CHAPTER III.

THE BANKER AND GENERAL PURVEYOR, G. J. OUVRARD

His origin and business development—First great speculation—The founding of his establishment at Paris—His private intimacies lead to acquaintanceship with the Director Baras and Brigadier Chief Bonaparte, before the appointment of the latter to the rank of General—The rapid rise of Ouv-rard, as a government contractor—He becomes the Maecenas of artists— His princely liberality—Nicolo Isouard, the composer—Ouvrard's first connexion with the Spanish Government—Immense transactions with the French Government, with Vanlerberghe and with Duprez—Ouvrard's journey to Madrid—His influence with the Prince of Peace—The business contract between King Charles IV. of Spain and Ouvrard—Results of this contract—The commercial treaty that sprang from it—Hope &, Co. in Amsterdam—The inconsiderate condemnation of Ouvrard, and frivolous palliation of Napoleon's unjust course towards him by Thiers, in the sixth volume of his History of the Consulate 66

CHAPTER IV.

THE MEXICAN BUSINESS OF MESSRS. HOPE & CO.

The basis of the plan laid down in Amsterdam, and its execution in the United States—David Parish of Antwerp intrusted with the chief control of this business, and Mr. A. P. Lestapis, from Hope's counting-house, and I, charged with the two most important branches of the money management; the former in Vera Cruz, and myself in New Orleans—My departure from Amsterdam for New York—Breaking out of the yellow fever there— Excursion to Boston—Arrival of the exiled General Moreau in New York— Arrival of David Parish in New York—Final consultations there—My arrival at New Orleans, on the first Easter Sunday, 1806—Sketch of the state of things in that city—Governor Claiborne—The land speculator John McDonough—The lawyer Edward Livingston—My first appearance in New Orleans, as a business man—The yellow fever, which had spared me in New York, seizes me here—The Conspiracy of the former Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr—General Wilkinson—The rencontre of the American frigate Chesapeake with the British man-of-war Leopard, in the year 1807—Its influence upon my business relations—General expectation of war with England 77

CHAPTER V. DAVID PARISH IN PHILADELPHIA.

The measures adopted by him—A retrospective glance at Ouvrard and his affairs—Mismanagement the natural result of the unlimited obligations he had assumed—Complicated relations with the French State Bank, which thereby finds itself obliged to suspend specie payments—Napoleon's return after the peace of Presburg—Despotic measures, and his arbitrary interference with Ouvrard's business relations, by which the whole organization is brought to the ground—Napoleon and the house of Hope & Co. in Amsterdam, who, with becoming dignity, reject his propositions, and send his agent, afterwards the Baron Louis, home with a flea in his ear—The French Consul, General de Beaujour, in Philadelphia, is obliged to place himself in the hands of Parish, as Mollien, the Minister of Finance, is also compelled to throw himself into the arms of Hope & Co.—False and one-sided judgment of Ouvrard by Thiers, who never did, or never would, comprehend Ouvrard's position as a merchant 95

CHAPTER VI. FORCED ABANDONMENT OF VERY IMPORTANT OPERATIONS.

My return to Philadelphia—Acquaintance with Robert Fulton at New York —A glance at his history—The trial-trip of the first steamboat Clermont from New York for Albany—Departure for Havana, to call in the government-exchange of 700,000 piastres—Negotiation with the Intendant-Gene-ral Roubaud—Exchange of these bills for a single one drawn to my order, and a bill for 945,000 dollars on the viceroy of Mexico given me,—the largest in amount I ever indorsed—I take passage from Havana in the schooner " Merchant," bound for Baltimore 110

CHAPTER VII. THE SHIPWRECK.

Shipwreck off the coast of Florida, on the Carysfort Reef—My sojourn in the village of Nassau on the Island of New Providence, one of the Bahama group—Return to the United States—Arrival in Philadelphia 125

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EMBARGO OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE YEAR 1808.

Rupture of communications with Mexico ; the first and most important cause which influenced the independent position of Parish, and became the source of his first embarrassments—The large purchase of lands on the St. Lawrence river was one of the next—History of this purchase—Gouverneur Morris and Le Ray de Chaumont were the originators of Parish's blindness, and the first to sell property of such diminutive value—Parish obtains permission from Gallatin, the Secretary of State, notwithstanding the embargo, to dispatch ships in ballast, and bring silver dollars from Mexico—The use made of this favor by John Jacob Astor, of New York—His history—Stephen Girard, in Philadelphia—Girard's history and career—Fracture of my right leg at Wilmington—I employ the retirement, rendered necessary by this accident, to strike off the first balance of our great operation 136

CHAPTER IX.

MY TRIP TO EUROPE IN THE MONTH OF APRIL, 1809.

Return to Europe in the mouth of April, 1809, for the purpose of taking over the first balance-sheet—Arrival at Falmouth—Stay there, in consequence of the Alien Act—Visit of Mr. John Parish, at Cheltenham—His outward appearance on the Bathers' promenade—My first visit to the House of the Barings—Visit to Mr. Henry Hope, the oldest head of the Amsterdam House—Sir Francis Baring—The London firm, Baring, Brothers and Co.— First meeting with Mr. Alexander Baring—Journey to Holland, by way of Helgoland—Journey to Paris—Meeting there with Mr. P. C. Labouchere, who makes me personally acquainted with Ouvrard—An anecdote of the latter—The pins—New plans of Ouvrard, which are overthrown by the battle of Wagram and its consequences—Return to Amsterdam, by way of Brussels—My sickness in Amsterdam during the winter—Return to Hamburgh, in the spring of 1810—Family circumstances 154

CHAPTER X.

THE RETURN TO ENGLAND.

Return to England, to await the arrival of Parish, for the final liquidation of the great operation—This takes place much later than was expected, and the liquidation is not made until June, 1811—Parish is accompanied by me

to Antwerp, where I await the result—Unusual profit by the operation— Meeting, in Paris, with Labouchere, Parish, and Le Ray Chaumont; the last busied with new projects for the sale of his lands, never lets Parish out of his sight—Rapid glance at the value of the lands purchased by Parish—Redoubled propositions to houses in Europe—I refuse them—Resolution to return to New Orleans—Preliminary consultations with Mr. Labouchere, and then with Mr. Alexander Baring, at London, in relation to my future establishment at New Orleans—The selection of a companion and future partner in business—My departure from Liverpool for New York, in September, 1811—Arrival there—Continuation of my journe}' to New Orleans overland, and by means of the western navigation—The flat-boats I build and fit up at Pittsburgh—I follow my companion, who had preceded me, and cross the Alleghany mountains on horseback—My first acquaintance, near the Falls of the Juniata, with Audubon, who afterwards became so celebrated as an ornithologist—My stay at Lexington—Henry Clay—First traces of the earthquake, on the way to Louisville, and then in that city— The earthquake comes on, in the night of February 6, 1812, near New Madrid, beside the Mississippi—Description of my situation—Consequences of the earthquake—Arrival in New Orleans, in March, 1812 1*70

CHAPTER XI.

NEW ORLEANS.

New Orleans—My first arrangements—Congress declares war against England June 18th, 1812—David Parish assumes one of the Government loans on his own responsibility, and thus gives rise to embarrassment in his affairs—The Peace confirmed at Ghent, in December, 1814, happily extricates him—Tropical hurricane at New Orleans, in the fall of 1812—Fracture of my right arm, in the year 1814—Needless suspension of specie payments by the New Orleans banks—Appointed, by the Exchange, a member of the Committee to examine into the condition of things, and report thereupon, as framer of the report—I get into personal difficulty—The origin of my first duel, with an opponent never known to me or seen by me before— A business operation in Pensacola, by way of the two lakes—Borgne and Pontchartrain, adjacent to New Orleans—The fleet of small craft I take across them, laden with cotton—I arrive with them in Mobile bay, there await the result of the first bombardment of the fort, and take advantage of the moment when the English fleet are hauling off, after their repulse, to run into Pensacola during the night—I am saddled with fresh difficulties bv the Clique of the Bank Cashier, Saul in New Orleans; for instance, in an affair with the Marine Paymaster, Shields—Interruption of my quarrel, by the arrival of the English fleet in the Gulf of Florida 184

CHAPTER XII.

JACKSON'S DEFENCE OF THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS.

His arrival there on the 1st of December, 1814—Simultaneous arrival of the English fleet in the waters of Florida—Capture of our gunboats by the English, on the 14th of December—March of our militia battalions to the Bayou St. John, on Lac Borgne—On the 23d of December, the first intelligence is received that the British had landed on the plantation of General Villere—"We are ordered to the spot with all the troops under Jackson's command—The night engagement of December 23d—The burning of our cutter, the Carolina, by an English battery, on Christmas day—The heavy cannonade on New-Year's day, 1815—The complete discomfiture of the British force, under General Packenham, on the occasion of its attack on our first line, January 8th, 1815—Immensely disproportionate loss of the English—Completion of the British retreat, on January 16th 202

CHAPTER XIII.

RETURN OF OUR SMALL ARMY INTO THE CITY.

The first news of the peace concluded at Ghent, December 24th, 1814—Martial law in New Orleans—Jackson's violent measures—The arbitrary course pursued by him toward myself—Characteristic traits—Source of his hatred to the National Bank—The peace rejoicings in the city—Present to Mrs. Jackson—Fitting out of the ship Horatio—Renewal of my quarrel with Mr. Shields—Effect of my publication of the correspondence between him and myself—Another and unfortunate duel with the son of Mr. Saul—Arrival of intelligence from Paris, announcing Napoleon's entry into that capital—Prudential arrangements in relation to the cargo of the ship Horatio, on board of which I finally embark 218

CHAPTER XIV.

JOURNEY TO FRANCE—WATERLOO—PARIS IN THE HANDS OF THE ALLIES IN 1815.

Voyage to France—Waterloo—Paris in the hands of the Allies in 1815—1 am obliged to run into Havana, on my way to Nantes—First news of the battle of Waterloo, at sea—Consternation and rage of my French shipmates

—Confirmation of the news by the pilot of the Belle-Isle—Arrival at Paim-bceuf—The white flag of the Bourbons floating over the forts—a second corroboration of Napoleon's fall—Visit to my old counting-room at Nantes. —The Venus Callypyges still in its former place—Journey to Paris—Prussian outposts at Blois—Major Keller, into whose hands Napoleon's chapeau and sword had fallen at Charleroi—The bridge at Tours, and the Grenadiers of the Old Guard on the left bank—Paris—Description of the position of affairs—Anecdote of the Duke of Wellington—The death of Marshal Ney—Review of the Russian Guard, on the Boulevards, from the Barrier du Trone to the Barrier de l'Etoile—The returned English officers from Orleans at Paris—English and French cooking—The American General Scott at Paris—Object of my trip to Europe—Ouvrard again Napoleon's Commissary-General during the Hundred Days—His description of the battle of Waterloo—Second return of the Bourbons—State of financial affairs—The remodelling of the Hope establishment at Amsterdam in 1814, and the entry of Mr. Jerome Sillem into it—Financial embarrassments of the Bourbons—Ouvrard's success in the negotiation of the first loan through the Barings in London, and the Hopes in Amsterdam—Powerful aid of the Duke of Wellington—Ouvrard, the creator of this mine of wealth for all concerned, comes off empty-handed himself 238

CHAPTER XV.

THE BATTLE-FIELD OF WATERLOO.—THE COTTON-MARKET.— FRANCIS BARING.—REMODELLING OF THE BARINGS' ESTAB LISHMENT.

Departure from Paris—Brussels—Visit to the Field of Waterloo—Coste, Napoleon's Guide, becomes mine—A short visit to Hamburgh and England, on my way back to the United States—Embarkation at Liverpool—Pit-cairn, the former American Consul at Hamburgh, with his newly-married Daughter and Son-in-Law, are my travelling Companions—The first Heart outpouring of the fond wedded pair, upon our arrival at New York—Journey overland to New Orleans—The Scotch Houses in New Orleans—Their policy on the Cotton Market, and mine—Trip to Europe in the Summer of 1819—The Congress at Aix, in 1818—Crisis in the Money Market— Berenbrook, the Dutch Speculator in Funds—Alexander Baring rescues the Paris Money Market from the consequences of the Crisis—Enormous Business of my House in New Orleans—Its preponderance in the Cotton-Market—Arrival of Mr. Francis Baring, then the Junior, now the Senior Partner of the London House at New Orleans—Sketch of some of that gentleman's peculiar Traits of Character—Death of Mr. S. C. Holland—Remodelling of the Baring House—Entry of Mr. Joshua Bates into it 260

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CONVERSION OF THE FRENCH FIVE PER CENT. RENTES.

My reception in Havre in the summer of 1822—James Lafitte, the Paris banker—A Sunday at his countiw-seat—" Maison sur Seine," a former pleasure palace of Louis XIV—The Marquis of Lansdowne—Exorbitant price of cotton—The general improper conduct of speculators at Havre and Rouen—The only exception—A merchant's morality—Breach of trust of one of the first houses in Havre, to the injury of Mr. P. C. Labouchere, its great patron—The combination of Messrs. Cropper, Benson & Co., and Rath-bone, Hodgson & Co., to bring about a fresh rise in the prices of cotton, which had gone down—An offer made, inviting me to join in this project, which, as I had foreseen, proved impracticable—A visit to Hamburgh, in the winter of 1823-24—Return to Paris—Project of the French Minister of Finance, the Marquis de Villele, for the conversion of the whole national debt into five per cent Rentes—Rivalry of the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, who succeeds in defeating the scheme, but without being able to unseat the Marquis—By this he loses his own place in the ministry—First acquaintance with General Lafayette ; his desire, after an interval of forty years, to revisit the United States—His embarrassed pecuniary situation—Successful attempt, on my part, to procure the sum of 100,000 francs for him—He is thereby enabled to undertake the desired journey, and starts upon it—Miss Wright, his protegee—The Paris Bourse, after the failure of Villele's scheme—Well-meant but enigmatically-worded advice of Mr. Francis Baring, in regard to the five per cent. Rente—He fails in his object to save me from an important loss 281

CHAPTER XVII.

THE BUSINESS CRISIS OF 1825-6.—LAFAYETTE IN NEW ORLEANS.

The Liverpool Cotton Market at the close of the year 1824—Sudden rise of prices, in January, 1825—Manoeuvres of the Liverpool houses to keep up the prices—Well calculated course of the Scotch house of J. <fc A. Denis-toun & Co.—The speculation mania in New Orleans—Arrival of General Lafayette in New Orleans—His reception—Anecdotes of him—I accompany him, in the name of the city, as one of its deputies, to Natchez— State of the Cotton Market when I arrived in Natchez 306

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS OF 1825-26.

