ick me up.

In our glorious and free country the killing or mangling of a few
persons more or less is of no particular concern to any one beyond the
friends of the victims, least of all to the railway magnate or to his
servant. But in France an accident which results even in the wounding of
a passenger is a very serious matter to the road where it occurs and to
its officials. They always hasten to take the fullest responsibility,
and if attention or the more solid matter--cash--can comfort the
sufferer, he will have no occasion to mourn long. If one life be
lost--even a servant of the road--a strict judicial inquiry takes place
upon the scene of the accident, by a high official of the State, advised
by experts, not as in this country, by some drunken country loafer or
ward heeler, who, all ignorant of the law, has been "elected" county
coroner, and one who is more anxious to procure free passes on the road
than he is concerned for the victim murdered by the neglect or parsimony
of inefficient railway officials.

The road from Paris to Calais is known as the Chemin de Fer du Nord, and
Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, head of the Paris Rothschilds, is the
president of the road. This fact occurred to me within a few minutes of
the accident, and I thought I might make use of the affair as a means to
help me in my business at Paris. I arrived about dark, went to the Grand
Hotel, and to bed at once. My nerves were so shaken that I was timid,
even when in the elevator, but I slept well and awoke at daylight
feeling better.

At 10 o'clock, limping badly and leaning on a cane, I entered a carriage
and drove to the Maison Rothschild, Rue Lafitte. The banking house might
well be called a palace. The various offices open upon a courtyard,
while the whole architecture of the building would suggest the residence
of an officer of State or nobleman rather than a building devoted to
finance. But the currents which centre there are potent and
far-reaching, and come richly laden with tribute from the four quarters
of the world. To win that tribute slaves toil, and, toiling, die, in
Brazilian diamond mines, and thousands of coolies, entrapped by agents
in China and India, enter into perfidious contracts which commit them to
hopeless slavery and send them to wear out their lives in despairing
toil amid the pungent and murderous ammoniacal fumes of the guano
islands of Chili and Peru. The Rothschilds, too, own the Almaden
quicksilver mine an