“Maintenant, les vôtres,” he growled.
“Here it is,” I answered, ignoring the plurality of the French pronoun, and I drew from my pocket a general letter of introduction to our consular service, signed by the Secretary of State. The gendarme, who had expected another book, opened the paper with a perplexed air which increased to blank amazement when, instead of familiar French words, his eyes fell on a half-dozen lines of incomprehensible hieroglyphics.
“Hein! Que diable!” he gasped. “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?”
“My passport,” I explained. “Je suis américain.”
“Ha! Américain! Diable! And that is really a passport? Never before have I seen one.”
It was not really a passport by any means. I had none. But monsieur le gendarme was in no position to dispute my word had I told him it was a patent of nobility.
“Very good,” he went on, “but you must have another paper. Foreign vagabonds cannot journey in France without a document to prove that they have worked.”
Here was a poser. It would have been easy to assert that I was a traveler and no workman, but it would have been still easier to guess where such an assertion would land me. I rubbed my unshaven chin in perplexity, then struck by a sudden inspiration, snatched from my bundle the cattle-boat discharge.
“Bah!” grumbled the officer, “more foreign gibberish! What is that vilaine langue the devil himself couldn’t read?”
“English,” I replied.