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arrangements for the trip to Portugal and I assumed that she had obtained the visa. He shrugged. "I understand. There has been a mistake but there is nothing I can do. I cannot permit you to enter France without a visa. Regulations are regulations." He was the complete bureaucrat and his counterpart can be found anywhere in the world. 

"If you will telephone the concierge at the Crillon," I said. "He will verify that I was there only eight days ago."

Instead of replying, he looked at his watch. "A plane is leaving for Lisbon in two hours," he said. "You must return to Lisbon."

The thought of flying through the storm a second time was too awful to contemplate. What to do? Out of the war years a memory surfaced -- the tears shed when I had been "bumped" from trains and planes.