Well, the sans gêne days seem to be passed.
Up to now, as I have told you, the sauf-conduit matter, except on the last day I was at Meaux, was the thinnest sort of formality. I had to have one to leave the commune, but the blank forms were lying around everywhere. I had only to stop at the hotel at Couilly, step into the café, pick up a form and ask the proprietor to fill it out, and that was all that was necessary. I might have passed it on to anyone, for, although my name was written on it, no one ever took the trouble to fill out the description. The ticket-seller at the station merely glanced at the paper in my hand when I bought a ticket, and the gendarmes at the ticket window in Paris, when there were any,--often there were none--did no more. Of course, the possession of a sauf-conduit presupposes all one's papers en règle, but I never saw anyone examining to make sure of that.
All this is ended. We are evidently under a new régime.
I had my first intimation yesterday, when I had a domiciliary visit from the gendarmes at Esbly. It was a very formal, thorough affair, the two officers treating me, at the beginning of the interview, as if I were a very guilty person.
I was upstairs when I saw them arrive on their wheels. I put down my sewing, and went down to be ready to open the door when they knocked. They didn't knock. I waited a bit, then opened the door. There was no one on the terrace, but I heard their voices from the other side of the house. I went in search of them. They were examining the back of the house as if they had never seen one like it before. When they saw me, one of them said sharply, without the slightest salute: "There is no bell?"
"How does one get in, since you keep your door locked?" he added.
"Well," I replied, with a smile, "as a rule, one knocks."
He looked on his paper, repeated it--mispronouncing it, of course, and evidently sure that I did not know how to pronounce it myself.
I could not deny the charge. I merely volunteered "Américaine."
Then the inquiry continued like this. "Live here?"
That seemed to strike him as a very suspicious date, and he stared at me hard for a moment before he went on: "What for?"
"Principally because I leased the house."