He enquired about the telegraph service, and was told that all telegrams to Switzerland must be taken personally to the Bureau de Ville for censoring before they could be accepted for despatch.
There was said to be a very long queue at the censor's table.
It was time for dejeuner; he gave up the struggle to communicate with Cavanagh for the time being.
Indeed, he had been apathetic about it from the start.
With the clear vision of age he knew that it was not much good; if he should get in touch with the parents it would still be impossible for him to cross the border back to them, or for them to come to him.
He would have to carry on and get the children home to England as he had undertaken to do; no help could come from Switzerland.
The hotel was curiously still, and empty; it seemed today that all the soldiers were elsewhere.
He went into the restaurant and ordered lunch to be sent up to the bedroom on a tray, both for himself and for the children.
It came presently, brought by the femme de chambre.
There was much excited French about the pictures of Babar, and about the handkerchief rabbit.
The woman beamed all over; it was the sort of party that she understood.
Howard said: 'It has been very, very kind of you to let la petite Rose be with la petite Sheila.
Already they are friends.'
The woman spoke volubly.
'It is nothing, monsieur -nothing at all.
Rose likes more than anything to play with little children, or with kittens, or young dogs.
Truly, she is a little mother, that one.'
She rubbed the child's head affectionately.
'She will come back after dejeuner, if monsieur desires?'
Sheila said: 'I want Rose to come back after dejeuner, Monsieur Howard.'
He turned slowly: 'You'd better go to sleep after dejeuner.'
He turned to the woman. 'If she could come back at four o'clock?' To Rose: 'Would you like to come and have tea with us this afternoon - English tea?'
She said shyly: 'Oui, monsieur.'
She went away and Howard gave the children their dinner.
Sheila was still hot with a slight temperature.
He put the tray outside the door when they had finished, and made Ronnie lie down on the bed with his sister.
Then he stretched out in the arm-chair, and began to read to them from a book given to him by their mother, called Amelianne at the Circus.
Before very long the children were asleep: Howard laid down the book and slept for an hour himself.
Later in the afternoon he walked up through the town again to the Bureau de Ville, leading Ronnie by the hand, with a long telegram to Cavanagh in his pocket.
He searched for some time for the right office, and finally found it, picketed by an anxious and discontented crowd of French people.
The door was shut.
The censor had closed the office and gone off for the evening, nobody knew where.
The office would be open again at nine in the morning.
'It is not right, that,' said the people. But it appeared that there was nothing to be done about it.
Howard walked back with Ronnie to the hotel.
There were troops in the town again, and a long convoy of lorries blocked the northward road near the station.
In the station yard three very large tanks were parked, bristling with guns, formidable in design but dirty and unkempt.
Their tired crews were refuelling them from a tank lorry, working slowly and sullenly, without enthusiasm.
A little chill shot through the old man as he watched them bungling their work.
What was it Dickinson had said?
'Running like rabbits.'
It could not possibly be true.
The French had always fought magnificently.
At Ronnie's urgent plea they crossed to the square, and spent some time examining the tanks.
The little boy told him: They can go right over walls and houses even.
Right over!'
The old man stared at the monsters.
It might be true, but he was not impressed with what he saw.
'They don't look very comfortable,' he said mildly.
Ronnie scoffed at him.