ry that the
six cannon balls are but thin hollow metal shells containing cavities
or recesses, into which presumably fulminating explosives might be
introduced. The mayor kisses him on both cheeks and on the forehead.

It is one's own turn; at the prospect one involuntarily shudders! One's
self is hedged about by impassioned inquisitionists. On every side one
is confronted by waving beards, condemning eyes, denouncing faces,
clenched hands and pointing fingers. From full twenty throats at once
one is beset by shrill interrogations; but, owing to the universal
rapidity of utterance and the shrillness of enunciation, one is quite
unable, in the present state of one's mind, to distinguish a single
intelligible syllable.

Lacking my translating manual to aid me in framing suitable responses, I
had resort to an expedient which at the moment seemed little short of an
inspiration, but which I have since ascertained to have been technically
an error, inasmuch as thereby I was put in the attitude of pleading
guilty to being a spy in the employ of the enemy, of being an accomplice
of Zeno the Great in nefarious plots against the lives and property of
the French people, and of having conspired with him to wreck all public
and many private edifices in the town by means of deadly agencies.

The mistake I made, Mr. President, was this: To all questions of
whatsoever nature, I answered by saying, "_Oui, oui._"

Almost instantaneously--so it seemed--I found myself transported to a
place of durance vile, deep down in the intricate confines of the
noisome cellars beneath the building where the inquisition had taken
place. There in lonely solitude did I languish; and at intervals I heard
through the thick walls, from the adjoining keep, the dismal, despairing
accents of my ill-starred fellow countryman bewailingly uplifted. True,
he had wilfully deceived me. Most certainly he told me those cannon
balls were solid iron.

Yet this was neither the time nor the place for vain recriminations;
for, indeed, all seemed lost. Doom impended--earthly destruction;
mundane annihilation! One pictured a gallows tree; and, turning from
that image, one pictured a firing squad at sunrise. I was only deterred
from committing to writing my expiring message to Mr. Bryan and the
world at large by two insurmountable considerations: One was that I had
no writing materials of whatsoever nature, and the other was that my
mental perturbation precluded all poss