Monsieur Segotin's Story
to us what it would be to you in England, for the Continental peoples are accustomed to that sort of thing; but now we had to go through a performance with the police or the military every time, almost, we crossed the street! If any of us had occasion to take the train (I speak of days subsequent to the gay times when the sentries were given carte blanche to slaughter anyone who should be seen leaving the town) he had to obtain permission and identify himself all over again and have his name and age and address put on his railway ticket. Our very dogs were registered and shot if they were not known to the authorities, while the owners of such evil dogs were exorbitantly fined. To possess carrier pigeons was an offence punishable by death. We might not go near a railway line except at certain places. Farmers might not go about in their fields and woods except as the authorities judged it suitable for them to do. To light a fire out of doors, to carry a lighted lantern at night, to approach an electric installation, to do this, that, and the other were alike forbidden. You and I, my friend, have jested together in other days about that famous German word verboten. At Saint Hilaire we learned to understand how little humour it really contains.
"And, should these people ever realise their ambition, the whole world will learn it too. It is, believe me, a word of infinite seriousness, and its scope is quite without bounds. It is everywhere, like the air one breathes, and it poisons that air
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