Extensive purchase of cotton for the house of Crowder, Clough & Co., in Liverpool—Failure of that house, and the establishments connected with it in New York and Charleston—Influence of the failure on the position of my house—Unavoidable suspension of payments—The creditors unanimously appoint me Syndic of the Mass —Transferral of my power of attorney to my junior partners—My voyage to England—Reception at Barings'—The true position of affairs, in respect to the Crowder assets—First success in the suit brought against the administrators of the Crowder assets—Rencontre in the Birmingham post-coach, on my way back to London—A letter from Mr. Alexander Baring—Consequences of the rencontre in the post-coach—Favorable issue of my heavy suit in the Court of Chancery—Lord Eldon; the last decision but one rendered by him before leaving the Min istry 317

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, the two candidates—Jackson's lack of qualifications for the office—Edward Livingston the first projector and leader of Jackson's election—Intrigues in his favor—Unworthy means to ensure his success—Jackson revisits New Orleans, in 182*7, as a candidate— Electioneering manoeuvres—The article in The American, a New York paper —I am set upon, in my dwelling-house, by a couple of his followers—Final departure from New Orleans—Havre—Paris—Fruitless attempts to found a concern at Havre—Acquaintance with an English banking-house, Daly <fe Co., in Paris—It leads to the establishment of a concern at Marseilles, as branch of the house ; Pierre Maillet & Co., at Martinique, together with Maillet, Cage & Co., at Havre, and Daly & Co., at Paris, as sleeping partners—Before the opening of my new establishment, I visit England and Hamburgh, the latter place only for five days—Return by way of England and Paris—Arrival in the French capital, on the morning of July 27th, 1830—The July Revolution—Departure for Marseilles—The failure of Daly & Co. follows close at my heels, and obliges me to return in haste to Paris—Journey to Havre, in behalf of Daly's creditors—The holding back of the Havre house, and the consequent impossibility of ferreting out the true state of affairs—The sudden crippling of the machinery and uprooting of the foundation of the new house in Marseilles renders its entire dissolution necessary—A fresh jouruev in search of subsistence stares me in the face. 335

1

CHAPTER XX.

THE SUPPLYING OF ARMS.

Visit to General Lafayette, "who had been appointed commander-in-chief of all the National Guard of the realm—The arming of that force—A couple of lines from the General procures me admission to General Gerard, the Minister of War—First contract for 50,000 old French muskets from the Prussian fortresses—Appointment of Marshal Soult as minister of war—The rival authority of Lafayette, as head of the National Guard, is in the way of M. Casimir Perrier, the new president of Louis Philippe's Council—The general commandancy of the National Guard is abolished by a vote of the Chambers—Lafayette drops the honorary title, and altogether retires—The extension of my contract for arms with the war ministry—Daly's bequest— I make the acquaintance of two blacklegs and cheats, G. and 0.—5000 stand of the arms purchased at Hamburgh arrive in Havre, and are rejected at the arsenal, as unfit for use—The same fate befals 5000 more at Strasbourg —I succeed, however, in extricating myself from the bad bargain, not only without loss, but even with advantage—Delivery of sabres for the army— Colonel Lefrancois, director of the arsenal at Havre—Contrast between him and another officer of rank—Remarks upon the contractor business in general « 349

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CONSPIRACY OF THE RUE DES PROUVAIRES—

My contracts and deliveries of arms lead to its discovery—The sub-contractor and intermediary, Darmenon—Disclosure of the plot to the Police Prefect, Gisquet—Arrest of the conspirators in the Rue des Prouvaires, in the evening of Feb. 2d, by Carlier, the last Prefect of the Police under the Republic—The trial in the assizes for the department of the Seine—My testimony —Opposition of the Prefect—The decision—Ambiguous conduct of the Prefect—The disclosure of his venality leads to his dismissal 361

CHAPTER XXII.

REMINISCENCES OF THE ARTIST WORLD OF PARIS—PAUL DELAROCHE—

His complete establishment in his profession, by his picture, " The Beheading of Lady Jane Grey"—Universal impression produced by the picture—The cholera in Paris in the summer of 1832—Delaroche's contract with M. Thiers, then Minister of the Interior, for the decoration of the walls of the

Madeleine—He goes to Rome, to complete the preparatory studies—Thiers breaks his word, and thus occasions the abandonment of the contract and Delaroche's return to Paris—His enviers and deprecators, and his demeanor towards them—The painter Charlet—An anecdote concerning him—A piece of experience and information from the monde galant of Paris enables me to give him a hint that I had got a peep at his cards, and had made out his game—Some sketchy remarks concerning the Coryphsei of the Paris school, such as Horace Vernet, Ingres, Delacroix, Decamps, Ary Scheffer, and others 368

CHAPTER XXIII.

CLOSING SCENES AN"D RESULTS OF MY DELIVERY OF ARMS.

A secret canker at work—The undermining of my prosperity by the puerilities of those engaged with me in the business—Loss of an important suit in the Tribunal of Commerce at Paris—I grasp at a straw—The scheme for the conversion of the Roman 5 per cent. Rentes takes me to Rome— My visit to Italy, after an absence of 38 years—Florence—Rome—The aged Duchess Torlonia—Chiaveri, her son by her first marriage—The Tyrolese Stolz, Secretary of the Papal Treasurer, Monsignor Tosti—My chance-meeting with Ouvrard, in the Villa Borghese—My return to France. by way of Leghorn, my birthplace—Another meeting, of an unusual kind, with an old friend—The beauty of the Villa Pandolfini—Disconsolate circumstances and prospects—Lack of profitable busiuess in Paris 380

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE INVENTION OF N. COLLAS AND ITS APPLICATION-

The Company of the " Tresor de Numismatique et de Glyptique"—Its first success at Paris—Effort to extend it in England—Journey to London—Visit to the Cabinet of Medals, in the British Museum—Mr. E. Hawkins, tin-warden—Combination of his project for a numismatic history of Great Britain with my scheme—Attempted conclusion of an arrangement with tin-Trustees of the museum, in consequence of an understanding with the book seller Tilt—His petition to the House of Commons, praying parliamentary aid in support of our project—The subject transferred to the Common;-' Committee on the British Museum—Hearing of witnesses by the committev —Sir Francis Chantrey, the sculptor—Characteristic anecdotes of thai artist—Unworthy opposition to my plan by the painter Brockedon, h. combination with W. Wyon, the coin engraver, and others, in favor of th< mathematical instrument-maker, Bates—The committee arrive at no definite conclusion, and allow the examination of witnesses to dr;i<r on—Uuinter

rupted efforts on my part with the Trustees of the museum to gain my point—The nature of my propositions meets with a very satisfactory reception on their part, and they carry the cost of executing my plan into their budget—A deficit of 2,000,000 pouuds sterling, in the general national Budget, compels the Royal High Chancellor to put his veto on this new appropriation 392

CHAPTER XXV.

QUEEN VICTORIA—THE QUEEN'S BENCH-PRISON—THE QUEEN'S CORONATION.

Plan to strike off a portrait-medal of the queen—Sir John Conroy, grand equerry of the Duchess of Kent—His resignation—The Baroness Lehzen, lady-secretary to the queen, who procures admission for myself and the sculptor "Weeks to Her Majesty's presence—The result of this audience —My arrest and confinement in the Queen's Bench-prison, in consequence of legal proceedings on the part of the litigious and runaway Duke Charles of Brunswick—My liberation, after 3-J- months' imprisonment—Unexpected arrival of my wife—The queen's Coronation-day—The simultaneous ascent of seven air-balloons from Hyde Park—Return of my wife to Paris—My determination to revisit the United States—Announcement of the second trip of the steamship Great Western across the Atlantic Ocean—Old Admiral Coffin, whom I meet at Leamington, tries to dissuade me from availing myself of this opportunity to sail for New York, and to prove the insecurity of ocean steam-navigation, upon nautical grounds—Still, I sail by the steamer—Arrival at New York, after an uncommonly stormy passage of eighteen days 40*7

CHAPTER XXVI.

NICHOLAS BIDDLE AND THE UNITED STATES BANK.

Wilder, the agent of the house of Messrs. Hottinguer & Co., in Paris and Havre—His intimacy with Nicholas Biddle, the President of the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States—Biddle's project to restore the balance of trade, between England and the United States, to an equilibrium—A colossal operation in cotton, the means for which are obtained by the strength of my own credit—The pitcher goes too often to the well, and is broken at last—Violent conclusion to the enterprise—Imprisonment in New Orleans— Return to the north, overland—Cincinnati—Philadelphia—The adventuress from Floreuce, my travelling companion to New York—Embarkation for England, on board of the Steamer Great Western—Race between this ves-

sel and its competitor, The British Queen—Classification of the company on board of the two steamers, by Gordon (James Gordon Bennett ?—Trans.), editor of the New York paper, " Morning Herald"—The Great Western wins the race, reaching England three days earlier than the British Queen.

418

CHAPTER XXVII.

LAST VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES.

Return to America by way of England—Attempt there to grasp at and seize a shadow—The intended rejection by the house of Hottinguer <fe Co., at. Paris, of the bills of the United States Bank, is communicated to me beforehand, when taking leave, by Mr. Hottinguer himself—An interesting acquaintanceship formed on the way to Boulogne—I embark at Liverpool on board of the steamer Liverpool Packet, which brings over the first protest of the drafts on the Hottinguer firm—Arrival in New York—General effect of Hottinguer's measures—The United States Bank suspends specie payments, and so gives the signal for other banks to do the same— Dissolution of the project which had been rejected by General Hamilton— I resolve to bid the West a final farewell, and to try my fortune, in the to me, as yet, unknown East—I return to Europe in the packet-ship England —Remarkable career of Captain Williams—London and Paris—The establishment of a commercial company in Venice draws me to that city on an express invitation from the parties coneerned—A sad year in my life—My acquaintanceship with the painter Nerly is my best consolation— I visit Trieste in hope of better fortune 480

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MY JOURNEY TO THE BLACK SEA.

Propositions of the house of Grant, Brothers & Co. to secure their claims against the house of James and John Cortazzi, at Odessa—The puerility of these gentlemen—I set out, and travel to Galatz, by way of Vienna and the Danube, descending the latter river—The baths of Mehadia—Galatz—Continuation of my journey to Odessa by land, in company with one of the many Princes Galitzin—Jassy—The Russian Consul General at that place —Son of the tragic writer, Kotzebue—The Quarantine of Skulieni—Kits-chenew—Potemkin's grave—Odessa—James Cortazzi—The President of the Tribunal of Commerce—A Cossack named Gamaley, Cortazzi's friend and debtor, serves me, at last, as a means for the liquidation of the debt to the house of Grant & Co.—The passport system in the southern Russian ports—Prince Woronzow—The travelling Yankee, Codman; the first only half-witted American I ever met with in my life 438

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE RETURN TO TRIESTE—

Departure from Odessa—The Bosphorus—Constantinople and the Golden Horn—The Turkish fleet—Smyrna—Three weeks' quarantine at Malta— Sicily—Naples—Comparison of the impression produced by the Bay of Naples with that I felt at my first sight of New York Bay—Continuation of my return-journey to Trieste, by way of Leghorn, Genoa, and Venice— Trieste—The house of J. C. Ritter & Co.—My position in it—The district-governor, Count Stadion—Some characteristic sketches of him 448

CHAPTER XXX.

TRIESTE.

Visit of the Emperor Ferdinand, in the company of his wife and minister— The Baron Von Kuebec—His invitation to persevere in the examination of Peel's Bank Bill, of 1844, which I first bring to his notice—He permits me to dedicate my " Condition and Prospects of the World's Commerce in the early months of the year 1845," to him—Count Stadion's great egg, the Austrian East India Company—Mission of Mr. P. Erichsen—The article of the Augsburgh " Algemeine Zeiiung" of August 9th, 1845, in relation to the population of Trieste, <fcc.—A reference to Mr. Von Bruck, the true lucky star that has risen over Trieste—Closer acquaintanceship with him—The blind traveller, Lieutenant Holman—The Scotchman, Keith, with his collection of daguerreotypes—Completion of a work on freedom of Trieste as a commercial port—Count Stadion lays his veto upon it—A project touching me, devised by Mr. Von Bruck, takes me to Vienna, and thence to Paris 456

CHAPTER XXXI.

PARIS, HAMBURGH—VAIN HOPE IN PARIS.

Remarks upon the condition of public affairs there in the years 1847 and 1848— False policy of Louis Philippe—Guizot—Negotiations with the publishing house of Messrs. Perthes, Besser, aud Mauke in Hamburgh, in relation to a revision of William Benecke's work on the " System of Insurance and Bottomry" —Another visit to Hamburgh in 1848—The February Revolution at Paris —Its consequences in Germany—Feverish state of things at Hamburgh— The Hamburgh free-trade paper called the " Deutseher Freihafen "—After

the withdrawal of its first leading editor, the management of the concern falls into my hands—The sheet christened the "Deutsche Handel's Zei-tuug" (German Commercial Journal) in the beginning of 1849—Dictatorial conduct of the directing committee of shareholders—Exhaustion of the small capital set apart for the support of free-trade principles—The paper dies—The committee set their faces against all explanation of the causes of the paper's decease, and step in violently—My farewell words to the readers at the close of tho paper are despotically suppressed and taken out of the compositor's hands—The revision of W. Benecke's work on " Insurance," and the completion of it in the month of April, 1852 468

PREFATORY.

The following pages present the autobiography of one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived; a man who, in the course of his mere commercial life, has had more and stranger adventures than are given to most professed travellers, and who relates them with a vividness and reality that deserve to give him rank among writers.

His book professes to give the history of fifty years, but the reader will find that it embraces seventy, and makes him acquainted with half the people in the world. In Europe and America, let him wander where he would, he never, in his late years, failed to find an old acquaintance. Men recognized him through the dust-clouds of Odessa, as in the bar-rooms of Natchez under the Hill . Napoleon, at the age of 24, examined him. Victoria has given him private audiences. He watched the rise and fall of Louis Philippe, after witnessing the accomplishment of the catastrophe of the Restoration. He has doffed his hat to Ferdinand of Austria, in Trieste, and shaken hands with the savage kings west of the Mississippi

He was a German citizen of the United States, born in Italy, and lived all over. He built flat-boats at Pittsburgh, for the navigation of the Ohio, and shouted among the crowd who cheered Robert Fulton's steamboat, as she first started from the wharf at New York He has been wrecked off the coast of Florida, and imprisoned in the Queen's Bench, at Londoa He was suspected of having the plague at Malta, and had the yellow fever in New Orleans. He peeped into the crater of Etna, and was shaken by the earthquake at Louisville. Napoleon's whole career and Aaron Burr's conspiracy are made a couple of items in his extraordinary existence.

This Yankee cotton speculator arranged the conversion of a loan for Lis holiness the Pope. This confidential adviser of the Austrian premier Von Kue-beck was a soldier of General Jackson, at the battle of New Orleans. This commissary of Louis Philippe and Duke Charles of Brunswick, was the intimate friend of the republican Lafayette. This lover of Livornese opera girls was mingled in the plans of Nicholas Biddle. This handler and possessor of untold thousands, of millions of money, lived on bread and cheese in Venice; and to get even that much, translated some English title-deeds for the monks of San Lorenzo.

