I did not ask these questions one after another as I have here put them down; I mixed them up with general conversation, and we parted on good terms.
I have pondered much upon the apparition, and have come to a definite opinion.

A man I met later at Frankfort, and to whom I described the pair, said he had seen them himself in Paris, three weeks after the termination of the Fashoda incident; while a traveller for some English steel works whom we met in Strassburg remembered having seen them in Berlin during the excitement caused by the Transvaal question.

My conclusion is that they were actors out of work, hired to do this thing in the interest of international peace.

The French Foreign Office, wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with England, secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town.

You cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time want to kill it.