In '56 I took my wife and baby Sue to Paris. I had observed in Europe that the Germans were more far-sighted than we in learning many languages. The bright German boy in a country town is taught French and English, and then sent to Bremen or Hamburg to get the practical education of merchants in great shipping houses. Afterward, he is sent to England to find out other modes of doing business. Then perhaps he establishes a house in New York. I found that German merchants, all over the world, were far ahead of ours, because of their practical training and mastery of languages. Seeing, in my travels around the world, that the German was everywhere, I determined to learn languages, and went to Paris for that purpose.
We took rooms at the Grand Hôtel de Louvre, in the Rue de Rivoli, and I at once went to Galignani, of "The Messenger," to find teachers. Under a Catholic priest, I studied Italian and French at the same time, which may account for my having a little of the Italian accent in my French. I have never known an Italian who was able to master the French accent. I also learned Portuguese and Spanish. This gave me the four Latin languages. I had, in '48, studied German under Gasper Bütts, who came to America during the Revolution of '48 with Carl Schurz. German texts and pronunciation I had to practise every day, but as I have never had a fancy for that language, I have not kept it up. I sent my sons to Frankfort-on-the-Main to learn German, and afterward to Seelig's College in Vevey, Switzerland, in '71, to learn Italian and French. My daughter Sue was sent to Stuttgart, and she is thoroughly acquainted with both German and French.
CHAPTER XVIII
MEN I MET IN PARIS
1856-1857
My life in Paris seems now like a romance to my memory. I was twenty-seven, and thought I had seen all the world, but discovered how little I knew, compared with others whom I met. I found, as in all these foreign cities, that notables in society and in public life often did not know one another. At Count Arthur De La More's, of the Orleanist staff, I found the greatest hostility toward the Emperor. One day we were sitting in the entresol, at his rooms on the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries, and he asked me whether I could see that man walking on the veranda of the Tuileries. I said I could, to which he replied: "Could one of your sharpshooters pick him off from here?" I looked up with surprise, and thought I saw the future assassin of the Emperor, but said nothing. I told him some of our men like Daniel Boone and David Crockett could have picked off a squirrel as far as they could see it. It was a little while after this that the Orsini bomb was fired at the Emperor. This was because Napoleon, though a member of the Carbonari, had "gone back on" the order; but his life was spared.
Prince Galitzen of Russia gave me a dinner at the Café Philippe, where I met some of the Russian nobility. These men were the cleverest I have ever seen. All were good linguists, artists, statesmen, soldiers, men of the world. At Prince Czartoryski's I met leading Poles, who were still revolutionists, plotting against Russia. One of these, a man of about eighty, said to me: "In my teens I went to St. Petersburg, saw Alexander and told him the condition of Poland. I asked him what he was going to do. He asked me what I should recommend. 'There are two ways of governing Poland,' I said; 'through interest or through fear.' Fear was the policy adopted. When I was forty, I again went to St. Petersburg. Nicholas was Czar, and he repeated the same question. I again answered, 'through interest or through fear.' When I was sixty I met another Emperor, and the same question was put to me, and I made the same reply. Poland is partitioned," he added; "and we are now only a memory."
At Leon Lillo's I met many Spaniards of the nobility and the ruling family. I still think that Lillo was the son of Queen Cristina, by her husband the Duke of Rianzares, a common soldier, of physical beauty, whom she had taken from the ranks and made a Duke. I used to meet him at Lillo's. Cristina, who was then probably the richest woman in the world, had bought Malmaison, the palace of Josephine. It was through this connection that I met Salamanca, the Spanish Rothschild, her banker. I shall speak later of how I got the funds to build the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, connecting the Erie Railway with the Ohio and Mississippi Railway.
At the Marquis del Grillo's I met his wife, the great Italian tragedienne, Ristori, whom I had seen on the stage in "Elizabeth." I met leading men of the Second Empire at the house of the Count de Rouville, including Persigny, the Foreign Minister, Count de Morny, the Minister of War, Walewski, Prince "Plon-Plon," and Mocquard, private secretary to the Emperor. At Triat's Gymnase I met the men who afterward organized the, Commune. At the house of Mrs. Winfield Scott, who was then living in Paris, I met many Americans, and at Castle's I saw "Bohemia."
Meeting all these different persons, distinguished in the great world of Paris, I was gaining the knowledge that would make me a walking library of political affairs in Europe. This made up for the loss of a college career. Practical experience and observation were my university.