The very names in this volume are wonderful. Kings, Emperors, Presidents and Popes jostle each other through its pages. Poets and painters are criticised and gossipped about—Chantrey and Nollekens, Delaroche and Delacroix jSerly and Landseer. Now you have a story of Gothe, and again an anecdote of Chateaubriand. Byron and Lamartine, Kotzebue and Cooper come quite familiarly to the tip of his pen, and when tired of telling what he knows about these, he writes verses himself—verses of great mediocrity.

One of the richest of modern merchants, and most daring of speculators, he yet never neglected his love for art nor his talent with the crayon. When his commercial greatness had culminated and waned, he became everything by turns—commissary for arms and provisions ; agent for a machine to engrave circular lines; editor of the little free port newspaper of Hamburgh ; political squib writer in the United States; clerk in a third-class house of business; translator of manuscript for Italian friars.

Vain, amusing, garrulous, scandalous old fellow; with the dryest common sense, that is not to be tricked; with the keenest eye for a defect, either in person or character, and a bitter or comic humor to help him in describing it, Mr. Vincent Nolte presents to our eyes one of the most curious life-panoramas that it is possible to see.

You must take his personalities, especially about people here, cum grano salis. He seldom looks at the bright' side of a character, and dearly loves—he confesses it—a bit of scandal. But he paints well, describes well, seizes characteristics which make clear to the reader the nature of the man whom they illustrate.

The amount of really useful information, historical, commercial, artistic, and personal, in this work, is immense; and it is so interspersed with anecdote and adventure, with variety and scandal " of a pleasant tartness," that all heaviness is destroyed, and the book is as delightful as a novel.

"We expect, of course, from the reading world, even more than a usual warmth of welcome for this entertaining work.

THE TRANSLATOR

INTRODUCTION.

Kind Eeader ! whatever the chance that has given me the right to address you, and has placed this book in your hands, I must, of necessity, look for you in one of the three following categories:

Either you belong to that very large number of individuals who, up to the present time, have neither known, heard, nor read any thing about me:

Or, to the smaller number who have, only here and there, cast a glance at the proofs of my literary activity ; but are, still, altogether unacquainted with me and the events of my life:

Or, finally ; to those who, under the inevitable condition of incomplete or untrue representations, have become more or less acquainted with me, have heard all sorts of things about me, or have learned, at least, my name.

From each and every member of these three classes I may expect the question: What are you going to offer us, when, in the title of your book, you speak of the Reminiscences of a Former Merchant, extracted from the History of a Life which has embraced the first half of the present century? Do you merely intend to narrate the mercantile observation and experience of a man wholly given up to

commercial pursuits; or have we to deal with one whom his business-occupations have not prevented from looking carefully at> things a-rounB ii^m]. and noting the great events of his time, nor. from obtaining personal information and availing 'xiiinsklf' b£' dp£ortu*iaitiss to observe distinguished characters, both in and out of his own calling, one who has been able to form and retain unprejudiced views, and has, during his own career, experienced the ups and downs of fortune, the vicissitudes of human existence and the consequences of human error? Should your inquiries, dear reader, embody the last words I have used, you have, indeed, hit the nail on the head,—since they convey precisely the tenor of much the greater portion of the historical and biographical sketches you will find in this work. Truth, and not poetry, composes the contents of the book you now hold in your hand.

Neither the private individual nor the business-man who gives extracts from his biography over to publicity, can often escape the suspicion of inordinate vanity and a blind overestimate of his own merit or of the part he has played in society. As feelings of that kind have not exerted any influence, in the present case, it is my duty to say a word regarding the motive in which these pages have had their real origin.

If, out of the panoramic whirl of my varying fortunes and experiences, no other recollections remained to me than such as have reference to the life of a merchant, solely, you might well conclude, dear reader, after what I have said above, that I should never have so far yielded to the numerous and repeated solicitations of many friends and acquaintances on both sides of the Ocean, who have long been

urging me to this step, as to let the resolve ripen within me to depict in a continuous narrative the most remarkable epochs of that important period of the world's history through which I have lived; and, so far as I have, in a greater or less degree, participated in them or witnessed them, to set forth the stirring events of the last half century in a recital which, apart from all personal connection with the author, might possess some attraction for the public at large. However, very early in life and, indeed, at an age when one is usually regarded as unripe for the proper consideration of important interests, chance, going hand-in-hand with the remarkable development of the world's history that has taken place since I entered upon my allotted sphere of activity, has brought remarkable events, remarkable men, and extraordinary business-combinations directly under my eyes, has kept my mental faculties in constant exercise and has made me acquainted, nay, has frequently placed me in close contact with a succession of distinguished personages. Under these circumstances, I have indulged the belief that what I have to communicate to my readers in these pages, might awaken not merely a certain curiosity, but probably something more than a simply transient interest, and not only excite their attention, but possibly keep it alive to the end, so that, in a general point of view, they will reap some gratification, or, at all events, some profit from the faithful reflection of certain truths which, I flatter myself, I have learned during the lapse of a not unimportant portion of the history of our time. At any rate, they may discover in this work much that is useful, much that is new, and, taking it altogether, find it not entirely worthless entertainment for a leisure-hour. The

history of my experience in practical life,—at least such has been my own impression,—should lead all thoughtful minds, as well as every reflecting reader occupied with the advancement of his own mental culture and moral perfection, to the conviction that, at the opening of each new epoch in our lives, as we progress from stadium to stadium along the toilsome way, we commence and must pass through a fresh novitiate which brings with it tests and trials more or less severe. Hence, the necessity of continual self-examination and an untiring watch over our present as well as prospective relations, in so far at least as the latter can be calculated; and in this, perhaps, lies the instruction that these volumes may contain. For 1 confess, without hesitation, that I have not always, in the course of my career, been able to keep this rule before my eyes.

Permit me to make one or two further remarks. That mercantile experiences, observations and views occupy, in one place or another, a not unimportant space in these pages, is the natural consequence of the relations and circumstances in which I have lived; but, however dry reminiscences and reflections of this kind may be to the general reader, I hope, at least, that I have clothed them in language so comprehensive that even the reader least familiar with commercial affairs, will not deny them a certain degree of interest, especially since they refer back to periods of which we could at the present day form but an imperfect idea, without some proper land-mark, and which cannot be altogether useless to the young merchant.

Whoever, in memoirs of this kind, strays from the strictest path of truth, diminishes their value and invades the regions of romance. The measure of respect which I feel

for the truth will be found by you, dear reader, in the frankness with which I have spoken in relation to myself and the vicissitudes of my own life. I have suppressed nothing, misrepresented nothing, but have laid myself open to the eyes of all; thoroughly disclosing what I am, and where and how the influence of circumstances which so very often deceive the highest powers of foresight possessed by men, has not unfrequently controlled my position and actions. I bring you without hesitation what is not in the power of every one to bring,—the offering of thorough rectitude of intention, convinced that you will not withhold from me the consideration and allowance to which I believe I may lay rightful claim, without putting your good will to too severe a proof.

To my contemporaries whose names appear in these pages, I am at all times, as in duty bound, ready to render full account. In reviewing the past, no one is brought before the public who would have been entitled to remain in the background without occasioning an injurious void in the connection of my memoirs and reminiscences, and without leaving very perceptible gaps in my descriptive sketches. Placing them upon the same platform with myself, before the reader's judgment, I share whatever fate befalls them, since I voluntarily resign the right of making any reply in self-defence, notwithstanding the fact that the changes of human life have placed it in my power and taken it away from them. No one could ask for more. The old motto : de mortuis nil nisi bene, under the sanction of which so much falsehood has been served up to a credulous posterity, has been regarded by me only in those cases where unblemished reputations have made praise a duty,

or, I might say, almost unavoidable; but, where historical Truth, in order to assert her rights without regard to any-minor or unworthy considerations, demands the voice of censure, I- have not, indeed, entirely abandoned the accents of palliating moderation, but have still given full scope to the safer motto: de mortuis nil nisi vere ! and allowed a sportive but yet kindly humor of my own to have its way.

THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER I.

REMINISCENCES OF THE AUTHOR'S BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

Leghorn, his birth-place, in 17*79—Journey to Hamburgh, in 1*788—Visit to Leghorn, 1791-1792—Return to Hamburgh, in 1792—Professor C. F. Hipp of Tiibinjen, his first and only instructor—Commencement of his mercantile career, in the House of Messrs. Otto Franck and Co. at Leghorn, in 1795— Entry of the French into Leghorn, under General Bonaparte, 1796— General Murat—Major Hullin—The popular representatives Garat and Salicetti—Sojourn at Florence—The villa Pandolfini, in 1797—Return to Hamburgh—French theatre in Hamburgh—The commercial crisis at Hamburgh, in the year 1799—Sojourn at Hamburgh—Altered family circumstances—Determination to leave the place—Departure from Hamburgh in 1804.

If it be true, as Louis the Fourteenth was the first to say, and as Louis the Eighteenth repeated, that " punctuality is the politeness of kings" —" Vexactitude est la politesse des rois" —it is still more true, that, to a merchant, punctuality is the first source of his credit, and that in it lies one of the vital conditions of his success. My good father, who destined me to mercantile pursuits, and who, even in my earliest years, sought to impress upon my mind the precepts of social and mercantile rectitude, did not fail to offer, in his own person, the most striking example of his respect for that excellent quality. He married on February 22d, 1779, at the age of forty, and was, thenceforward, assisted in his cultivation of the virtue he so much admired, by my mother who, by-the-by, was punctual in all she undertook, for she brought me into the world on November 21st, or, precisely at the termination of the nine regular months prescribed by the laws of nature.

Tuscany is the land of my birth, and the city in which ifc

occurred is Leghorn, where my father John Henry Nolte a native of Hamburgh, had acted as apprentice and shop-boy, at first, in the house' oF his uncle 'Otto -F?ranck, but during the last fifteen years preceding his marriage, had officiated as a partner in the concern* j .(Efts pttofe'^d teen brought up in England, and was married to an English lady. He had taken my father, when only nine years of age, from Hamburgh, and sent him to college at Exeter, in England, where the boy was raised and educated at his expense, until he called him away, in his sixteenth year, to Leghorn.

My father was unable to make good, from the barbarous style of mercantile correspondence in use at that period, what he had lost of his mother tongue during his seven years' sojourn in England ; but in its stead, he had learned the English language in uncommon perfection, and continued to speak it for the remainder of his life with especial preference. But still, his uninterrupted residence, of more than thirty years in Italy, always made him look upon that country as his real home; and thus the two languages, English and Italian, became a sort of second nature to him, while the German, as was to have been expected, remained a merely secondary convenience. He had probably never received correct tuition in it, so incorrectly and ungrammatically was he accustomed to write it.

At the college, in Exeter, there sprang up between him and a school-mate named Francis Baring, the son of a cloth manufacturer, an intimate friendship, which continued to subsist until 1811, when Baring, who had in after years become remarkable as the originator and founder of the great London firm of the same name, died. There is yet extant, in the hands of his children, a collection of Biblical sayings and book extracts, written by my father at Exeter, in the year 1754, and also containing the autograph of his friend Baring. When my father visited England in 1772 this old friendship was renewed, during a business and pleasure trip, undertaken by Baring and himself, through England and Scotland, and led to a closer business connection between the then London firm of John and Francis Baring and my father's house in Leghorn, Otto Franck and Company. The

necessities of the Messrs. Baring, who had to import dye-stuffs and like materials from Italy for the cloth manufactory, established and afterwards enlarged by them, in Exeter, as well as for other similar establishments, had laid the foundation of this business connection. I shall, in the course of my present work, have occasion, in relating my own very considerable intercourse with the successors of the respected London firm, to return to the family. My readers, probably, feel as little anxiety as I do myself, to learn what was the real origin of my family, which I, God only knows why, have always taken to be Italian. I recollect having heard my father say that his grandfather had owned large mills in the vicinity of Carlshamm, in Sweden. How, in the name of sense, this circumstance could ever have put it into my head that my family was of Italian descent, I cannot imagine. But when, after a residence of several years, at a later period of my life, in Trieste, I was about to leave that city, chance threw a kind of key to the mystery in my way-—although, as I have already remarked, I never gave myself much trouble about the matter. There then lived, and if I am not greatly mistaken, still live at Trieste, three merchants by the name of Vogel, one of whom, owing to his extensive dealings in coffee, was nicknamed the Coffee Vogel; the other, on account of his business as agent for several commercial houses, was called the Wandering Vogel; and the third, who had obtained from the Austrian government the exclusive privilege of selling what amount of poisonous drugs were required for consumption and exportation, was universally known as the Poison Vogel* It was the latter who, a few days before my departure from Trieste, took it into his head to give me a gleam of light concerning my ancestors; and told me, with great gravity, that he had accidentally been reading the chronicles of an old Austrian general of the Thirty Years' War, and had learned from them that two commanders of Lombard regiments belonging to his corps (Parmee, had taken French leave, and gone over to the camp of Gustavus Adolphus. One of these two, he added, was

* These three German words mean, respectively, the coffee-bird, bird of passage, and poison-bird. Hence, the spirit of the joke is greatly impaired by translation.

called Nolte : this, he seemed to consider, explained the riddle of my Swedish and yet Italian origin, beyond a doubt; for, that the Swedish miller Nolte, in Carlshamm, was descended from the Lombard deserter of the Austrian army, appeared to him a natural consequence and a matter of course.

I had just, a short time previously, entered my ninth year, when my father formed the resolution of leaving Leghorn and removing, with his whole family, which then consisted of my mother and myself, one brother and two sisters, to Hamburgh, for the purpose of securing to his children all the advantages which would have been inaccessible to them had they remained longer in Italy. Upon our arrival in Hamburgh, we first went to the Senator Matsen, my grandfather on the mother's side, who was, just at that time, amtmann in Ritzebuttel. Soon after our return from that place, I was placed under the charge of a half-English, half-French tutor by the name of Geris, a native of Jersey, who was then carrying on an educational institute for boys in the neighboring village of Oppendorf, where my father had purchased a country-seat and garden. He was an indolent, ignorant man, who surrendered the whole task of instructing' his pupils to all kinds of under-tutors, and gave over the conduct of his household to a menagere who was inclined to accept his not altogether Platonic blandishments, and to pack off the dunces who amused themselves, from time to time, by disturbing the bacchanalian exercises which usually preceded those endearments. Some recollections of this brief period, during which I learned nothing but to steal fruit from the orchard, long remained fresh in my memory. My most intimate crony, in those days, Siegmund Rucker, who. stood for so many years at the head of the first sugar-broker business of the London Exchange, died suddenly last summer, in his 74th year, in consequence of the sudden suspension of payments by his firm. My friendship with him, renewed in subsequent years at Leghorn, lasted until his death.

