"As I presented my ticket, a truck full of luggage was pushed through the gate next to mine. The porters about it were sneezing bitterly. 'Snuff?' said one of them contemptuously. 'Snuff be blarsted! It's pepper!'
"Whether at that moment my stomach in fact slipped or not I am unable to say, but the impression that my contents had dropped several inches was overwhelming.
"I staggered into the Pullman, more dead than alive…. After a large barley and a small water, I felt somewhat revived, but it was not until the train was half-way to Dover that I had myself in hand. I was just beginning under the auspices of a second milk and soda, to consider my hideous plight, when a genial fool upon the opposite side of the table asked me if I had 'witnessed the comedy at Victoria.' Icily I inquired: 'What comedy?' He explained offensively that 'some cuckoo had tried the old wheeze of stuffing pepper in his trunk to put off the Customs,' and that the intended deterrent had untimely emerged. My brothers, conceive my exhilaration. 'The old wheeze.' I could have broken the brute's neck. When he offered me a filthy-looking cigar with a kink in it, and said with a leer that I shouldn't 'get many like that on the other side of the Chops,' I could have witnessed his mutilation unmoved….
"Still, it's an ill wind…. The swine's words were like a spur. I became determined to get the stuff through.
"Grimly I watched the case go on to the boat, to the accompaniment of such nasal convulsions as I had never believed to be consistent with life itself. By way of diverting suspicion, I asked one of the crew what was the matter. His blasphemous answer was charged with such malignity that I found it necessary to stay myself with yet another still lemonade.
"Arrived at Calais, I hurried on board the train.
"The journey to Paris was frightful. The nearer we got, the more dishevelled became my wits. The power of concentration deserted me. Finally, as we were running in, I found that I had forgotten the French for 'moths.' I'd looked it out the night before: I'd been murmuring it all day long: and now, at the critical moment, it had deserted me. I clasped my head in my hands and thought like a madman. Nothing doing. I thought all round it, of course. I thought of candles and camphor and dusk. My vocabulary became gigantic, but it did not include the French equivalent for 'moths.' In desperation I approached my vis-à-vis and, in broken accents, implored him to tell me 'the French for the little creatures which you find in your clothes.'…
"I like the French. If I'd asked an Englishman, he'd have pulled the communication-cord, but this fellow never so much as stared. He just released a little spurt of good-will and then started in, as if his future happiness depended on putting me straight. 'But I was meaning the fleas. Oh, indubitably. Animals most gross. Only last November he himself….' It took quite a lot of persuasion to get him off fleas. Then he offered me lice. I managed to make him understand that the attack was delivered when the clothes were unoccupied. Instantly he suggested rats. With an effort I explained that the things I meant were winged. As the train came to a standstill, he handed me 'chauvesouris.' Bats! I ask you….
"I stepped on to the platform as if I was descending into my tomb. How I got to the baggage-room, I'm hanged if I know; but I remember standing there, shivering and wiping the sweat off my face. Truck by truck the registered baggage appeared….
"I heard my case coming for about a quarter of a mile.