CHAPTER XIV.

ROTHSCHILD.

A FEW days after the elections of the tenth of December, 1851, three men were sitting at a table at the Elysée-Napoleon, the President of the Republic, Rothschild, the banker, and Victor Hugo, the poet and people's representative. While stooping the latter let fall a paper.

"These are the verses of a young girl who asks Monsieur the President of the Republic to pardon her father confined at Clichy."

"Head of the State though I am, I can do nothing "Where debts are

in this case," replied Napoleon.

concerned the Baron is more powerful than I."

"Read us the verses, if you please," said the Jew to the great poet, " then, if you desire it, I will do all that is necessary."

The verses were pronounced to be admirable.

Next day Mademoiselle Geffrotin left the convent where her father had placed her before his incarcera

tion so that she should not be left alone, and went to the house at Clichy to fetch him whom a stranger had liberated. They went back joyously to their modest lodging. But oh! what a surprise! Everything was changed! The old furniture and curtains had been replaced by furniture from Boule's, and the curtains were of French muslin. Everything in old Geffrotin's room was of velvet and red damask. In the young girl's chamber white silk and green damask velvet abounded. To all this the unknown had added a bundle of banknotes to the amount of ten thousand francs. Questioned by the father and daughter, the old servant said that a gentleman had come in the morning with a van, furnished the house, and left the banknotes for her to give her master without saying another word.

"It is he!" cried the released prisoner. "I knew quite well, when I was organizing the Society of the tenth of December, that if I spent my savings. for Louis Napoleon the President of the Republic would reimburse me with heavy interest. Long live Napoleon!" again repeated the old soldier of the first French Empire.

I say "old soldier of the first French Empire" because the young girl's father was formerly a captain in Napoleon I.'s army; from 1815 to 1830 he had refused to serve the Blancs, as he called the Bourbons; but at sight of the tricoloured flag he

had again entered the ranks, gone through a campaign in Africa, and then retired.

When Louis Napoleon arrived in Paris the old Captain became, with General Piat, one of the organizers of the Society of the tenth of December. His purse being much smaller than his Napoleonic enthusiasm, he had been forced to run into debt, and had given bills to a certain Lehonith, a red-hot Orleanist, who thought he had performed a political action the day on which he had the equally rabid Bonapartist shut up at Clichy.

Ten months after the occurrences recounted above Mademoiselle Geffrotin gave birth to a male child. At the sight of the creature and the sound of its cries the old soldier sprang to the cradle and demanded in a stentorian voice

"Tell me the name of the father or I will strangle it!"

"Monsieur de Rothschild," answered the mother. "Rothschild! . . . Ah! I have it now! . . This gilded furniture, these banknotes, this luxury were the price of my honour! And I, old fool that I am, who thought that it was he! I might have known; he does not look at all like the other one! He has the face and manner of a German Baron!"

Captain Geffrotin took his hat and cane and repaired to the Stock Exchange. Going up the staircase of that temple of finance he saw Baron

Rothschild talking amidst a group of exchange brokers. The old soldier went forward, and calling him aside, told him the object of his visit.

"A child! a child! Whose father I am?" said the Jew.

"Come, no more blackmailing!"

He had not finished before he received a frightful blow in the face.

The police arrested Geffrotin and took him to the manager of the Stock Exchange (Monsieur Hubeau). Without examining him, this gentleman, as soon as he heard that the prisoner had dared to strike the money-king, sent him to the Conciergerie, where, three days afterwards, he was summoned by Monsieur Rhau, the examining magistrate, to be questioned.

At the first words the Captain stopped the magistrate, saying

"Write that I shall kill Baron Rothschild the first day I regain my liberty for having dishonoured my daughter. I will sign nothing else."

The examining magistrate had him taken to prison, and hastened to give Baroche, the AttorneyGeneral, an account of the prisoner's declaration.

Two hours afterwards Captain Geffrotin reached his home at Montmartre. His old servant announced that his daughter had been summoned to the banker's. Without sitting down Geffrotin hastened to the Rue Florentin and went to the room which his daughter had just entered.

The Procuror-General was in the Croesus' sanctuary with the Baron.

As soon as the girl-mother came in Rothschild gave her his hand, made her sit down by him, and asked

"What day was the child born?"

"The twenty-second of October."

"Ha! let me see!" said the Baron, drawing a memorandum-book from his pocket, "this date corresponds exactly with the twenty-second of January. Now read, Procuror-General. That day Mademoiselle Geffrotin went to the Elysée. Now, I ask her, is Napoleon, Victor Hugo, or am I the father of your child? Leave my house, you disreputable girl, and tell your dullard of a father that we will have him taken to Cayenne the first time he dares to speak to us!"

"Then I will go to Cayenne to-day," said the Captain, entering, and he seized the Jew by the throat with a vigorous hand, crying, "Ah! scoundrel! so you dishonour young girls and then have their fathers put in prison!"

Baroche seized Geffrotin, and leading him to the door, said

"Go home quickly; I take everything upon myself."

Father and daughter descended the staircase with different feelings-the father glad at having