[146] at the time that the fellow would play me a trick if he had the opportunity. What Humboldt did not know until I told him, is, that I met this Englishman, a few evenings before the perquisition, at Chateaubriand's, when the conversation turning on the French refugees in America, I said they were not received there with the enthusiasm that is generally supposed in Europe. The Englishman denied this with uncommon promptness, and alleged, in proof, that a great dinner had been given to them in Boston. A charge of this kind, upon a town which had sung a solemn Te Deum for Bonaparte's defeats in Russia, and made an illumination for the restoration of the Bourbons, naturally vexed me, and I told him and Chateaubriand very circumstantially how things stood. The Englishman made no reply, but was evidently displeased, especially at the decided satisfaction Chateaubriand expressed. If, then, he is a spy, I doubt not he is the person who denounced me, not, perhaps, because he thought me dangerous or wished to revenge on me the little disputes I had with him,—though M. de Humboldt believes him capable even of this,— but because his bread depends on the information he gives, and he would be as well paid for denouncing me, as for denouncing any one else.On the 27th July, Mr. Ticknor says: ‘From the early part of July almost all my French friends had left Paris, and I was very solitary, except that I had acquaintances more or less intimate among Americans.’ The remainder of his residence in Paris he gave to a careful study of the public places and institutions of the city, writing elaborate and historical notes on what he saw. In August, he made two visits at Draveil, the chateau of Mr. Parker, an American gentleman, who had lived in France for thirty years.
This text is part of:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.