a strange land. Fortunately she has all her papers in order, and can
show that she has nine nephews actually in the French army. I made a
statement in writing for her to this effect, which she took to the
registration office, but she had to wait, standing without shelter from
eight in the morning to six o'clock at night. After carefully
scrutinizing her papers, the officials told her that her papers must go
for inspection to the Prefecture of Police, and that she must come back
for them to-morrow. She had with her photographs of three of her nephews
in military uniforms. One of these nephews had received a decoration
during the Morocco campaign for saving his captain's life during an
engagement.

I managed to see the Commissary of Police of the quarter and spoke to
him about Sophie, explaining her case and saying that as she was such a
splendid cook it would be a great pity if Paris should lose her
services. The commissary smiled and said: "It will be all right. Sophie
will be allowed to remain in Paris!" I profited by the occasion to
obtain a _permis de sejour_, or residence permit, for myself. The
commissary, after noting on paper my personal description and measuring
my height, handed me the precious document authorizing me to reside in
the "entrenched camp of Paris." These papers must be kept on one's
person, ready to be shown whenever called for. Outside of the office
about three hundred foreigners, including Emile Wauters, the Belgian
painter, and several well-known Americans and English, were waiting
their turn to get into the office. I congratulated myself on having a
journalist's _coupe-file_ card that had enabled me to get in before
the others, some of whom stood waiting for six hours before their turn
came. This is an instance of stupid French bureaucracy or red-tapism. It
would have been very easy to have distributed numbers to those waiting,
and the applicants would then have been able, by calculating the time,