discomfort and delay there. More than once I
sat down to lunch or dinner with brilliant commensals, one of whom was
understood to have made away with a well-known personage in order to rid
the state of a bad administrator, and another had, at a secret
_Vehmgericht_ in Turkey, condemned a friend of mine, now a friend of
his, to be assassinated.

In Paris, this temporary capital of the world, one felt the repercussion
of every event, every incident of moment wheresoever it might have
occurred. To reside there while the Conference was sitting was to occupy
a comfortable box in the vastest theater the mind of men has ever
conceived. From this rare coign of vantage one could witness
soul-gripping dramas of human history, the happenings of years being
compressed within the limits of days. The revolution in Portugal, the
massacre of Armenians, Bulgaria's atrocities, the slaughter of the
inhabitants of Saratoff and Odessa, the revolt of the Koreans--all
produced their effect in Paris, where official and unofficial exponents
of the aims and ambitions, religions and interests that unite or divide
mankind were continually coming or going, working aboveground or
burrowing beneath the surface.

It was within a few miles of the place where I sat at table with the
brilliant company alluded to above that a few individuals of two
different nationalities, one of them bearing, it was said, a well-known
name, hatched the plot that sent Portugal's strong man, President
Sidonio Paes, to his last account and plunged that ill-starred land into
chaotic confusion. The plan was discovered by the Portuguese military
attache, who warned the President himself and the War Minister. But
Sidonio Paes, quixotic and foolhardy, refused to take or brook
precautions. A few weeks later the assassin, firing three shots, had no
difficulty in taking aim, but none of them took effect. The reason was
interesting: so determined were the conspirators to leave nothing to
chance, they had steeped the cartridges in a poisonous preparation,
whereby they injured the mechanism of the revolver, which, in
consequence, hung fire. But the adversaries of the reform movement which
the President had inaugurated again tried and planned another attempt,
and Sidonio Paes, who would not be taught prudence, was duly shot, and
his admirable work undone[2] by a band of semi-Bolshevists.

Less than six months later it was rumored that a number of specially
prepared bombs from a cert