After I had fooled away more than eighteen months in this parody of an educational establishment, my father was obliged to visit Leghorn on business, and took me with him, without any other object in view, so far as I was concerned, than to have me

with him. We arrived in that city shortly before the commencement of the carnival. A daily visit to the Opera House was freely accorded me as I was only 11 years of age, and known, moreover, as the son of one of the heaviest shareholders in the "Teatro degl' avvalorati"; hence, the progress of my education became limited to the dancing hours of the, then, primo ballerino Gianfal-doni, and the fencing rehearsals of his brother who, as leader of the so-called Grotesque Quadrille, without which no ballet was considered possible at that time, also belonged to the corps. During the performance of the opera, well-known masks are received into all the boxes, in Italy, during the carnival season. So I, too, was seized with a fancy to try my skill in the sport; but, then, where was I to get my dress ? who would give me the money, which was sure to be refused me by my father 1 However, I managed to overcome all these difficulties. When I was setting out from Hamburgh they had given me, among other things, a gala-jacket of wonderfully beautiful red cloth, and a pair of white cassimere breeches, and as I had remarked that my uncle, who had succeeded my father not only in the management of the Otto Franck establishment, but also in the Hamburgh Consulate as well as in the use of the identical red consular coat left behind him by his brother, used to cut a very ridiculous figure in that garment, I hit upon the idea, and quickly determined to have my red jacket transformed into a miniature consular uniform, and to appear in the theatre as the " Signor Consolino di Amburgo," and to mimic my uncle's laughable airs. The little consul created a perfect furor. This impudent piece of roguish invention pleased my father amazingly, but the one who never forgave me was, as I might have expected, my good aunt, who was not at any time much inclined to be amiable.

In the following spring my father took me back to Hamburgh, and looked about him in search of a private tutor for myself and my younger brother Henry. A truly lucky chance for me—I have always regarded it as such, at least—brought to his notice a Suabian graduate who pleased him at first sight, and was immediately installed in our house as tutor. This person, a native of Tubingen, who afterwards distinguished himself as one of the

most valuable teachers in Hamburgh, and who has fashioned and stored so many strong intellects and left the impression as well as the traces of his rare talents as a precious legacy to his scholars, was the future Gymnasium Professor Carl F. Hipp, whose name has never ceased to live in the grateful recollection of his former pupils, but has remained more especially stamped indelibly upon my memory. More than forty-eight years have rolled away since I was withdrawn from his charge, to return to Italy, where I was to enter my father's establishment as an apprentice and begin my mercantile career, yet I still look back with emotions of pleasure to the time when I enjoyed the instruction of that excellent man.

He had always known how to gratify my restless love of knowledge, in the fullest measure, give it a wholesome direction, and managed to stimulate my natural diligence in such a degree that I never failed to experience especial pleasure in accomplishing the manifold tasks he put upon me to be learned between afternoon and the next morning, and then again between Saturday and Monday, and I felt quite proud when he, one day, wrote in a report of my general behavior and proficiency, word to the effect that with my many perfect recitations, I had regularly crushed him to the ground. I arrived at Leghorn with this burning need of activity and a no less eager zeal for progress in everything. I there found my friend Riicker, who had also just been placed as an apprentice, or to use our term, a volunteer, in the counting-room of Messrs. Hoist. Conducted the very next morning to the office of Franck, I was set at work, of course, upon the A B C's of the mercantile craft, viz. : the copy-books, which were laid before me in both the English and German languages, with the intimation that making correct transcripts of the letters they contained, in either tongue, would be my first employment. The gentlemen letter-writers were of the usual kind, and their wretched style and language wearied me to the utmost limits of endurance, and their news touching oil and soap, brimstone and Spanish liquorice had but little attraction for one like me, whom my honored preceptor had inspired with a refined taste for the firstlings of Schiller's Muse. Thus I toiled, most unwillingly, without any zest for the work before me, and, conse-

quently, executed it badly. As already intimated, the guidance of the house had remained in the hands of my uncle, a very weak man, whose facility in transacting business was the only merit he could count, to say that he had one. He possessed no knowledge whatever of the world or of men, and gave ready heed to the suggestions of inordinate vanity. The counting-room of the house of Otto Franck and Co. was in the basement of the still surviving house of Franchetti, adjoining the Mayoralty,— the Piazza della Communita — on the corner of the Piazza d'Arme. To come strutting out of the office entirely bareheaded, with no cravat, his morning gown fluttering about him, his linen open at the bosom and neck, and his feet decorated with a pair of red Turkish slippers, and parade up and down half the length of the square, attended by a train of gopds-and-money-brokers, he gesticulating (an accomplishment sometimes, as every one knows, often more readily learned in Italy than the language,) so as to attract the notice of strangers to the Capo dela casa, Otto Franco, as he was generally styled, gave him rare pleasure, which nothing but bad weather could compel him to forego, and even then the sacrifice was a sore one. It was out of the question for me to expect any valuable instruction or correct mercantile ideas from such a man. It never entered his head to inspect the progress I was making or to cheer me forward and sustain me in an amiable and instructive manner, by providing certain books which the knowledge I gradually acquired of the business of the house from its correspondence, and the trade transactions I saw going around me, made me consider necessary. On the contrary ! One day he took the notion to inspect one of the note books upon which I had been busied. Mistakes and omissions were instantly discovered, as my companions, directly afterwards, informed me,—I had been looking for some slight correction or information, but not a trace of either was vouchsafed. But, there was a large dinner party at the house that same day. It included strangers from all the commercial cities of Europe and some notabilities of Leghorn, among others the influential and popular advocate Baldasseroni. Of course I could not then have dreamed that fifty years later I should be so familiar with

that man's great work on the Insurance System, written long after the period of which I speak. I was sitting at the lower corner of the table. Suddenly, in a pause of conversation, the voice of my uncle, who was sitting at the upper end, rang out with the following words, to make the punishment he wished to administer the more impressive and severe : " Vincent! I take this opportunity of saying to you that it is long since I saw such careless blundering work as your order-book exhibits !" The effect produced by this abrupt attack upon an ambitious youth of fifteen may be readily conceived. There I sat under the gaze of the whole company as though I had been struck by lightning and utterly annihilated, but at length managed to collect my senses sufficiently to reply : " My own father, had he been here, would not have taken advantage of such an occasion as this to heap reproaches upon me,"—then to spring up from my seat, and making for the door, draw it to after me with great violence.

Such scenes as this, for the entertainment of his necessarily invited guests, were not at all uncommon with my uncle. I need not say to my readers that they inspired me with no respect for him, and were not at all calculated to increase my attachment to a mercantile life ; which, from the first, had been forced upon me, instead of having been voluntarily selected. My mind had acquired an artistic turn, and my predilection for painting made me wish to become a painter. I wrote to that effect to my father, but much as he respected art, and although he was himself an amateur, and by no means a bad judge of pictures, he still curbed my wishes, by upsetting me with the remark, that unless I felt an inward conviction—that unless I could elevate myself into a painter of the highest order, I should often, during my life, have to feed on crusts. In saying this, my good father overlooked two essential qualities which I possessed, and which might well have led a young painter to his aim. One of these was a powerful imagination, which, as early as my eighth year, enabled me, without having enjoyed any instruction in drawing, to make a sketch with charcoal, on a white garden wall, of Marlborough's funeral, according to the French popular air, " Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre." The second quality, which has never abandoned me

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. £5

throughout my whole life, is diligence and iron perseverance. I still fancy that I should have made no mean painter, had free rein been given to my own earnest wishes.

Neglect of my office duties was a natural consequence. I went after all sorts of amusements, drew caricatures on my letter-stand in the counting-room, frolicked for hours together with my friend, the young and universally beloved painter Terreni, who was a great fop, and had the mania of aping the dress and manners of the Englishmen who from time to time made their appearance in Leghorn. This disease, thanks to his illustrious example, took root in my breast too; and whenever, during the course of the week, I could see a newly arrived visitor among the English, who at that time were so constantly noticed at Leghorn, but more especially at Florence, and could on the ensuing Sunday exhibit myself on the Corso attired in a similar costume, I was supremely happy. The tailor had received no order forbidding him to let me have clothes, and his account at the end of the year presented the not inconsiderable sum total of twelve coats, of all colors, and twenty-two pair of hose and pantaloons, which were just then coming into fashion. By the way, this was a hereditary propensity. So long as he lived in Italy, my father had paid great attention to his toilet, and when he left Leghorn, he took with him to Hamburgh a whole wardrobe of embroidered and laced coats of all colors, from his bottle-green gold-laced wedding coat, lined with poppy-colored satin, and worn with hose to match, to a simple coffee-colored frock—all of French cut and make. After a time, he sold the collection to Schroder, then theatrical manager at Hamburgh. The wardrobe in question had become very familiar to us all, from the regular quarterly brush-ings and dustings it got—and I have a very lively recollection of what occurred some time subsequent to the sale, in the theatre— whither we had gone, to see Schroder himself in the part of Count Klingsberg, in his comedy " Die Ungluckliehe Ehe au;-Delicatessen"—("Too much refinement makes unhappy matches.") When Schroder appeared, my eldest sister, since Madame Berke-meyer, recognized the familiar garment he wore, and shouted out., 2

" That's papa's coat! That's papa's coat!" or, to use the Hair burgh phraseology, " That's papa, his coat!"

My uncle was altogether dissatisfied with me. I cannot conjecture what ideas he formed as to the causes of my frequent absence from the counting-room, although he knew that I often repaired to the stable and went off on horseback. But the vicinity of the aforesaid stable was a dangerous one,—for, in the opposite house there lived all sorts of sirens, in the persons of two or three right pretty ballet-girls. He hit upon the lucky thought of coming to an arrangement with the Barigello, the captain of the sbirri or policemen, to have him watch my movements and make a daily report to him. One of the Swiss porters, usually styled facchini, belonging to our house, who had taken a liking to me, noticed the spy's hang-dog countenance in the vicinity of our office every day, and soon perceived the sort of surveillance to which I was subjected. Greatly astonished at my uncle's course, he informed me of it, and pointed out the policeman who was watching me and my movements. On the next day, the instant I observed, to use Schiller's expression in Fiesco, the confiscated face of this fellow, I pounced upon him with: cosa volete, birbante ? [what do you want, you scoundrel ?] and afterwards repeated the agreeable inquiry every time I saw him. The well laid plan, thus being discovered, had to be given up, partly because it must have been evident that I was on the look-out, and partly in consequence of the fact that the report amounted to the same thing every day, not forgetting either the ballet-girls, or my excursions on horseback.

But, a remarkable historical epoch was just then opening,—an epoch destined to exert the greatest influence on the face of Europe both territorially and politically. It affected my career in the obscure condition of an apprenticed clerk in one of the first mercantile houses of Leghorn, where, like a young colt taken from its parent, I spurned the authority placed over me, in the person of my ridiculous uncle, and rebelled at every measure taken to subdue me. This tvas the invasion of Italy by the French Revolutionary army under Bonaparte, and the" first victorious campaign of that leader in Lombardy, whence he advanced in person

with a considerable division of his force into Tuscany. The English consul at Florence had managed to ascertain the direction and route to be pursued by this column, and as he could have no doubt in relation to its final destination and object, he, at once, dispatched an express to Mr. Udney, the English consul, then residing at Leghorn. The courier arrived on the last Saturday of June, 1796, and his appearance was followed by an immediate assembling of all the English merchants in Leghorn, at the consulate. The consul advised these gentlemen to have all their goods and merchandise conveyed, as soon as possible, on board of the English ships, then lying in the harbor, and to put themselves under the protection of a British squadron which was cruising off the roads. This squadron was small in numbers, but commanded by the already distinguished Commodore Nelson. During the whole of Sunday until late at night, and, then again, early on Monday morning, unusual activity reigned in every part of the minor port of the Darsena so called, and also in the outside harbor of the " molo." On Monday, about noon, the last ships stood out of the harbor with a favoring breeze.* It was scarcely two o'clock when word was suddenly spread through the city that a column of French troops were advancing, with cavalry at their head, on Leghorn, along the great highway leading from Pisa. As the mounted force reached the Porta Pisa, a detachment of them galloped directly, outside of the fortifications, to the harbor-gate, the Porta Colonella, and rode straight to the CasteW Vecchio or fort, over which the Tuscan flag was waving. All at once we saw the flag disappear and the French tricolor, hitherto unknown to us, run up in its stead. At the same moment, a few cannon-

* Thiers states that Bonaparte broke up the English factory at Leghorn, and that he did not succeed in capturing all the English ships. The truth is, that all the ships escaped, and that no English factory existed at Leghorn. There were many independent English houses there established, like the houses of other nations, but no such thing as an exclusive English company existed. This act of violence was committed at a time of profound" peace with France, so far as we were concerned, without the least excuse. Governor Spanocchi was reproached with having extended a friendly reception to emigres and foes of the Republic.

shots were discharged at the English vessels which were tacking out of the harbor, but had not yet reached the roads.

Nelson knew what he was about. I could no longer restrain my curiosity, but ran out into the large street, the Strada Ferdinanda, which runs in a direct line from the Porta Pisa to the Porto Colonella, and saw at the head of the cavalry a magnificent rider, far surpassing* I thought, anything of the kind I had ever previously beheld, who galloped in and alighted at the door of th« Genoese banker, Dutremoul. I soon learned that it was the famous General Murat. This was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon. About six, it was reported that General Bonaparte had reached the Porta Pisa. No sooner did he learn that the English residing at Leghorn, had found time to escape with their property, than he burst into a violent rage. Just at this moment, Count Spanocchi, the governor of the city, attired in his customary uniform, a blue coat, red waistcoat, and white breeches (the gala uniform consisted of a white coat with red vest and breeches), and surrounded by his officers and the first authorities of the city, approached Bonaparte, where he sat holding in his horse, and was about to offer him some words of welcome. But the general left him no time, for he cut short all the fine things he was going to say with the following lecture :— " How do you presume to appear thus in my presence 9 Do you not know your business better % You are a shameless fellow, —a traitor to the country! You have allowed the English to escape, and shall give strict account of it. A court-martial shall be instantly set over you,—you are my prisoner,—surrender your,sword!" And with the conclusion of this Spanocchi vanished. Bonaparte's words were repeated to me the same evening in our counting-room, by my fellow-clerk, Giacomini, who had squeezed with the crowd out of the Porta Pisa, and had heard all that passed. We learned next day, that the late commandant of the city had been placed under arrest during the same night, and that the French GTeneral Vaubois would now act in his place. Scarcely had Bonaparte entered the city with his staff, and ridden to the grand ducal palace, when the police entered every house and ordered the windows to be illuminated, under

threat of severe penalty, in case of disobedience. The single paper then issued at Leghorn, appeared next morning with a flaming account, describing the arrival of the victor of Lodi and Areola, with an additional paragraph stating that the city had at once been voluntarily illuminated. Thus I got a very fair idea of a voluntary illumination, and never erred in after life as to the meaning of this expression.

