Even if they have no income and do not earn anything they always have a lawyer and now for the first time in my life I had a lawyer, and so I went down to say good-bye to my lawyer.

We had recently quite a number of difficult moments. America had come into the war, our consul and vice-consul in Lyon with whom we had gotten very friendly because they had taken a summer home right near us and kept a white goat called Genevieve, and there we first found out that you could have goat’s milk that did not taste of goat, had been interned first at Lourdes and then taken to Germany and now I went to Belley to say good-bye as we were moving. My lawyer said that everything was nicely arranged and we thanked each other and said what a pleasure it had all been, and then he said and now I have something rather serious to tell you. I was in Vichy yesterday, and I saw Maurice Sivain, Sivain had been sous-prefet at Belley and had been most kind and helpful in extending our privileges and our occupation of our house, and Maurice Sivain said to me, tell these ladies that they must leave at once for Switzerland, to-morrow if possible otherwise they will be put into a concentration camp. But I said we are just moving. I know he said. I felt very funny, quite completely funny. But how can we go, as the frontier is closed, I said. That he said could be arranged, I think that could be arranged. You mean pass by fraud I said, Yes he said, it could be arranged. I felt very funny. I said I think I will go home and will you telephone Madame d’Aiguy to meet me. He said shall I walk home with you, I did feel very funny, and I said no I will go home and Madame d’Aiguy will come down to see you and arrange and I went home. I came in, I felt a little less funny but I still did feel funny, and Alice Toklas and Madame d’Aiguy were there, and I said we are not moving to-morrow we are going to Switzerland. They did not understand that and I explained and then they did understand, and Madame d’Aiguy left to go and see the lawyer and arrange and Alice Toklas and I sat down to supper. We both felt funny and then I said. No, I am not going we are not going, it is better to go regularly wherever we are sent than to go irregularly where nobody can help us if we are in trouble, no I said, they are always trying to get us to leave France but here we are and here we stay. What do you think, I said, and we thought and I said we will walk down to Belley and see the lawyer and tell him no. We walked down to Belley it was night it was dark but I am always out walking at night, I like it, and I took Alice Toklas by the arm because she has not the habit of walking at night and we got to Belley, and climbed up the funny steps to the lawyer, and I said I have decided not to go. Madame d’Aiguy was still there and she said perhaps it was better so, and the lawyer said perhaps we had better go and then he said he had a house way up in the mountains and there nobody would know, and I said well perhaps later but now I said to-morrow we are going to move to Culoz, with our large comfortable new house with two good servants and a nice big park with trees, and we all went home, and we did move the next day. It took us some weeks to get over it but we finally did.

But what was so curious in the whole affair was its unreality, like things are unreal when you are a child and before you know about realism as we did in the Spanish-American war and the Russo-Japanese war just that.

And also the strange quality of government employees, I know a great deal now that and Russian literature about that same time of the Russo-Japanese war taught us about that.

It was around those days that three things happened that made me know about those kind of things. There was my eldest brother coming home from the East as a member of the G. A. R., he had to grow a beard to look old enough, of course he did not belong but there were privileges in traveling and other things so he came along with them. It was then I first knew about officialdom and what one did by bribing. Of course that has to do with war, because the ordinary person that is one leading a peaceful life particularly men comes in contact with officials but in war-time, sooner or later everybody does. The second thing was the famous Oscar Wilde trial and the question of public opinion and the third thing was the Dreyfus case and anti-semitism.

Anybody can ask a question and anybody can answer a question, and during war-time they ask questions more than ever particularly in war-time like this one of 1943. Who said Christine aged six of her mother who is the Italians, Italians being in occupation it was a natural question, why the Germans said her mother, and who are friends of the Germans, why the Italians said her mother, and who are friends of the English said Christine, why the Americans said her mother, and is Stalin friends with Germans said Christine, no with the English said her mother, and who are the French friends of, said Christine, why no one said the mother.

So if you ask questions and there is an answer it is not nevertheless any less illuminating, but anybody can ask questions in the year 1943, in July.

Nevertheless there are more public servants than ever, more police, more regulations, more avoidance of the law, more prisoners, more coming and going and everybody sooner or later has to know a great many public servants a very great many, and certainly very certainly they do not ask or answer questions, and if they do they do not mean to they ask them because that is what they are told to do. We have an acquaintance, she was taken by the Germans because well there was a reason, there usually is a reason one might say there always is a reason. And they asked questions and she kept answering saying she did not know the answer to the questions.