A few years before the Revolution, my cousin
He traveled with his young wife on the Paris-Petersburg express last month.
At the Russian-German border to their main wagon the German customs arrived at the last and in a good mood - with this wagon problems usually did not arise.
The two gendarmes did not even think of checking the luggage, they only checked the passports. The clever guardian who headed them did not get away with this - he polently asked to present documents and entered into a kind conversation with individual passengers - whether with the passengers who liked him, or with the most suspicious.
Among those selected were my grandfather and my wife.

The lieutenant first laughed at a nice pregnant Russian lady in his Russian language, and then he himself began to whisper over the German of both spouses with the immediate sense of humor characteristic of this nation. In those distant times, people laughed easily – to make them laugh to the colic in the stomach, it was enough to show Charlie Chaplin. Responding to the intrigue, the lieutenant finally noticed that the Russian lady was a little offended, and galantly switched to the international French. In this neutral territory they talked. After the inspection, there was some time left before the train departed, and both officers — my grandfather and a customs officer — went out to smoke on the platoon, continuing the conversation. The conversation went on a family topic - it turned out that the lieutenant married a year earlier than his great-grandfather, but still worked hard on what his Russian colleague has already done.
The grandfather had time to give him two useful practical advice – which he did not specify. Both gendarmes, of course, were released away at the beginning of the overture. But soon one of them returned in a jump, carrying a depa.
After reading it, the German guardian made an impenetrable face, stolenly looked at both of the guns in possession - his own and my grandfather, and very thoughtfully - at the whole train as a whole.

Instantly through the situation, the great-grandfather looked at both guns already demonstratively, with a separate look attended to the rifle behind the shoulders of the escaped gendarme, after which he asked significantly in heavy German: "Customs inspection was completed BEFORE receiving a deposition, didn't it?"

“You are so,” the German officer replied in French.
“Our clinics are better, and your wife would be quieter.
But to convince you to stay, I am not going to arrange a shooting here. I wish health to your wife and your future child. Thank you for the advice, but I’m not going to need it anymore.” With these words, he sneezed to the machinery, cut off his grandfather and went away thoughtful, throwing for goodbye: "And I will not show you the depeas - anyway, you have a dumb German..."

This brief conversation is due to the lives of three dozen descendants of my grandfather. And the fate of all the people in this train turned differently. At that time, Germany declared war on Russia and the First World War began. The German lieutenant simply postponed the world war for three minutes on the territory entrusted to him.