About eleven o'clock on the ensuing day all the foreign consuls waited upon Bonaparte, who was dismissing them very abruptly, when his glance happened to fall suddenly upon my uncle in his red consular uniform. He instantly accosted my worthy relative thus :—" What's that 1 An English uniform ]" My uncle, overwhelmed with confusion, had just presence of mind enough left to stammer out: " No, Padrone''' (this word was probably borrowed from the street corners). " No, questa e Vuniforma di Amburgo /" " No, master (or boss), this is the uniform of Hamburgh!" Having thus delivered himself, he tried to get away ; but Bonaparte went on with a fierce diatribe against everything that even looked English, thought English ideas, or could have any intercourse whatever with England. " These Englishmen," said he, according to the recital of my uncle when returned to the house, " These Englishmen shall get such a lesson as they never heard of before ! I march now on Vienna, and then farther northwards, where I will destroy their hiding places at Hamburgh and other places of resort, and then ferret them out in their own piratical nest!" My uncle told me that upon this outbreak, he could not keep himself from exclaiming aloud, Birbante ! (villain!) before the whole company present, but that the sound of it was lost in the general buzz of the throng.

However, any one acquainted with my uncle, is well aware that with him the deed was often far behind the thought, and such was, no doubt, the case in the instance just mentioned.

On the Piazza d'arme, where the French cavalry checked public circulation with especial vigilance, the concourse of people was so great that it was almost impossible to make one's way through the crowd. As to the younger employes in our counting-room, of whom I was the very youngest, our porters had received the

strictest directions not to let any of them pass out. But I wanted to see the young hero, the man of the day, who, although not yet twenty-eight years of age, had made such havoc among the gray-beard commanders of the Austrian army, and could not make up my mind to stay nailed to my desk, copying news concerning oil, soap and Spanish liquorice, while this human phenomenon was to be seen in the near vicinity ; for I have already stated that the grand ducal palace in which be quartered, was separated from our establishment only by the mayoralty, the Palazzo della commit-nita. So, I managed to slip out of the house by stealth, and to advance a few steps to the corner of the street whose entrance is formed by the two palaces. Here a coach was in attendance for the French commander, and I stood by, waiting until he should come out. At length he appeared, surrounded by a number of officers. I saw before me a diminutive, youthful-looking man, in simple uniform ; his complexion was pallid and of almost yellowish hue, and long, sleek, jet-black hair, like that of the Talapouche Indians of Florida, hung down over both ears. This was the victor of Areola ! While he was taking his place on the right hand seat in the carriage and waiting for his adjutant, I had a moment's opportunity to examine him with attention :—around his mouth played a constant smile with which the rest of mankind had, evidently, nothing to do; for the cold, unsympathizing glance that looked out of his eyes, showed that the mind was busied elsewhere. Never did I see such a look ! It was the dull gaze of a mummy, only that a certain ray of intelligence revealed the inner soul, yet gave but a feeble reflection of its light. Macbeth's words to the ghost of Banquo would almost have applied here : " there is no speculation in those eyes," had not what was already recorded and what afterwards transpired, unmistakably shown the soul that burned behind that dull gaze. At last the coach was driven off—and an interval of seven years elapsed ere I again saw this remarkable man. He left Leghorn the next day. I must not omit mentioning that an officer of colossal but symmetrical proportions stood at the carriage-steps in an attitude of profound respect. This was the newly-appointed city-major, afterwards General Hullin, the very grenadier who, seven years previously

to the period of which I am speaking, on July 14th, 1789, at the storming of the Bastille, was the first man to scale its walls, and who subsequently attained the sad eminence of being made president of the military commission who were ordered to try, or rather to execute the unfortunate Due d'Enghien, at Vincennes. He was also, after the battle of Jena, made Governor-general of Berlin. When the coach was gone, the by-standers related that Bonaparte had thrown a small purse, full of gold, to Hullin, with wopds to the effect that he must make a good use of his position, and no longer be such a simpleton as he had been heretofore. Relata repeto —for I neither heard nor saw any thing of this, near as I was to the carriage.

The demeanor of the French army in Leghorn was unendurable to the inhabitants of that city. A portion of their most valuable trade was taken away from them, viz. : their commerce with England. Immense masses of troops were, from time to time, marched through the city, and frequent contributions of money, equipments, &c, were levied. The troops who came in, ragged and often unshod, left the place as soon as they had been comfortably clothed, and provided with shoes to their feet. The very sight of the French national cockade had become hateful to the eyes of all the inhabitants. The common people called it " il pasticcino," the patty-pie, and gave vent to their inward dissatisfaction in all sorts of street-ballads, one of which I still vividly remember. The last lines of it, hitting at the frequent change of troops who came to Leghorn only to be re-clad and get a new outfit, were in the popular dialect, as follows :

" Io cledevo di veder fla pochino, Che se n'andasser via questi blicconi:

Dia Saglata ! ne vien ogni tautino Quasi, quasi dilei, Dio mi peldoni 1

0 che anche Clisto polta il palticcino, O che i Soplani son tanti minchioni !"*

(In English: I thought that we should have seen these rascals

* The real word used here, and beginning with C, was of a much lower

character

leave the place in a short time—Good God ! more of them flock in, every moment! A man might almost say—God forgive me ! —that either Christ himself has stuck on the patty-pie, or that our princes are only so many chuckle-heads!)

Leghorn was like a camp. In the Piazza d'arme they had put up the statues of Liberty on a broad altar, and there the popular representatives Garat and Salicetti made long speeches to the soldiers at every daily parade. Business was at a stand-still, in all the counting-houses, our own not excepted. I sauntered about, made sketches of the French soldiery and the street-groups, invented all kinds of follies to pass away the time, and spent considerable sums of money. Antonio Antoni, the old cashier of our establishment, had too much respect for the son of his former master and the nephew of his present one, to deny me any thing; —so he gave me all I asked, and that he had a good reason for so doing and for keeping me in a good humor, was afterwards made manifest by the circumstance that, through my uncle's negligence in looking after the books and asking for a yearly balance-sheet, the said books remained four years in arrear.

When, at length, by the advice of one of our two book-keepers, an Englishman, named Henry Betts, an attempt was made to regulate our accounts, a gradual peculation of about sixty thousand pezza in the four years was discovered. The other bookkeeper was a brother of the unfaithful cashier, and the embezzlement was thus easily explained. Only think into what hands I had fallen, to practice and acquire the elements of commercial knowledge!

No one can give what he does not himself possess ; and if my uncle had no clear conception of a merchant's true value, or of his own duties to himself and others, it was of course impossible for him to impart correct ideas to me. Yet, all that I should have needed was here and there a hint or two from the lips of an experienced and cautious man, and such instruction would soon have brought me back to the right path. But I had to do without all this, and learned to feel their necessity only in after years. Fortunately, my good sense remained unimpaired. There was no one to store my mind with those indispensable requisites which,

4K *

as my predecessor Benecke says, in his Memoirs published by his family, were according to the judgment of such men as Brisch, Brodhagen, Ebeling, and others, absolutely necessary at that time, to any one who desired to attain even a degree of perfect acquaintance with mercantile science. These requisites were—

1. An intimate theoretical knowledge of the whole commercial system.

2. A knowledge of all commercial regulations, agreements, and the laws of trade and exchange.

3. The possession of several foreign languages; for instance, French, English, Spanish, Italian, etc., etc.

4. Facility in calculation (Arithmetic).

5. A knowledge of Chemistry.

6. Technology.

7. The different classes and qualities of manufactured and other goods, and their materials.

8. Geometry and Mechanics (Mathematics).

9. Physics.

10. Commercial Geography.

11. The history of Trade.

12. Natural History in all its branches ; so as to have a knowledge of the first origin of various products. And, finally, when all this had been learned, the next point was—

13. Good and ready penmanship!!!

Benecke states, with perfect frankness, that he diligently applied himself to the acquisition of all these things, so as to be competent to accept a place in some counting-house. What would a pupil of the present day be likely to say to any one who, as he first presented himself in the counting-room, should ask him if he had gone through a regular mercantile education in the preparatory branches detailed above 1 ? Why, most assuredly he would make his escape without delay—and so should I have done.

Early in the beginning of the year 1797 my uncle determined to send his family into the country, in the neighborhood of Flor ence, and for that purpose rented the Villa Pandolfini, close by the Grand Ducal pleasure palace called the Poggio Imperiale, in the loveliest part of the little village of San Leonardo, and sent

2*

me thither to keep my aunt company, but without appointing me any other employment. The summer slipped away in daily morning promenades to the picture gallery, and evening strolls on the Ponte della Trinita, where the fashionable society of Florence used to assemble, the gentlemen nearly always bareheaded, but provided with parasols and fans. There they would walk to and fro; and thither, every evening, among the throng came the fair one who had riveted my attention. Just opposite to the Villa Pandolfini lived a banker. I shall not now mention his name, but he was a widower, owned the villa he inhabited, and was often visited there by an only daughter. This banker was the person through whom my aunt received her funds, and hence our acquaintanceship was soon formed. The two young people, that is to say, Mademoiselle and I, were mutually pleased with each other. I had begun this flirtation as a mere pastime, but my young beauty took it all the more to heart. We appointed secret meetings at her villa, and sometimes even in Florence. My aunt's vigilance was aroused by these proceedings, and she forthwith wrote to her husband in Leghorn, that I would inevitably put myself in for it, as we used to say at Hamburgh. My uncle went still farther, and wrote to Mr. Nolte, sen., in Hamburgh, that I, already half ruined, in both body and soul, was now in a sure way to go headlong to the devil, unless he at once sent for me to come home.

My father's orders to pack me off to him were not long in reaching me, and in, the month of October, my uncle Matsen, on the mother's side (afterwards Consul for Hamburgh at Naples), conducted me back to my parents. A few days of bitter reproaches, on account of prodigality and recklessness, were soon past, and my father set me to work in his own counting-house, where I fell to with such persevering zeal and diligence, that he was pleased with me beyond measure, and in the very next twelvemonth intrusted me with his bank-book—a mark of confidence seldom bestowed upon so young a man. My. father saw that if I had received no proper guidance, employment, and encouragement to progress in my calling, it must have been his brother's fault. The ready ease with which I could oversee and

manage my father's business, which was quite simple, left me plenty of leisure time. I had acquired great fondness for the theatre, and visited it as often as I could. Comedies, dramas and tragedies were collected and studied with eagerness, and the French stage, which was put in operation at Hamburgh just about that time, facilitated the enjoyment of my extreme preference for everything connected with the theatrical world, which occupied me to the exclusion of other side-pursuits, and exercised all the faculties of my mind.

The arrival of a most excellent company of players, who had been driven out of Brussels, or had left it for lack of sufficient support, and among whom were several performers of considera b'le talent—for instance, the dramatic actors Mees and Bergamin, and the baritone singer Deriibelle—occasioned the establishment of this theatre, which in a short time became the theatre of the Hamburgh fashionables. The large number of French emigrants of rank, at that time residing in Hamburgh, and also the attendance of the notabilities of Hamburgh society, secured the managers great success. The contract for printing the play-bills had fallen into the hands of a highly-noble and highly-wise city council printer, named George F. Schniebes, who looked up to Benjamin Franklin as the patron saint of his order, and did his best to imi tate him, at least in dress. For he too wore a kind of fur cap on his head, mounted a pair of spectacles on his nose, and appeared in a kind of morning-gown. There was no trouble in translating the play-bill, so long as the Lexicon afforded the means of Germanizing the French titles—for instance, " La Caravane du Caire," or, " Felix ou l'Enfant trouve." But whenever the dictionary was at fault, in regard to certain words, he gave them the nearest translation possible, " to the best of his knowledge and belief," as he has often confessed to me. The first of these, that made me roar, was: " L'Amant Statue," translated by Schniebes, The Stiff Lover. The next was " (Edipe a Colonne" CEdipus at Cologne. Aid can be given this man, I said to myself, maliciously, with Schiller's Robber Moor, at the end of his great play, and so offered my treacherous assistance to the city council printer in translating his theatre bills. After that the street-corners were decorated

with the following attractive placards:—" Le Marechal ferrant" —Marshal Ferrant. " Les precieuses ridicules"—The ridiculous treasures. " Nicaise Peintre"—Painter Nick. " La Dinde aux louis"—Louis' Turkey. " La veillee et la matinee villageoise"— The old woman and a country morning. "Les amants prothees" —The lovers of tea. The whole town laughed at these absurd translations, yet it greatly displeased Mr. Schniebes when any one tried to convince him that folks were laughing at his expense, in coming to his aid with such translations. His invariable answer was, that he perfectly understood the French language himself, and moreover had an assistant, upon whose knowledge of languages he placed full reliance.

Yet a play-bill, received from Mayence, put me to shame, and far surpassed anything I could do in that line. It ran thus:— " L'Abbe de l'Epee, Instituteur des Sourds muets"—The Abbot of the Sword, Instigator of Doves and dumb people.

But the year 1799, a disastrous one for Hamburgh, was now upon us. Circumstances, which I have elsewhere described, occasioned, within the space of six weeks, some 136 failures, amounting to no less a total than 36,902,000 Marks banco, and crippled or prostrated every branch of business and business connection. The largest of these failures was that of Messrs. de Dobbeler & Hesse, for the sum of 3,100,000 Ms. banco; the next, that of J. D. Rodde, for 2,200,000 Ms. banco. Of all the rest, only the Messrs. Nootnagel, Schwartz & Roques, who failed for 1,540,800 Ms. banco, Bernhard Roosen Salomon, Son,' for 1,037,000 Ms., and Axen & Hinsch, for 360,000 Ms. banco, were enabled to resume payment in a short time, and fully satisfy their creditors. Many considerable houses managed to settle up their affairs by quiet private agreement.

During this convulsive state of the Hamburgh Bourse, the London Exchange bestirred itself, since merchandise and bills of exchange could afford no immediate relief, at a time when discount had risen to fourteen per cent., and merchandise, even sugar, had fallen thirty-five per cent, in price, to render aid by cash remittances, and procured from Government the use of the frigate Lutine, which took on board over a million pounds sterling worth

of silver, and sailed for the Texel. I need not describe the anxiety with which the arrival of this ship was looked forward to ; it can be readily comprehended, as well as the disappointment that followed, when the mournful news reached us that the frigate ha<J been wrecked on the Dutch coast, near the Texel, and lost, with all on board, excepting the third steersman, who alone succeeded in saving his life, and brought the disastrous intelligence.

