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All the clerks ran out and threw themselves upon me. They tore me
away from the sacred person of the Consul and thrust me out into
the street bleeding and with a swollen eye to rage there, comforted
only by the assurance that without a doubt both his were black. I
am a little ashamed--not very much--of the fact that it comforts
me even now to think of it. He really did me a favor, that Consul;
but he was no good. He certainly was not.
It is to be recorded to the credit of my resolution, if not of my
common sense, that even after that I made two attempts to get over
to France. The one was with the captain of a French man-of-war
that lay in the harbor. He would not listen to me at all. The other,
and the last, was more successful. I actually got a job as stoker
on a French steamer that was to sail for Havre that day in an hour. I
ran all the way down to Battery Place, where I had my valise in a
boarding-house, and all the way back, arriving at the pier breathless,
in time to see my steamer swing out in the stream beyond my reach.
It was the last straw.


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