ory,
whereupon he announced that he also had telegrams to send and that he
would go with us. We drove in state to the telegraph office, and found
that the entrance which had been indicated to us was the alley through
which the mail wagons drive in the good days when there are any. Before
an admiring crowd, we descended and made our way among Prussian troopers
through the noisome alley to a small side door, where we were stopped by
a sentry who stuck a bayonet in our general direction and said we could
go no further. I was immediately thrust into the foreground as the
brilliant German scholar; and, limbering up my heavy German artillery, I
attacked him. The sentry blanched, but stood his ground. An officer came
up as reinforcements, but was also limited to the German tongue; so I
had to keep it up, with two full-grown Ministers behind me thinking up
impossible things to be translated into the hopeless tongue. The
officer, who was a genial soul, announced as though there were no use
ever again to appear at that particular place, that the instruments had
all been removed, and that there was absolutely no way of sending any
messages--no matter from whom they came. We told him that we had come at
the special request of the General himself. He replied that that made no
difference whatever; that if there were no wires and no instruments,
there was no possible way of sending the messages. After three or four
repetitions, the Minister and I began to understand that there was no
use haggling about it; but the Spanish Minister was not so lightly to be
turned aside and took up the cudgels, himself bursting into the German
language. He stood his ground valiantly in the face of a volley of long
words, but he did not get any forrader. Prince Ernst de Ligne came in
with a permit from the General to send his messages, and joined forces
with the Spanish Minister; but the poor officer could only shrug his
shoulders and smile and repeat what he had already said a score of
times. Mr. Whitlock and I began to laugh, and had a hard time to control
ourselves. Finally we prevailed upon them to return to the Hotel de
Ville. The Minister was beginning to get even madder than he was
yesterday, when I got back with my story of the way I had spent the
afternoon, going from one wild goose chase to another. We got the
Burgomaster in his private office and placed our troubles before him. He
understood the importance of the matter and sent for the General.