However, one cheerful recollection remains to me from that gloomy time. It relates to the honorable and highly esteemed house of the Brothers Kaufmann, who were compelled, by the pressure of circumstances, to suspend payment, but began again a short time afterwards, and completely re-established themselves. One of these gentlemen, who had just married, had presented his wife with a ticket *in the Hamburgh City Lottery. The highest prize was 100,000 Marks banco. About the same time the tickets of a lottery, to be drawn for a farm worth 50,000 Prussian thalers, in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburgh, were put in circulation, and the winning number was to be the same that should draw the prize in the Hamburgh lottery. Mr. Kaufmann's bride had taken it into her head to purchase the same number as the one on her Hamburgh ticket in the farm lottery, and make a present of it to her husband. Fortune favored them both, for they were the winners. I was relating this anecdote two years ago at a small dinner party, when, as I concluded, a gentleman sitting opposite to me remarked, " The incident you have been narrating, Mr. Nolte, is accurately true, for the parties you mentioned were my father and mother." This gentleman was the present Syndic Kaufmann.

The crisis had been too severely felt at Hamburgh, and had affected commercial connexions of every kind too thoroughly, not to bear heavily upon my father's business, and even threaten to tear it from its hitherto quiet and steady current. This business consisted, almost exclusively, in the collection of orders and consignments for the Leghorn house, and was compelled, in view of the retrogression of all enterprising spirt on the Hamburgh Bourse, which was the result of necessity, to contract its operations in proportion as the English and French war placed more

and more obstacles, in the way of everything like commerce, to and from the Mediterranean. Neither was the occupation of Hamburgh, in the spring of 1801, by the Danish troops, under Prince Charles of Hesse, exactly calculated to enliven the customary enterprising spirit of our Bourse.

The very feeble interest awakened in me by my father's business, and, to tell the truth, by anything that related to commerce, allowed me to look, with a certain degree of unconcern, upon a state of things generally critical to merchants whose capital was only moderate, and I had never taken the trouble to find out the condition of my father's pecuniary affairs. He had never manifested any trace of anxiety about himself. So I satisfied myself with a conscientious discharge of my counting-room duties, and then employed my abundant leisure time with a variety of other things. A turn for writing had taken hold of me. A paper, then conducted by Court Councillor Spazier, at Leipsic, and entitled a " Gazette for the World of Fashion," gave me an opening to write some sketches of social matters in our own city, which were penned with a certain smack of humor, accepted by the editor, and very favorably read in his paper. This thing pleased me amazingly. I worked at night, and not a soul in Hamburgh ever suspected that I was the author of these sketches.

The older and extensive houses of Hamburgh suffered comparatively little in the crisis I have described. Hamburgh, whither a large portion of the French emigration had directed their steps, and which served as a place of refuge to a part of the French nobility of the highest rank, and had received and sheltered them with its means and its hospitality, had become an extremely gay and sociable place of residence. In front of the Dammthor, in the direction of the Grind-el-Allee, had lived for some time Madame de Genlis, Generals Dumouriez and Valence; even the Due de Penthievre (afterward King Louis Philippe), Prince Talleyrand, and other notabilities. Several of them were to be met with in the various social circles, and at the soirees of Mr. Peter Godeffroy, which took place every Wednesday evening, might, among others, have been seen the Baron de Breteuil, who at one time played an important part at the Court of Louis

XVI., had been styled by Chamfort " a relic of the olden time," and, notwithstanding the simplicity of his life, was regarded with great respect and consideration. He attracted my attention in a very particular degree by his imposing presence and his noncommittal eye. These soirees, too, had their picture drawn in the " Gazette," but, as I have just said, no suspicion alighted on me. The theatre continued to be my favorite study and pursuit. I never rested until I had completely inoculated my friend, Peter Godeffroy, jr., with my mania for the play; through him his father caught the complaint, and it spread to the whole family ; so that at length the French architect Ramee, the same who had built our first Borsenhalle (Exchange), was directed to put up a stage, etc., in the large establishment of Mr. Godeffroy, and there, in the course of the winter, we all made our debut. Our company consisted of fourteen persons, and among them four ladies, belonging to the first families in Hamburgh. Of these, Mr. Godeffroy's two daughters, Madame R. Parish, in Niensteden, and Mrs. General Ponsett, in the Crimea, are yet living. Of the male performers, I am now the only survivor. Senator Ferdinand Schwartz, who died some years ago, displayed much talent in the comic line, when the part happened to suit his peculiar humor.

During the two succeeding years the palmy days of Hamburgh's prosperity were fast drawing to a close. The business circumstances of my father, who had several years before withdrawn from the Leghorn house, but sank a considerable sum in its failure, which occurred about this time, were greatly impaired ; in short, he came back, and, without making the slightest attempt to sustain himself, at once came to the resolution of compounding with his creditors for eighty-five per cent., and thus swamped nearly everything he possessed in the world.

One of his numerous friends directly afterwards placed in his hands an accumulated capital of 120,000 marks to which his old ally Sir Francis Baring, Bart., also contributed 20,000 marks by re linquishing all rates for interest, and this sum enabled my father to recommence business. He was then sixty-three years of age, and had with his advancing age not been able, after settling in Hamburgh, to expand* or uplift his mercantile ideas and combinations

beyond the limits of an experience gradually acquired during a long career at Leghorn. Every thing on the European continent belonging to the mercantile profession, and which the iron hand of Napoleon, that deadly foe of all commerce, had not yet seized, had soon to feel its weight in a greater or less degree ; the usual avenues of legitimate profit were gradually narrowed, and at last entirely closed, and my father utterly lacked each and every quality requisite to the invention of new channels and sources of relief, not to say that he had neither the courage nor the capital to have brought to bear upon them. I could, therefore, render him no assistance,—that we both fully understood. He rejected every word of advice I ventured to offer him, as the idle talk of a pre sumptuous and imprudent boy ; seriously thought that I cared for nothing but amusement, never took into account the inward strength and capacity I possessed, and which only required proper guidance to achieve something useful, yet was fully open to my mother's, counsel, and at length approved of my proposition to separate from him and go in search of fortune to other parts of the world. I desired and made application for a place in some; other country : many such openings were held out to me by numerous family-friends, who judged of me more favorably than my own father did: one of these was in the house of Lobotker and Company in Copenhagen, the other in the house of Dobree, and the third with Messrs. A. M. Labouchere and Trotreau,—the latter two at Nantes. The last of these places was proposed to me by Messrs. Matthiesen and Sillem, who were especially friendly to me, with the idea of my conducting the German and English correspondence of the house they named. The position of this latter establishment was more important than that of the other, but their offer was unconnected with any view of my future partnership in the house itself, such as was presented to me by the Copenhagen establishment; but after mature deliberation touching my knowledge and capacity, I decided that I could make no just claim to the position offered me in Copenhagen, and thereupon concluded an agreement with the concern at Nantes for the term of three years. My friend Peter Godeffroy took my extensive library of plays off my hands, and the price they were worth

was applied to meet the expenses of my journey to Nantes, including a brief stay at Paris. I parted from my friends and parents with a heavy heart indeed, but without any concern in relation to myself and my future.

My route lay through Bremen, where I accidentally fell in with three very agreeable travelling companions,—the Count von Hax-thausen, of the Royal Danish Life-guards from Copenhagen, Major Holstein of the Queen's Jagers on the Island of Amager, and a young man of fine education called Joly, from Antwerp, who left us at Brussels. At length we arrived in Paris on the eleventh day after my departure from Hamburgh. My two Danish friends went to one of the best hotels; but I, for the purpose of living economically, went, on the recommendation of our conductor, to the small Hotel St. Pierre in the dirty little street St. Pierre de Montmartre, close by the Messageries.

It was in this place that experience first taught me how erroneous it is to suppose that any real saving can be effected in what are styled the cheap hotels, where food and lodging are vastly inferior to those found in better class-houses, and in a place like Paris, where, in those days much more than at present, they were dependent upon profits made upon strangers, the unavoidable roguery was much more repulsive and unblushing.

CHAPTER II.

PARIS—NANTES—AMSTERDAM.

rhe trial of General Moreau at Paris, when I arrived there—State of opinion in that capital—Napoleon's first parade as Emperor, on the Place du Car-rousal—Departure for Nantes—My entry into the house of A. M. Labou-chere and Trotreau — The two head partners — My departure from Amsterdam at the request of P. C. Labouchere, head of the firm of Hope and Co., in that city—Some notice of the history of that house, and the characteristics of its leading partner—The object of my journey to the United States and farther intentions—Unexampled business projects with the banker, G. J. Ouvrard, in Paris.

The moment of my arrival in Paris was just at that period when the First Consul was proclaimed Emperor by the Senatus Consultum of the 18th of May, 1804, and General Moreau had been arrested, and was confined in prison as an accomplice in a plot against the government and the life of the First Consul. A piece of good luck befell me in Paris which I might heartily wish should be allotted to every one who visits that city for the first time, viz: that I was enabled to secure the intimacy of a friend who had long been thoroughly acquainted with the city, and who was, nevertheless, not in the least unwilling to represent the part of a regular cicerone in escorting the new-comer to every place of interest, but who had, moreover, acquired a knowledge of Paris life, in all its phases, and was thus enabled to obtain admission for strangers into many places not always easily accessible to them, and when there, could point out many things worthy of remark which might have escaped the notice of an inexperienced eye. Thus, for instance, access to Frascati's, at that time the favorite resort of the elegant Parisian world, was free to every one who had paid his entrance fee; but what good

would it have done me to walk alone through its magnificent saloons and splendidly illuminated gardens '? But to learn, on such an evening, that the beautiful woman who, just at that moment, stood before me was Madame Recamier; that the elegant young man, leaning against the pedestal of a statue, was the celebrated dancer Trenis, and that the person near him, with a note-book of music in his hand, the renowned vocalist Garat, was something which rendered the presence of a well-informed and agreeable companion absolutely necessary. Such a friend it was my lot to find, and in this way I, in a few weeks, was enabled to know and understand Paris as perfectly as though I had passed a long time there. Nothing, however, of all the novelties that I had an opportunity of seeing and hearing made a deeper impression upon me than the lively and universal interest which every one around me seemed to take in the fate of the imprisoned General Moreau. His name was seldom pronounced, by the middle and lower classes, unless coupled with an expression of the greatest love and respect, and without a malediction upon both his implacable persecutors,—the First Consul and the governor of Paris, General Murat, who had in his later proclamations placarded the name of General Moreau, in large letters, on all the street corners, accompanied by the word " traitre a la Repub-lique" No one either could or would yield any belief to the publicly proclaimed guilt of this distinguished general, and the wit of Paris did not, by any means, commit default on this occasion, for you might everywhere hear the pasquinade il 7i > y a que deux partis, en France les moraux (Moreau) et les immoraux. Moreau, as the result has shown, was not actually a participator in the plot of George Cadoudal, Pichegru, the two Polignacs, and others; but he had committed, what to a man in his station and position was an unpardonable error—he had manifested a want of decision, in seeing George Cadoudal and Polignac, and listening to them. As it has since appeared from the whole prosecution, it was not the plot itself from which he receded, but the object it had in view, viz: the restoration of the Bourbons, and it is beyond a doubt that Moreau, most probably, would not have refused his participation, in the same affair, under other

conditions. As it was, the result was inevitable. He did not deserve the sentence of death as Napoleon desired—in order that he might pardon him, and so be enabled to lower him in public estimation,—but he could not escape the banishment to which he was sentenced as a punishment for the great political crime he had committed. Moreau soon left for Cadiz, where, as it was then said, he was to embark for the United States. I never dreamed, at that time, that I should have an opportunity in later years, of knowing this man.

The first review which the new Emperor was to hold was appointed to take place at the Place du Carrousel, and my curiosity to get one more sight of this man, as Emperor, whom I, seven years previously, had seen in Leghorn as a victorious general, was indescribable. I not merely wished to see him, but to get close to his person, and have a good chance to study him. My travelling companions, Count Haxthausen and Major Holstein, who had obtained an audience at Court, were so good as to procure for me, through the Danish Minister, a special card of admission to the Gallery of the Louvre—a favor accorded to scarcely twenty persons, and I was enabled to gratify my wish. I several times saw the great man of the day surrounded by a brilliant staff, and uniforms of every description, riding up and down through the ranks, then galloping swiftly by outside of the inner court-yard, in front of the ranks of cavalry ranged along there, amid the shout of Vive VJEmpereur, until his horse suddenly stumbled and fell, and he rolled on the earth, holding the reins of the bridle fast in his hand, but leaped to his feet in a moment, before even a part of his general staff, who came dashing up at full speed, could yield him any assistance. The newspapers observed profound silence in regard to this occurrence; but I must confess that, as I witnessed it, a thought of its ominous character impressed me at once. I have often recollected it in the course of my life, but the remembrance struck me with greater force than ever, when I first heard Talleyrand's famous words, in relation to the unfortunate result of the expedition into Russia: " Cest le commencement de la Jin." How correct Talleyrand's insight was into the future, is shown by an expression which he let fall from his sick bed,

after the battle of Marengo, to Ouvrard, who was paying him a visit: " I well know what the First Consul ought now to do—what his own interests, what the peace of France and the tranquillity of Europe demand of him. Two ways stand open before him : the first leads to the Federative system, which permits every Prince, after victory, to remain master in his own country, but, under conditions which are favorable to the victor. To-day the First Consul might replace the King of Sardinia, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, &c, on their thrones ; but, should he seize upon everything, annex everything, then he flings himself into a path which is interminable."

In Paris, I once more met with some old friends : —not living ones, however, but the four bronze horses of Saint Mark which I had seen before the Church at Venice, in my earlier years. They were now placed upon the triumphal Arch of the Place du Carrousel : then in the Museum I saw the Venus De Medicis, from the Tribune of the Florentine Gallery ; the best pictures of that Gallery, such as the Fornarina, by Raphael, which I have visited, daily, in Florence, without ever being able to sate myself with its beauties, and the Madonna della Sedia, by Raphael, and Christ on the Mount of Olives, by Carlo Dolci, from the Grand Ducal Pitti Palace. The sight of these awakened singular, but more especially painful sensations in my bosom, when I thought of the difference between my present condition and prospects, and the times gone by when these enjoyments were first accessible to me.

