Other edicts followed, or arrived simultaneously like a broadside fired into the life of the city.  Public processions “with whatever patriotic motive” were sternly prohibited.  “Purveyors of false news, or of news likely to depress the public spirit” would be dealt with by courts-martial and punished with the utmost severity.  No musical instruments were to be played after ten o’clock at night, and orchestras were prohibited in all restaurants.  Oh, Paris, was even your laughter to be abolished, if you had any heart for laughter while your sons were dying on the fields of battle?

The newspaper censors had put a strangle grip upon the press, not only upon news of war but also upon expressions of opinion.  Gustave Herve signed his name three days a week to blank columns of extraordinary eloquence.  Georges Clemenceau had a series of striking head-lines which had been robbed of all their text.  The intellectuals of Paris might not express an opinion save by permission of the military censors, most of whom, strangely enough, had German names.

The civil police under direction of the Military Governor were very busy in Paris during the early days of the war.  Throughout the twenty-four hours, and especially in the darkness of night, the streets were patrolled by blue-capped men on bicycles, who rode, four by four, as silently as shadows, through every quarter of the city.  They had a startling habit of surrounding any lonely man who might be walking in the late hours and interrogating him as to his nationality, age and business.

Several times I was arrested in this way and never escaped the little frousse which came to me when these dark figures closed upon me, as they leapt from their bicycles and said with grim suspicion: 

“Vos papiers, s’il vous plait!”

My pockets were bulging with papers, which I thrust hurriedly into the lantern-light for a close-eyed scrutiny.

They were very quick to follow the trail of a stranger, and there was no sanctuary in Paris in which he might evade them.  Five minutes after calling upon a friend in the fifth floor flat of an old mansion at the end of a courtyard in the Rue de Rivoli, there was a sharp tap at his door, and two men in civil clothes came into the room, with that sleuth-hound look which belongs to stage, and French, detectives.  They forgot to remove their bowler hats, which seemed to me to be a lamentable violation of French courtesy.

“Vos papiers, s’il vous plait!”

Again I produced bundles of papers—­permis de sejour in Paris, Amiens, Rouen, Orleans, Le Mans; laisser-passer to Boulogne, Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Aire-sur-Lys, Bethune and Hazebrouck; British passports and papiers vises by French consuls, French police, French generals, French mayors, and French stationmasters.  But they were hardly satisfied.  One man with an ugly bulge in his side-pocket—­you have seen at Drury Lane how quickly the revolver comes out?—­suggested that the whole collection was not worth an old railway ticket because I had failed to comply with the latest regulation regarding a photograph on the permis de sejour...  We parted, however, with mutual confidence and an expression of satisfaction in the Entente Cordiale.