[That was forty-three years ago. The British
passport, however, remains to-day as unsatisfactory as it was then.]
But let me pass to other instances. One day an unfortunate individual,
working in the Paris sewers, was espied by a zealous National Guard, who
at once gave the alarm, declaring that there was a German spy in the
aforesaid sewers, and that he was depositing bombs there with the
intention of blowing up the city. Three hundred Guards at once volunteered
their services, stalked the poor workman, and blew him to pieces the next
time he popped his head out of a sewer-trap. The mistake was afterwards
deplored, but people argued (wrote Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, who sent the
story to The Morning Post) that it was far better that a hundred innocent
Frenchmen should suffer than that a single Prussian should escape. Cham,
to whom I previously alluded, old Marshal Vaillant, Mr. O'Sullivan, an
American diplomatist, and Alexis Godillot, the French army contractor,
were among the many well-known people arrested as spies at one or another
moment. A certain Mme: de Beaulieu, who had joined a regiment of Mobiles
as a _cantiniere_, was denounced as a spy "because her hands were so
white.
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