I had already passed a month in Paris, and it was now time for me to pay some attention to my new calling. I therefore set out for Nantes and, on the day of my arrival there, visited the counting-room which was destined to receive me. The firm of Messrs. A. M. Labouchere & Trotreau, in pursuance of the wish of Mr. P. C. Labouchere, one of the leading partners of the house of Hope, in Amsterdam (of whom I will, hereafter, have further occasion to speak), was to replace the formerly important house of Widow Babut & Labouchere, which existed before the Revolution. The present head of the firm was the youngest brother of the P. C. Labouchere referred to, and had commenced his mercantile career in Copenhagen. The next partner in the firm was

Mr. H. Trotreau, a man well advanced in years, and one of the most respectable persons in the whole city, who possessed a large fortune, and had, at the request of his young friend in Amsterdam, lent his name to the firm so as at once to procure sufficient credit in the place. The junior head of the House was absent when I arrived. He had gone to Copenhagen to marry a young Norwegian lady—a Miss Knudson, from Drontheim. Mr. Trotreau was managing the House, but understood neither German nor English, and it so happened that the chief correspondence of the establishment, which was to be conducted by me, was in these two languages. I was, at once, intrusted by Mr. Trotreau with, the task of translating all letters sent to us, in those languages, into French, and was also intrusted by him with a key to the replies that it would be necessary to make to them. I had pleased him, and won his confidence, for my replies were, without further examination, signed by him. I had never received any instruction in the French language, but had been my own teacher, and yet, as it appeared, my translations were both comprehensible and agreeable to Mr. Trotreau. When he desired to give me some information regarding the peculiar expressions and turns of phrase, my desire to arrive at a complete and thorough familiarity with them increased every day; and whenever I had finished my replies, I used to make it a point, without having been asked, to translate these also into French, and hand them to Mr. Trotreau, not only to be received, but also to be corrected by him. I made myself so perfectly familiar with the French mercantile expressions, that Mr. Trotreau declared to me that I needed no further instruction, and might, if I saw fit, also undertake the French correspondence of the House. It may readily be conceived what inward gratification this offer afforded me. The French clerk, from whose hands it was transferred, bitterly complained of this preference; but Mr. Trotreau replied, " What would you have, my friend 1 I read Mr. Nolte's letters with much more pleasure than yours, and I think that our correspondents will do the same." At length the absent head of the House, Mr. A. M. Labouchere, returned with his young Danish wife. He was desirous of extending the business of the House, which frequently, through

the interference of the House of Baring, in London, received some consignments from the United States, and thought that more frequent and more accurate commercial reports not only would contribute to the popularity of his House in the United States, but would place him in the condition to outstrip in rank other Houses in Nantes.

With this, the duty was imposed upon me of making out frequent market circulars, and sending them to the United States. This was most laborious and irksome work. Mr. Labouchere had learned the addresses of many American firms, frequently from the lips of American ship-captains, with whom he came in contact, and then when I was out would deposit the long list of new names on my desk, for me to make out a corresponding number of circulars, and dispatch the same to them; and whether the firms were in Portland or Savannah, every fluctuation of the mar ket down to the most trifling, had to be set forth. Three clerks would have been necessary to execute this mechanical labor—for nothing was known at that time of lithographic circulars, and I was too conscientious to abridge them, or to seek recreation from my severe toil by imitating the brilliant stroke of art achieved by my friend Paul Delessert, in the house of Messrs. Matthiesen and Sill em, at Hamburgh. After the letters had been signed by old Mr. Sillem, the father of Mr. Jerome Sillem, they were laid before the eyes of my young friend, for him to work in a compendious market circular. This sort of work fatigued him, so one day he took it into his head to insert the following words under every letter : Omelets are rising, owing to the extreme scarcity of eggs. Before the mails went off, the Chef wished to take a last look at the letters, and of course instantly saw the obnoxious words of all other things. It was to be expected that no head of a commercial house would take such a master-stroke quietly, and my friend Paul had to leave the office in a hurry. But I was not the only one who found this constant transmission of circulars extremely burthensome. The houses to whom they were sent, particularly the American firms, had every reason to be sick of them; for they were frequently dispatched in vessels sailing to some port in Maine, to be sent thence as far very often as Savan-

nah, and had to go overland, subject to the, at that time, enormous American postage. One day Mr. Labouchere came in, from the post-office, with a letter bearing an enormous Paimbceuf stamp (Paimbceuf is, properly speaking, the port of Nantes),—and holding it up before me, remarked, as he broke the seal; "There, Mr. Nolte!—a consignment, no doubt, from America!" But, when he had got it out of the envelope, the contents of the packet were discovered to be some thirty of our circulars, nearly all in my handwriting, which the recipients had amused themselves by re-enclosing to our address.

Another packet of the same kind arrived by post at Paimbceuf a few weeks later. Upon this occasion Mr. Labouchere seemed quite certain that all was right. He tore open the envelope with incredible' eagerness, and discovered a Dutch Price-current of stuffed birds, dried fish, frogs and tortoises, butterflies, beetles, and shells of every description—all things for which Mr. Labouchere had an especial preference, and of which he kept a small collection himself. The price-current was from a man in Rotterdam, to whom he had made himself known, and sent a card.

This canvassing for consignments from the United States, and the kind of uneasiness which Mr. Labouchere betrayed, whenever his neighbors, Messrs. Hottinguers & Co., a branch of the Paris banking house, received important consignments from the United States—frequently whole fleets at a time—were to me inexplicable—so I asked my chief what the real cause of this anxiety could be. -His reply invariably was: " Large advances, probably !" My next question was : "And who makes these advances? how are they made V His answer : "lam ignorant of that!" or " I do not know." At length, however, I learned from one of the Hottinguer clerks, with whom I had struck up a friendship, that the house of Messrs. Baring accepted bills drawn as an advance, in the United States, took out the insurance, and after sale took charge of the remittances for the merchandise. From this information, I for the first time got a key to this whole system, so universally understood at the present day, but of which I had never received the least hint at my father's house in Leghorn, nor under his own eye in Hamburgh; nor, as the reader may

have observed, even in Nantes, up to that time. Upon making this original and important discovery, I immediately went to Mr. Labouchere. The firm of Messrs. Hope, in Amsterdam, and the house of Messrs. Baring, in London, had been mentioned in the circulars of the Nantes house as its especial friends; and indeed, with the additional remark that Mr. P. C. Labouchere, in Amsterdam, the brother of my chief, was the associated partner of one, and the son-in-law of the " Chevalier" Francis Baring, (Sir Francis Baring, Bart.) one of the leading partners of the other. " I cannot understand," said I to Mr. Labouchere, " how you can let such important advantages as are within your reach remain unimproved, and to a certain degree wholly neglected. All that the Messrs. Hottinguer get, you also might have. You must of necessity send some one to the United States, and if you can find no better agent, I am at your disposal—I am ready to go thither !" A couple of weeks after that, he asked me to reduce to writing my ideas concerning the United States, and the advantages of a visit to that country, and send them to his brother in Amsterdam, who must have discovered from my correspondence with the house of Hope & Co., what I could do, and who had asked him to make the present request of me. It was Saturday when I received the above intimation. I shut myself up all day on Sunday, threw my ideas in relation to the desired plan on paper, wrote it over three or four times in the very best French I could muster, and the next morning took my work to Mr. Labouchere, to have him examine it, and transmit it to his brother, if it pleased him. Mr. Labouchere read it over, and instantly exclaimed: " Why, that is excellent! It is perfect! It would be impossible to speak more to the point! Whom have you been consulting V I replied with truth: "Nobody ! Whom should I consult 1" I now understood what I had already for some time been fancying to myself—that my chef either did not know how to estimate his own position, or that something lay in the background which they either wished or were obliged to conceal from me. My communication was sent. Some nine or ten days had to elapse, before I could get a reply from Amsterdam. I got none, but about ten days later, Mr. Labouchere called me into hi?

private office, and told me that his brother had commissioned him to send me directly to Amsterdam, and to release me from my three years' contract. This was done. My curiosity excited to the highest degree, I bade farewell to my friends in Nantes, and set out on my journey. My anxiety to reach Amsterdam as soon as possible did not, to my great regret, allow me to remain more than a few days in Paris; but my haste was not so much use to me after all, for I had scarcely reached Brussels when I was attacked with fever-and-ague, and only arrived in Amsterdam after a fortnight's delay.

The next morning I repaired to the counting-house of Messrs. Hope, but as it was almost time to go on 'change, found no one there but a brother of Mr. Labouchere.

The house of Hope and Co. in Amsterdam consisted at that time of the head partner of the whole concern, Mr. Henry Hope, who, as the son of a Scottish loyalist settled in Boston, had been born in the United States, and had emigrated to England after the first invasion of Holland by the French republican army under Pichegru ; then of several members of the Hope family, Adrian, Thomas L. Hope, (the well known " Furniture Hope," who had written a work on antique furniture,) and Henry Philip Hope, who resided sometimes at the Hague, sometimes in England, had capital and interests in the Amsterdam firm, but, as sleeping partners of the concern, were never known nor mentioned in it by name. The management of the house was in the hands of Mr John Williams, an Englishman, who had married the niece of Mr. Henry Hope, and afterwards assumed the name of John Williams Hope, but in the latter years of his life called himself John Hope, under the authority of a royal patent signed by George IV. as Prince Regent. Beside this gentleman stood, as the most active member of the house, the very soul in fact of the concern, Mr. P. C. Labouchere, whom I have already named. This distinguished man, born at the Hague, was the son of a French dry-goods merchant residing there,—a native of Orthes in Beam, who had sent the young man to his brother, of whom we have already spoken, established in Nantes, there to commence the mercantile career marked out for him. There, young Labo*

chere exhibited so many evidences of intelligence and industry, that his uncle felt desirous of opening before him a broader field than he could pretend to offer in his own establishment, and as it just so chanced about the time in question that his friend Mr. Hope had commissioned him to send him an active and capable clerk to take charge of his Trench correspondence, he proposed his nephew to that gentleman, who accepted the youth's services and engaged him provisionally on an agreement for three years with a fair salary. Shortly before the close of this term, young Labou-chere gave his principal a hint that a moderate increase of salary was desirable. An answer was promised for the next morning. When he went at the appointed time to receive the anticipated reply, old Mr. Hope laid before him for his signature a contract already drawn up, in which he named him as his partner, with a suitable share in the profits, and intrusted him with the signature of the house. Mr. Labouchere was at that time but twenty-two, yet ere long assumed the highly respectable position of head of the firm, the first in the world, and studied the manners of a French courtier previous to the Revolution: these he soon made so thoroughly his own, that they seemed to be a part of his own nature. He made a point of distinguishing himself in every thing he undertook by a certain perfection, and carried this feeling so far, that, on account of the untractable lack of elasticity in his body and a want of ear for music which nature had denied him, he for eighteen years deemed it necessary to take dancing-lessons, because he saw that others surpassed him in the graceful accomplishment. It was almost painful to see him dance. The old school required, in the French quadrilles, some entrechats and one or two pirouettes, and the delay they occasioned him always threw him out of time. I have often seen the old gentleman, already more than fifty, return from a quadrille covered with perspiration. Pro perly speaking, he had no refined education, understood but very little of the fine arts, and, notwithstanding his shrewdness and quickness of perception, possessed no natural powers of wit, and consequently was all the more eager to steal the humor of other people. He once repeated to myself as a witty remark of his own to one of his clerks, the celebrated answer of De Sartines, a former

chief of the French police, to one of his subordinates who asked for an increase of pay in the following words : " You do not give me enough—still I must live!" The reply he got was : " I do not perceive the necessity of that!" Now, so hard-hearted a response was altogether foreign to Mr. Labouchere's disposition, as he was a man of most excellent and generous feeling. He had, assuredly without intention, fallen into the singular habit of speaking his mother-tongue—the French—with an almost English intonation, and English with a strong French accent. But he was most of all remarkable for the chivalric idea of honor in mercantile transactions, which he constantly evinced, and which I never, during my whole life, met with elsewhere, in the same degree, however numerous may have been the high-minded and honorable merchants with whom I have been thrown in contact. He fully possessed what the French call " des idees chevalaresques."

I had seen this remarkable man, (who, by the way, was mar-ried to the second daughter of Sir Francis Baring in London.) at Hamburgh, when the failure in that city of the former very extensive house of Martin Dorner who, as banker for the Russian loan, was a correspondent of Hope and Co., had called him thither. He took that occasion to present himself to my father with a letter of recommendation from his old London friend ; but I merely saw him, as I was too young and too inexperienced to form any but a partial opinion of him, even when he passed a day with us at Eppcndorf; only his elegant manners had attracted and pleased me, and long remained in my memory. They had inspired me with a species of awe. When, summoned by himself, I again saw him at Amsterdam, it was on 'change. I had not, as already intimated, found him in his office, and was conducted to him by his younger brother, Samuel P. Labouchere, the still surviving partner of Hope and Co. We found him at the Bourse, leaning with his back against a pillar and surrounded by a swarm of jobbers and runners, acting entirely on the defensive, that he might get breath. Twenty-five years later, I saw, leaning against that very identical pillar, his successor in the house of Hope and Co., Mr. Jerome Sillem from Hamburgh, not, either, without remarking the singular contrast between the manners of these two

distinguished merchants. Mr. Labouchere, who had the highest respect for his friend Sillem, on account of his truly practical good sense in all things, and his unusually penetrating sagacity, and was in the habit of calling him " a rough diamond," would put aside the runners who beset him, with great seriousness but also with much dignity, while Sillem, on the other hand, would snarl very fiercely at them, and frequently pushed them violently out of his way with both hands, and as much rudeness of manner as possible. After 'change hours, if he again chanced to meet these gentry, he would lift his hat with a very subservient air, indeed. " Here," he would say to me, " they are not troublesome,—but on 'change I have to be rude in order to get rid of them." Yet, be it here remarked, to do this required no especially severe effort. The outward conventional forms of politeness, particularly those of French device, were not in. accordance with his nature, and hung about him like an ill-fitting garment. He understood politeness where he considered it appropriate, rather in the English sense—he substituted for it a certain heartiness and readiness to serve those with whom he had intercourse.

After the close of the Bourse, Mr. Labouchere placed my arm confidentially in his, and said, " Let us take a walk ; we will be able to converse undisturbed, and to better purpose, than in the counting-room. I have very often been pressed, by my brother, to give him permission to send an agent to the United States, but never would listen to his request, until he made mention of you and your wishes. I think that I have a perfect knowledge of you, and understand you, from your correspondence, and that you may be useful to him, to yourself, and to us all."

The " us all" sounded very pleasantly in my ears, for under the word us was given to understand a mission for the important house of Messrs. Hope itself. I instantly said, " How is that ? Us all!"

" I will tell you," he continued. " To make your first appear ance as agent for the house of my brother is a very good prelim, inary introduction to the United States, and you can, according to the directions and hints I will give you, carefully look about you there a couple of months, until we shall have some further addi-

tional need of your services. Even were you not to make one single bargain, I should still be well enough satisfied ; but I have something better in store for you. You will be intrusted with a mission that will make you catch your breath to hear of. You will feel the ground heaving under your feet," &c, &c.

And here he began to sketch for me the outline of a really col-lossal undertaking he was then planning in his own mind, and with which the reader shall presently be made better acquainted.

He then pointed out the position he had in view, and the heavy responsibility that would rest upon my shoulders. He was right. I did catch my breath at the magnificence of his project. Ere I had put a hand to it, I at once declared to Mr. Labouchere that I was too young and inexperienced to assume such a responsibility, and that I should only in a moderate degree equal his expectations. His answer was—

" That is my business, and not yours. I have but one thing to recommend to you : never commit any action which may one day cause you to blush before me, or in the presence of your own conscience!"

