excursions to Paris from the turmoil in the wake of war, I heard shouts
and saw a crowd of people rushing towards a motor-car coming down
the Boulevard des Italiens. One word was repeated with a long-drawn
sibilance:

"Espion! Espion!"

The spy was between two agents de police. He was bound with cords
and his collar had been torn off, so that his neck was bare, like a man
ready for the guillotine. Somehow, the look of the man reminded me
in a flash of those old scenes in the French Revolution, when a
French aristocrat was taken in a tumbril through the streets of Paris.
He was a young man with a handsome, clear-cut face, and though he
was very white except where a trickle of blood ran down his cheek
from a gash on his forehead, he smiled disdainfully with a proud curl
of the lip. He knew he was going to his death, but he had taken the
risk of that when he stayed in Paris for the sake of his country. A
German spy! Yes, but a brave man who went rather well to his death
through the sunlit streets of Paris, with the angry murmurs of a crowd
rising in waves about him.

On the same night I saw another episode of this spy-hunting period,
and it was more curious. It happened in a famous restaurant not far
from the Comédie Française, where a number of French soldiers in a
variety of uniforms dined with their ladies before going to the front
after a day's leave from the fighting lines. Suddenly, into the buzz of
voices and above the tinkle of glasses and coffee-cups one voice
spoke in a formal way, with clear, deliberate words. I saw that it was
the manager of the restaurant addressing his clients.