hin easy reach.

The innkeeper and his sons were liberally recompensed; and their talents
thus being made known to the company of contractors, they were employed
again a year or two after in collecting the means required in a siege,
and in forwarding provisions to a province threatened with famine. These
large operations gave the brothers a certain distaste for their country
life, and they removed to Paris in quest of a more stirring and
brilliant career than an Alpine inn with farm adjacent could afford. One
of them enlisted at first in the king's guards, and the rest obtained
clerkships in the office of the company of contractors. By the time they
were all grown to manhood, the eldest, a man over forty, and the
youngest, eighteen or twenty, they had themselves become army
contractors and capitalists, noted in army circles for the tact, the
fidelity, and the indomitable energy with which they carried on their
business.

The reader is aware that during the last years of the reign of Louis
XIV., France suffered a series of most disastrous defeats from the
allied armies, commanded by the great English general, the Duke of
Marlborough. It was these four able brothers who supplied the French
army with provisions during that terrible time; and I do not hesitate to
say, that, on two or three critical occasions, it was their energy and
intelligence that saved the independence of their country. Often the
king's government could not give them a single louis-d'or in money when
a famishing army was to be supplied. On several occasions they spent
their whole capital in the work and risked their credit. There was one
period of five months, as they used afterwards to say, when they never
once went to bed _sure_ of being able to feed the army the next day.
During those years of trial they were sustained in a great degree by the
confidence which they inspired in their honesty, as well as in their
ability. The great French banker and capitalist then was Samuel Bernard.
On more than one occasion Bernard saved them by lending them, on their
personal security, immense sums; in one crisis as much as three million
francs.

We can judge of the extent of their operations, when we learn that,
during the last two years of the war, they had to supply a hundred and
eighty thousand men in the field, and twenty thousand men in garrison,
while receiving from the government little besides depreciated paper.

Peace came at last; and it came at a mo