I was now placed upon the right ground. He had correctly judged me, and I had understood him perfectly. At length we touched upon the question, how much salary I was to receive for all this. He replied —

" Nothing ! Your expenses will be liberally paid ! that is all. If you cannot foresee what a position such a part may secure for you in the commercial world, and the facilities which it cannot fail to open for you in the future, you had better stay at home."

My reply was that his extreme confidence honored me, and that I would unconditionally agree to all that he saw fit to point out to me.

" In order to progress," he added, " you must renounce all impatience to succeed."

The leaven of impatience which he had perhaps discovered in me did not, however, belong to personal account. A glance at the circumstances and prospects of my family, whom I had left in Hamburgh—my father, as I have already remarked, was in his sixtieth year when I parted from him—was the stimulus which

kept alive within me this burning desire for rapid progress and early success.

The business, of which Mr. Labouchere had communicated only to me a rough outline, and which I got to understand and form an opinion of, in its whole extent, only several months later in the autumn of 1805, originated in one of the many conceptions and combinations of Mr. G. J. Ouvrard, formerly a celebrated banker, afterwards transformed into the munitionaire general, who published his own memoirs in three volumes, during the year 1826.

What he has communicated in those volumes, concerning his relations with the house of Hope & Co., consists in detached, imperfect, and disconnected fragments. The following will unfold the whole plan to my readers, and I hope render it perfectly comprehensible. However, before I enter upon the narrative, I consider it necessary to say many things about this remarkable man which deserve to be rescued from oblivion, and greatly contribute to a true and faithful sketch of him. He was in reality a remark able phenomenon, and the times in which he lived were well adapted to make one of a man so strangely framed, and yet possessing such lofty intelligence. He can scarcely be reproached for not having been able, in drawing his own portrait, to avoid the favorite habit of most autobiographers, who generally, in this or that characteristic, paint a much more flattering picture of themselves than the nature of the object would justify ; for the extraordinary facility with which he schemed and executed the most incredible business combinations might well excuse an overplus of vanity. Nor should we fail to observe, that in the whole tenor of his self-written memoirs, there is nowhere anything pretentious, nothing boastful of what he has done, but only a certain desire for celebrity. And if I have spent a little more time, in referring to these characteristics of Ouvrard, than the influence of his business combinations upon my own fortune would seem to render necessary, it has been done with the view to bring forward some characteristic traits of one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of Napoleon's empire, which the majority of that great man's biographers either did not, know, or have not felt disposed to communicate.

CHAPTER III.

THE BANKER AND GENERAL PURVEYOR, G. J. OUVRARD.

His origin and business development—First great speculation—The founding of his establishment at Paris—His private intimaeies lead to acquaintanceship with the Director Barras and Brigadier Chief Bonaparte, before the appointment of the latter to the rank of General—The rapid rise of Ouv-rard, as a government contractor—He becomes the Maecenas of artists— His princely liberality—Nicolo Isouard, the composer—Ouvrard's first connexion with the Spanish Government—Immense transactions with the French Government, with Vanlerberghe and with Duprez—Ouvrard's journey to Madrid—His influence with the Prince of Peace—The business contract between King Charles IV. of Spain and Ouvrard—Results of this contract—The commercial treaty that spraug from it—Hope & Co. in Amsterdam—The inconsiderate condemnation of Ouvrard, and frivolous palliation of Napoleon's unjust course towards him by Thiers, in the sixth volume of his History of the Consulate.

J. G. Ouvrard was the son of the owner of a considerable paper manufactory, in the French province of Bretagne ; first saw the light in the year 1770, on an estate in the near neighborhood of Clisson, and had been educated in the college of that place. Introduced, as early as the age of seventeen, into a large colonial produce establishment at Nantes, he there, ere he had yet reached hie twentieth year, set up a similar business for himself, under the firm-name of Guertin & Ouvrard, in 1788, shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution. He himself relates how he got his first ideas of the powerful levers of credit, from seeing Mr. Gras-lin, the builder of the new town of Nantes, in order to pay the hands he had employed in this work, put in circulation a kind of paper money, which was made payable at sight, but only h* copper coin. These notes, which had attained extensive circuktion,

but had fallen into momentary discredit without any plausible reason, through the malice of some ill-disposed persons, were suddenly presented all at the same time, and the same means which had once worked so well with the English Bank* likewise answered the purpose in this case, since the time required by the daily and continuous payment of the notes in copper coin was sufficient to give Mr. Graslin elbow-room to clear his way and gather in his scattered resources. At length, as people saw this liquidation going forward, for whole days together, the panic gradually subsided with daily increasing rapidity, until finally the holders of the notes altogether ceased presenting them. This example was by no means thrown away upon young Ouvrard. Soon after, the taking of the Bastille, on the 14th July, 1789, stamped upon the Revolution, which had just begun, the seal of a completed fact, and left free course to public speech, and to entire liberty of the press. Young Ouvrard hereupon conceived the idea that there would be a great deal of w r riting and printing, and that consequently paper would become scarce. Sustained by some business connexions he had formed, and by the credit of his father, he had concluded with all the paper manufactories in the neighboring districts of Poitou and Angoumois, a contract for every sheet of paper that they could deliver during the next two years. Ouvrard had made a correct calculation; paper began to be scarce everywhere, and to rise in price; and he finally succeeded, soon after that, in disposing of his contract to the heavy booksellers, Dufrat Brothers, in Tours, and several other publishers in Nantes, for a bonus of 300,000 francs. This operation, a very considerable operation for a beginner of scarcely twenty, stimulated his taste for speculation. He began to reckon up the unavoidable effect of

* Before the Pretender Stuart had lost the battle of Culloden, in the year 1745, and his army had advanced as far as Derby, there was a kind of panic on the Bank of England, and everybody rushed in to get their notes exchanged for coin. The directors, in order to save themselves, hit upon the plan of swelling the throng by a host of their own emissaries, who were paid off in silver sixpences, and then passing out at one door, and returning into the Bank through another, and brought back the sixpences. In this way time was gained, and the panic gradually subsided.

3*

THE BANKER AND GENERAL PURVEYOR,

ic Revolution on the French colonies, and, foreseeing the certain decrease of importation thence, united with the heavy house of Baour & Co.;, in Bordeaux, still existing at the present day, in very large speculations in sugar and coffee, and thereby, while still quite young, in a short time became a millionaire. But in Nantes, the consequences of the Revolution, and the bloody rule of the monster Carrier, had deprived innumerable families of their head, spread mourning and woe through others, and in all directions produced deep and unusual despondency. Ouvrard's customary business having ceased, he turned soldier, rose to the rank of Chief of Ba-tallion, and as such was sent, by General Canclaux, to Paris, to carry to the Convention a number of standards, taken in the fight of Torfou. Upon this occasion he became well acquainted with Paris, and speedily discovered it to be the oral theatre, where he would have the best chance of developing his love of speculation, and putting his projects into execution. Hereupon he determined to remain in Paris, and there found an extensive mercantile house. This he proceeded to do, pushing forward his ventures in colonial produce in combination with several capitalists in Bordeaux with so much success, that but a short time had elapsed ere he had made enormous sums, and found himself at the head of several millions of money, a capital which no one there could boast of at that time, and which, so soon as the social relations of Paris had been restored, gave him extraordinary preponderance in that city.

He had become acquainted with Madame Tallien, so celebrated for her beauty and wit; was her lover; through her got to know the Director Barras,and saw at her house no less a person than Bonaparte, who was at that time a mere Chief of Brigade in the artillery, and in such needy circumstances, that he found himself obliged to take advantage of a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, which entitled all officers placed in active service to a donation of as much cloth as was required to make a military coat, vest, and pantaloons. Bonaparte's application was rejected, be cause he was not just at that time in active service. A couple of words from Ouvrard to Madame Tallien were, however, sufficient to obtain from that lady a letter of recommendation for young

Bonaparte to Lefeuve, the Commissary of the 17th military division ; and the result of this recommendation was, that Bonaparte got what he desired—cloth enough for his new uniform. In after years, when Bonaparte was every day attaining higher distinction and importance, and early began to show symptoms of dislike to Ouvrard, this otherwise keen and skilful man could seldom refrain from narrating the anecdote, with a sarcastic smile ; while, on the contrary, the player Talma, who had become intimate with Bonaparte, and had often replenished his empty purse, grew more and more reserved, in his communications and his demeanor, the higher his friend ascended the ladder of fortune.

The DirectorBarras,to whom all that remained of good French society, after the Reign of Terror, looked in those days, and who was thoroughly competent to form a correct estimate of Ouvrard's financial talents, made use of his influence with Pleville Peley, then Minister of the Marine, to sustain Ouvrard's efforts to replace the Commissariat of the four Regisseurs by private contracts and deliveries, and thus this gentleman was at length appointed Munitionnaire General of the Marine, and intrusted with the charge of providing all that might be needed for it. These deliveries ran up to no less a sum than 63,973,494 francs, which Ouvrard furnished. Pleville Peley's successor in the Ministry of the Marine was the well known Admiral Bruix. When, the latter had been ordered by the Directory to proceed from Brest to Cadiz, with a fleet of twenty-five ships, to bring away the Spanish fleet lying in that port, under Admiral Massa-redo, and escort them to Brest, and succeeded in accomplishing this perilous task, notwithstanding the watchfulness of the combined British squadrons, Ouvrard also undertook the provisioning of the Spanish fleet at Brest, and carried on this business for some years after their return to Cadiz so skilfully, that at the conclusion of his contracts he had put in his pocket a clear gain of fifteen millions of francs. Ouvrard had become so omnipotent as a financier, that every one that wanted to borrow came to him; and even the Directory, which had at the time when the expedition to Egypt was crowned with the greatest success, still found itself in extraordinary embarrassment, occasioned by the simulta-

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neous defeats of the republican armies in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, borrowed from him the sum of ten millions of francs, which he advanced to it with the greatest readiness and facility. After Bonaparte's return from Egypt and the fall of the Directory, the First Consul desired Ouvrard to let him have the sum of twelve millions. The latter was not disposed to accede to this request, so application was made to the other bankers of Paris, and the will, perhaps the means, was also found wanting in them. The First Consul, who would not listen to a refusal, w r as exasperated to the last degree, and became still more so, when Ouvrard took it into his head to make some inquiry concerning the ten millions he had lent to the Directory. A couple of days afterwards this sum was paid back by his order to Ouvrard, but in a way that amounted to drawing the pen across the whole debt—that is to say, in drafts on the already expended revenues of the bygone year. At the same time Ouvrard was put under strict arrest, under the pretence that he had treated the government badly, and made exorbitant charges against it, in the execution of his contracts for the navy. His papers were sealed up, and a commission of six State Councillors appointed to exam-into the state of his affairs. It turned out that Ouvrard had contracted no debts, and that in landed property and money and in French rents, which at that time were worth only fifteen francs, he possessed a capital of twenty-seven millions. Upon this occasion a discovery was made which deeply wounded the French Consul, namely, that during Bonaparte's absence in Egypt, Ouvrard had supplied the pecuniary necessities of Josephine, who had remained behind at Malmaison; and that she had thus become to a considerable degree his debtor. This circumstance, taken together with the banker's refusal to lend him the twelve millions, awakened in the bosom of the First Consul the most violent antipathy to Ouvrard, whose arrest revolted all Paris, more particularly the financial men, and called forth loud complaints. Collot, a subsequent Director of the Mint, who was among the most intimate advisers of Bonaparte, did not hesitate to remark to the First Consul that it was a bad beginning to give any one the right to be disturbed by such arbitrary measures, " A man,"

responded Bonaparte, " who possesses thirty millions, and thinks nothing of it, is much tjo dangerous for my position." Through the interposition of Josephine and some of the first notabilities of the city, the intended step of arraigning Ouvrard at Marseilles before a military commission was not carried out, and he was released. As a set off for this clemency, he was placed under the especial watch of some gensdarmes. This however did not prevent him from pursuing his usual course of life, nor from making Castle Raincy (which in after years fell to the Duchess of Berry), a rendezvous for the best society of the capital and all foreigners of note. There he used to receive and entertain them with princely hospitality, which he was able to do, soon after the peace of Amiens with the celebrated Mr. Fox and Lord Erskine. He also became the Maecenas of artists, whom he was accustomed to recompense with munificent liberality. The reader will perhaps allow me, ere I return to him and his connection with the Messrs. Hope, in Amsterdam, to relate an anecdote of him which was confided to me, and which is but little known.

The Hotel de Salm, which, in the latter days of the Consulate and the beginning of the Empire, had become one of the most magnificent resorts where the elite of French society were accustomed to sojourn, had called together, an extraordinary assembly to hear several selections from a new opera, written by a young and promising composer. Both artists and amateurs, were in an equal degree enchanted with this quite original and most charming music. Among these was Ouvrard, who was indefatigable in testifying his admiration to the young composer. It w r as quite late at night when Ouvrard returned. As he was passing through the court of the hotel to his carriage he saw, lying on the ground, a paper, the form of which, and the stamp it bore, at once informed him that it must be the official notification of a sheriff's officer (un exploit cPHuissier). To pick'it up quickly, spring into his carriage, and drive off to his own hotel, was the work of a moment. Scarcely had he reached his residence ere he examined the paper, and discovered that it was one of the customary protests which leave the person to whom it is sent no other alternative, than either to pay the required debt upon the spot, or to be shut

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up in the Hotel de Clichy, the common prison for insolvent debtors. Ouvrard read further on, and, to his great surprise, found on the paper the name of the young composer whose music had so enchanted him. The trouble was about a sum amounting to three thousand francs; and for such a trifling sum as this, a young man of genuine talent was to be compelled to sacrifice a brilliant future. Ouvrard felt the force of this, and instantly formed his resolution ; so on the next day the young artist received the following letter:—

" Be at your ease, Sir ! What you lost yesterday evening at the Hotel Salm has fallen into safe hands. The finder considers himself fortunate in having made a discovery which places it in his power to become useful to a man whose talent and worth he can thoroughly appreciate. In the meanwhile comfort yourself with the intelligence, that at this moment your creditor has no further claim on you. The finder of your document begs you to pardon the feeling of curiosity which impelled him to read a paper belonging to you without your permission. As he takes a lively interest in your future, and knows perfectly well how material obstacles bear down with leaden weight the most splendid capacities, he begs you to accept the enclosed ten notes of one thousand francs each. No thanks, dear Sir, for what is merely a trifling advance upon the future success of your exertions ! What your friend expects of you, however, is only perseverance in the right path you have chosen, and a continued effort, on your part, to deserve the fame that awaits you; and the gratification this will bring him will assuredly far, far exceed the little service he now seeks to render you."