Also let me tell you things are slowly changing here.  Little by little I can feel conditions closing up about me, and I can see “coming events” casting “their shadows before.”

Let me give you a little example.

A week ago today my New York doctor came down to spend a few days with me.  It was a great event for a lady who had not had a visitor for months.  He wanted to go out to the battlefield, so I arranged to meet his train at Esbly, go on with him to Meaux, and drive back by road.

I started for Esbly in my usual sans gene manner, and was disgusted with myself on arriving to discover that I had left all my papers at home.  However, as I had never had to show them, I imagined it would make no difference.

I presented myself at the ticket-office to buy a ticket for Meaux, and you can imagine my chagrin when I was asked for my papers.  I explained to the station-master, who knows me, that I had left them at home.  He was very much distressed,—­said he would take the responsibility of selling me a ticket if I wanted to risk it,—­but the new orders were strict, and he was certain I would not be allowed to leave the station at Meaux.

Naturally, I did not want to take such a risk, or to appear, in any way, not to be en regle.  So I took the doctor off the train, and drove back here for my papers, and then we went on to Meaux by road.

It was lucky I did, for I found everything changed at Meaux.  In the first place, we could not have an automobile, as General Joffre had issued an order forbidding the circulation inside of the military zone of all automobiles except those connected with the army.  We could have a little victoria and a horse, but before taking that, we had to go to the Prefet de Police and exhibit our papers and get a special sauf-conduit,—­and we had to be diplomatic to get that.

Once started, instead of sliding out of the town past a guard who merely went through the formality of looking at the driver’s papers, we found, on arriving at the entrance into the route de Senlis, that the road was closed with a barricade, and only one carriage could pass at a time.  In the opening stood a soldier barring the way with his gun, and an officer came to the carriage and examined all our papers before the sentinel shouldered his musket and let us pass.  We were stopped at all the cross-roads, and at that between Barcy and Chambry,—­where the pedestal of the monument to mark the limit of the battle in the direction of Paris is already in place,—­we found a group of a dozen officers—­not noncommissioned officers, if you please, but captains and majors.  There our papers, including American passports, were not only examined, but signatures and seals verified.

This did not trouble me a bit.  Indeed I felt it well, and high time, and that it should have been done ten months ago.