16. Stories retailing just so much of our own as we had first talked about are constantly being repeated to us; some with the little additions we can recognise as our own early surmises; generally with the omission of points we did not know to be interesting until later; and often with all the muddles arising from the attempt to shorten a long story, with a few unauthorised additions and explanations thrown in. These stories are told to us as being the property of persons we have never heard of. We have constantly enquired on what authority they rest, and, if there is any at all, we have not infrequently been able to discover the track they have followed from us back to us again.
17. We do not think that deception explains it. If we were deceived in one, two, or three points, could we have been in all? For out of them we have been able to reconstruct the story of Trianon in many tiny details, the truth of which we have had to discover for ourselves.
18. We are constantly asked why we, of all people, should have had such an adventure? We are equally puzzled; and have come to think that it may not be so unusual as it seems. We can imagine that people, even if they suspected anything unusual (which they might easily not do), may have thought it best not to follow it up. The peculiarity in our case may simply have been that two persons were equally able to consider the circumstances, and did do so: that we found there was available evidence, and that we had the opportunity for obtaining it.
19. Certain unusual conditions were present.
(1) Two people in broad daylight, good health, and normal conditions, were equally able to bear witness to the facts, yet not in the manner of thought transference between each other, for they did not see alike in every point.
(2) Some of the facts were so small that no historical knowledge, however dim, could have suggested them.
(3) They concerned such well known historical personages that much documentary proof as to the reality of the incidents is accessible; yet, in some particulars, they are of such a nature as to be incapable of reproduction by any tricks of scenic effects; and some of the evidence found in the archives had, to all appearance, not been disturbed since its collection by the National Assembly until Miss Lamont in 1904 undid the old fastenings that had stuck together through age and disuse: for instance—much of the evidence about the gardeners taken from the wages book.
E. M.
F. L.
September, 1910.