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It was a small room with a wooden bed, and we lay shut up in it from ten o'clock at night till nine o'clock the following morning. The plank bed was hardly sufficient for three of us to lie down upon. My friends talked away the whole night. There were insects in the plank bed which tormented them, as they afterwards told me. But as for me, wrapped in the gentle embraces of sleep, I was insensible to their attentions. They assailed me, I imagine, the whole night, but they failed to disturb my slumbers.
On the following morning a policeman unlocked the door and took us to the office where we had been examined the previous night. The first thing that we insisted on was that we must have some one who understood and could speak English. An English-speaking police officer was accordingly brought in. He grasped the whole situation in a minute and apologized to us for the trouble and insult to which we had been subjected. He took us to the police prefect, a cultured Frenchman who spoke English well, and he was even more profuse in his apologies. The trial of the Communist prisoners was then going on and was exciting European interest. People from different countries had come to witness the proceedings. Our prefect politely offered us tickets of admission to the court. We thanked him, but declined the tickets. We thought we had had enough of France. We straightway hurried to the station and before nightfall we were leaving French territory for a more hospitable country. The incident shows the dark and often unfounded suspicions which pervade the police mind even in the great centres of European civilization.
Our tour through Europe was necessarily a hurried one. Having been away from home so long, we wanted to be in Calcutta during the Durga Pujas, our great national festival, which usually takes place about the end of September or early in October. Venice impressed me as a unique city, both in its physical and historic aspects. Its streets are the inlets of the sea; and its palaces frown upon them. Historic memories crowded upon me as I gazed upon the palace of the Doges, the Prison and the Bridge of Sighs. The Prison which Napoleon wanted to burn down was reminiscent of the dark ages and of the cruel treatment accorded to prisoners in those days. From Venice we proceeded to Brindisi, where we went on board an Italian steamer and arrived at Bombay. We came straight to Calcutta, breaking journey at Allahabad, where Babu Nilcomol Mitter, then the leader of the Indian community, gave us a reception, at which, on behalf of my friends and myself, I made