cremation, and urged that, however obnoxious, the
wishes of the dead should be respected, Daphne had reviled her husband
and requested Jonah to open the door, so that she could sit in a
draught.

We were in a bad way.

Now that we were in France, the difficulty of obtaining cigars,
cigarettes, or tobacco, such as we were used to enjoy, seemed to be
insuperable. The prohibitive duty, the uncertainty and by no means
infrequent failure of the French mails, brought the cost of procuring
supplies from England to a figure we could not stomach: attempts at
postal smuggling had ended in humiliating failure: the wares which
France herself was offering were not at all to our taste. We were
getting desperate. Jonah, who had smoked the same mixture for thirteen
years, was miserable. Berry's affection for a certain brand of cigars
became daily more importunate. My liver was suffering....

"We'd better try getting a licence to import," I said heavily. "It may
do something."

"Ah," said my brother-in-law, drawing a letter from his pocket, "I knew
I had some news for you. I heard from George this morning. I admit I
don't often take advice, but this little missive sounds an unusually
compelling call.

"_Above all, do not be inveigled into obtaining or, worse still, acting
upon, a so-called 'licence to import.' It is a copper-bottomed have.
I got one, when I was in Paris, gleefully ordered five thousand
cigarettes from Bond Street, and started to count the days. I soon got
tired of that. Three months later I got a dirty form from the Customs,
advising me that there was a case of cigarettes, addressed to me, lying
on the wharf at Toulon--yes, Toulon. They added that the charges to be
paid before collection amounted to nine hundred francs by way of duty,
eleven hundred and sixty-five by way of freight, and another three
francs forty for every day they remained in the Custom House. In this
connection, they begged to point out that they had already lain there
for six weeks. Friend, can you beat it? But what, then, did I do?
Why, I took appropriate action. I wrote at once, saying that, as I was
shortly leaving for New York, I should be obliged if they would forward
them via Liverpool to the Piraeus: I inquired whether they had any
objection to being paid in roubles: and I advised them that I was
shortly expecting a pantechnicon, purporting to contain furniture, but,
in reality, full of mines. These I begged them to hand