the remark that she
was going directly through to Ghent on the following day and that
she knew how to go right through the German lines. That was
precisely the way that the Germans had just forbidden me to go.
But this accomplice (if such she was) got no rise out of me. To all
intents I was stone-deaf. Compared to me, she would have found
the Sphinx garrulous indeed. She may have been as harmless as
a dove but, after my escapade, I wouldn't have talked to my own
mother without a written permit from the military governor. The
Kaiser himself would have found it hard work breaking through my
cast-iron spy-proof armor of formality. I had good reason, too, not
to let down the bars, for I was trailed by the spy-hunters. Not until
ten days later when I passed over the Holland border did I feel
release from their vigilant eyes. My key at the Metropole was never
returned to me and I know that my room was searched once, if not
twice, after my return to the hotel.

It would be interesting to see how all this tallies with the official
report of my case in the archives at Berlin. Perhaps some of these
surmises have shot far wide of the mark. Javert, for instance, may
not be a direct descendant of the ancient Inquisitor who had