cket the
small translating manual, previously described as containing English and
French sentences of similar purport arranged in parallel columns, and,
holding it in one hand, I endeavoured to advance to the centre of the
turmoil, with my free arm meantime uplifted in a gesture calling for
silence and attention; but a variety of causes coincidentally transpired
to impede seriously my efforts to be heard.

To begin with, the uproar was positively deafening in volume, and my
voice is one which in moments of declamation is inclined to verge on the
tenor. In addition to this, the complete freedom of my movements was
considerably impaired by a burly whiskered creature, in a long blouse
such as is worn in these parts by butchers and other tradespeople, who,
coming on me from behind, fixed a firm grasp in the back of my garments
at the same instant when one of his fellows possessed himself of my
umbrella and my small portmanteau.

Finally, I could not locate in the book the exact phrases I meant to
utter. Beneath my eyes, as the printed leaves fluttered back and forth,
there flashed paragraphs dealing with food, with prices of various
articles, with the state of the weather, with cab fares, with
conjectures touching on the whereabouts of imaginary relatives, with
questions and answers in regard to the arrival and departure of trains,
but nothing at all concerning unfounded suspicions directed against
private individuals; nothing at all concerning the inherent rights of
strangers travelling abroad; nothing at all concerning the procedure
presumed to obtain among civilised peoples as to the inviolate
sacredness of one's personal property from sumptuary and violent search
at the hands of unauthorised persons--in short, nothing at all that
would have the slightest bearing on, or be of the slightest value in
explaining, the present acute situation. Given a modicum of leisure for
painstaking search among the pages and a lessening of tensity in the
state of the popular excitement, I should undoubtedly have succeeded in
finding that which I sought; but such was destined not to be.

Of a sudden a chorus of exultant shrieks, louder than any of the cries
that until then had arisen, caused all and sundry to face a spot near
the door. The gendarmes had forced open the black box so highly prized
by Zeno the Great and now bared its contents to the common gaze.

Mister President, think of the result on the minds of the mob already
inflam