Show ON THE FRENCH FRONTIER The English Bicyclist and the Drey fus Case Pall Mall Gazette The place was a custom house on the French frontier and the time the morrow mor-row of the Eenrtes verdict The Englishman Eng-lishman had come to claim a refunding of the money he had deposited when he took his bicycles into France The papers were in order the identity of the machines verified and while the chief went for the key l of his strongbox strong-box the Englishman Invited speech upon up-on the affaire Ah mals cest une drole daffaire on ne saura jamais la verlte remarked the man In a draggled uniform One thing only was clear that foreign money had done It HI love Jews no more than you observed ob-served the Englishman who felt the tiJudaism that charged the air but if there had been a cosmopolitan syndicate I should have heard of It in England Then how sir do you explain the rage of the foreigners which would be laughable were it not so odious The foreign journalists have earned their money well The man had read his Petit Journal Ah bien sur exclaimed the five in derisive chorus And why should they discuss French affairs i they were not paid for it I was vain for the Englishman to submit that when people have had proof of a prisoners innocence they are apt to feel Indignant at his conviction against all the rules of evidence and equity He was speaking to anti Dreyfusards and readers of the Petit Journal moreover he was one against five I was manifestly safer to play the Indifferent spectator and to talk of the great exhibition There was a proposal pro-posal among certain foreign hotheads he said to boycott the exhibition nay more to eschew French silks and French wines France remarked one would suffer less from that than the foreigners themselves She was rich enough to do without them True but apparently the Parisians think otherwise for in the morning papers they speak of postponing the exhibition ex-hibition for a year This spiked their gun With exclamations of dismay and incredulity one reached for his Petit Journal and ran his finger down Its columns the others pressing on him chin on shoulder Their chief returning return-ing with his key recalled them to business l busi-ness Monsieur will sign his receipt for 52 francs 60 centimes and then take the money Ah but it was not monsieur mon-sieur who had signed the original document docu-ment It was madame Tenez voila un impasse The receipt and the document must be signed by the same hand Madame was far away in another country in fact and could not come tomorrow nor indeed until next year if even then Could not her husband sign on her behalf No the regulations were positive upon up-on the point Either madame must sign or the deposit be forfeited Then upon the Englishman fresh from the study of the Henrys and the Du Patys and the Merciers of official France j there flashed an inspiration Might he not forge madames signature It was like a guiding light to the lost mariner But can you do it well asked the chief eagerly To a marvel I have studied the art for years Give him a slip of paper and a new pen and let him show us And you M this to the officer who had witnessed wit-nessed the original signature tell me if it resembles madames autograph Ah Does madame write as large as thatCest Cest juste pronounced M I remember well the dash and the two dots underneath The chief chuckled in anticipatory glee and stood over the artist while he executed his forgery on the original document And while the Englishman pocketed his money he felt that somehow a bond of sympathy had united the party and that he had risen many degrees in their estimation if not in his own |