My session was brief.
“The police visé must come first,” said the officer in charge.
Monsieur le Préfet has his office conveniently located about eight miles away from the Control, over the river. And he’s on the fourth floor of a building constructed before the invention of the elevator. From behind an untrimmed hedge of black whiskers he questioned me as to my forebears, musical tastes and baseball preferences. Then he retired into chambers and presently issued forth with my passport, on which his stamp had been added to the beautiful collection already there. It says I’m Bon for a trip to Amérique par Angleterre, so I don’t know whether I’m to go that way or through Grande Bretagne.
Thence back to Rue Napoléon Lajoie, and another long wait.
“Yes,” said the officer when my turn came again, “the visé is all right, but where is your steamship ticket? You’ll have to show that before we can pass you.”
In order to show it I had to go and buy it, and in order to buy it I had to scare up some money, which is no mere child’s play in Gay Paree these days. I called on four people before I found one who was touchable. With what he grudgingly forked over I hastened to the booking office and felt at home there, it being on Rue Scribe. There was a customer ahead of me—our president’s youngest son-in-law.
“Do you know who that was?” said the agent excitedly when the young man had departed.
“Yes,” I replied, “but we don’t speak to each other.”
“Now,” said the agent, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you a few questions. It’s annoying, I know, but it’s the wartime rule.”
“Shoot,” I told him. “I’m thoroughly used to being annoyed.”
He ran through the familiar list and saved a new one for the windup.
“Why are you going to America?”
I could have spent an entire week replying to that, but even minutes were precious.
“Because it’s where I live,” proved satisfactory.
He apologized again for having to propound the queries, which shows he must be new on the job. The rest of them don’t care whether you like it or not. I signed six or seven pledges, gave over the bulk of my borrowed fortune, and set out again with my ticket for the Rue Jacques Johnson. I got there just in time, for they close early on Saturday. Other days the poor devils have to work right through from ten to four.
The officer also wanted to know why I was going to America. And he asked me at what hotel I would stop in London. I told him I’d never been there and knew nothing about the hotels.
“You must make a choice,” he said. “We have to know your address.”
“Is there one called the Savoy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s say the Savoy.”
“All right. You’re to stay there, then, while you’re in London, and you’re to leave England on this ship Wednesday night. Otherwise you may have trouble.”
I’ll be surprised if I don’t anyhow.
He decorated my passport with a heliotrope inscription, naming the port from which I’m to depart from France, the hotel in London, and my good ship, and sent me into the next room, where a vice-consul confirmed the military visé and relieved me of two francs.
The train leaves at seven tomorrow morning, and between now and then I have only to pack and to settle with the hotel. The former chore will be easy, for I possess just half as much personal property as when I came. Parisian laundries have commandeered the rest.
Monday, September 17. London.
With tear-dimmed eyes, I said farewell to Paris yesterday morning at the unearthly hour of seven. There was not even a gendarme on hand to see me off.
The trip from Paris to England is arranged with the customary French passion for convenience. They get you out of bed at five to catch the train, which arrives in the port at noon. The Channel boat leaves port at ten o’clock at night, giving you ten solid hours in which to think. Not ten either, for the last two are consumed in waiting for your turn to be examined by the customs and viséed by the Authorities du Exit.
Customs examination in this case is a pure waste of time. The gentleman only wants to know whether you are trying to smuggle any gold money out of France. I’d like to see the departing guest who has any kind of money left to smuggle.
The Authorities du Exit are seven in number. They sit round a table, and you pass from one to the other until something has been done to you by each. One feels your pulse, another looks at your tongue, a third reads your passport right side up, a fourth reads it upside down, a fifth compares you with your photograph, a sixth inspects your visés for physical defects, and the seventh tries to throw a scare into you.
I got by the first six easily. No. 7 read both sides of the passport and then asked by whom I was employed. I told him.
“Where are your credentials?” he demanded.
“What do you mean, credentials?”
“You must have a letter from the magazine, showing that it employs you.”
“You’re mistaken. I have no such letter.”
He looked very cross. But there were others left to scare, so he couldn’t waste much time on me.
“I’ll pass you,” he said, “but if you come back to France again, you can’t leave.”
He and I should both worry.
But it does seem pathetic that the written and stamped approval, in all colors of the rainbow, of the Paris chief of police, the American consul, the British Military Control, the British consul, the French consul in New York, and nearly everybody else in the world,
