Dubos, however, assigned me a duty which made a happy compromise between my self-esteem and my desire for employment. This was to make acquaintance with all of that adventurous race comprised between the buccaneer and the smuggler; to learn their various wants, when they voyaged, and for what, became my province. They were a wild, wasteful, and reckless class, who loved far better to deal with one who should stand to them in the relation of a companion than as a chapman or a dealer.
If I am free to own that my occupation was not very dignified, I am equally able to assert that I never prostituted any influence I obtained in this way to personal objects of profit. On the contrary, I have repeatedly been able to aid, by good counsel and advice, men whose knowledge of adventurous life was far greater than my own; and oftentimes has it occurred to me to obtain for them quadruple the value they had themselves set upon objects they possessed.
I can scarcely account to myself for the extraordinary interest the pursuit engendered,—the characters, the places they frequented, the habits, were all of the strangest, and might reasonably have amused one ardently fond of adventure; but there was, besides all this, a degree of danger in the intercourse that imparted a most intense degree of interest to it.
Many of these men were great criminals. Many of the valuables confided to my keeping were obtained by the most 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 once had I been warned that the authorities entertained suspicion of me; and although the police, even to its highest grades, was in our pay, it was yet possible that they should find it their interest to betray us. It was just at this time that a secret envoy arrived from Paris at Havre, en route for England, and was arrested on entering the town. His papers were all seized, except one small packet which was conveyed by a safe hand to myself, and my advice and counsel requested on the subject of it. The address was simply “W. P.,” and marked, “with the greatest speed.” There was an enclosure that felt like a locket-case or a medallion, inside, and three large seals without.
The envoy, who had contrived to disburden himself of this in the very moment of his arrestation, at once made a signal indicative of its pressing emergency; and his own rank and position seemed to guarantee the fact. One of our luggers was only waiting for the tide to weigh anchor and sail for England; and the sudden resolve struck me to take charge of the letter, and see if I could not discover for whom it was meant. Both Dubos and his wife did all in their power to dissuade me from the project. They spoke of the great peril of the attempt, and its utter fruitlessness besides; but for the former I had not many fears, and as to the latter consideration, I was fortified by a strong and deep-felt conviction that the locket was intended for no less a personage than the head of the English ministry, and that “William Pitt” was designated by the initials of the direction. I own that the conjecture was mainly suggested to me by the constant reference made to his name, and the frequent allusions I had heard made to him by many of the secret emissaries.
If I did not impart this impression to Dubos, it was simply because I knew how little interest the subject would have for him, and that I should frame very different reasons for my journey if I looked for his concurrence. I need not stop to record the discussion that ensued between us. Enough if I say that honest Pierre made me an offer of partnership with him if I consented to forego my journey, from which he steadily predicted that I should return no more. This prophecy had no power to deter me,—nay, I half suspect that it furnished an additional argument for my going.
Having consigned to him, therefore, all the objects of value that had been left with me, and taking nothing but the few papers and letters belonging to myself, I sailed that evening; and, as day was breaking, I saw looming through the distance the tall and chalky cliffs of England. We were a long way to the northward of the part usually frequented by our skipper, and it was not without difficulty that I persuaded him to land me in a small bay, in which a solitary cottage was the only sign of habitation.
By noon I gained the hut of a fisherman, who, though he had seen me put out from a craft that he knew to be French, yet neither expressed any surprise at my appearance, nor thought it a matter for any questioning. The shoal water and the breakers, it is true, could have prevented the spot being selected as a landing-place for troops; but nothing was easier than to use it to disembark either secret emissaries, or even a small body of men. I walked from this to a small town about eight miles inland, whence I started the same night by coach for London. I cannot convey my notion of the sense of freedom I felt at wandering thus at will, unquestioned by any one. Had I but travelled a dozen miles in France, I should have been certain of encountering full as many obstacles. Here none troubled their heads about me; and whence I came, or whither I went, were not asked by any. Some, indeed, stared at my travel-worn dress, and looked with surprise at my knapsack, covered with undressed calf-skin; but none suspected that it was French, nor that he who carried it had landed, but a few hours before, from the land of their dread and abhorrence. In fact, the England and France of those days were like countries widely separated by distance, and the narrow strip of sea between them was accounted as a great ocean. No sooner had I arrived in London than I inquired for the residence of the Prime Minister. It was not a period when the Parliament was sitting. They told me that I should rarely find him in town, but was sure of meeting with him at Hounslow, where he had taken a house for his health, then much broken by the cares and fatigues of office.