t questionable means. They
trafficked not alone in articles of contraband, but they dealt in the
still more dangerous wares of secret information to governments; some
were far less smugglers than spies. All these curious traits became
revealed to me in our intercourse; and I learned to see by what low
and base agencies are often moved the very greatest and most momentous
incidents of the world. It was not alone that many of these men
were employed by persons high in station, but they were really often
intrusted with functions very disproportionate to their own claim for
either character or fitness. At one time it would be a state secret; at
another, some dark piece of treacherous vengeance, or some scarcely less
dark incident of what fashion calls "gallantry;" while occasionally
a figure would cross the scene of a very different order, and men of
unquestionable station be met with in the garb and among the haunts of
the freebooter.

There was scarcely a leader of the republican party with whom some
member of the exiled family had not attempted the arts of seduction.
With many of them, it was said, they really succeeded; and others only
waited their opportunity to become their partisans. Whether the English
Government actually adopted the same policy or not, they assuredly had
the credit of doing so; and the sudden accession to wealth and affluence
of men who had no visible road to fortune, greatly favored this
impression. My friend Pierre Dubos troubled his head very little about
these things. So long as his "brandies could be run" upon the shores
of England, and his bales of silk find their way to London without
encountering a custom-house, he cared nothing for the world of
politics and statecraft; and it is not impossible that his well-known
indifference to these matters contributed something to the confidence
with which they were freely imparted to myself. Whatever the cause, I
soon became the trusted depositary of much that was valuable, not alone
in actual wealth, but in secret information. Jewels, sums of money,
securities to a great amount, papers and documents of consequence, all
found their way to my hands; and few went forth upon any expedition of
hazard without first committing to my keeping whatever he possessed of
worth.

I was now living in privacy and simplicity, it is true, but in the
enjoyment of every comfort; but, still, with all the sense of a
precarious and even a perilous existence. More than onc