The next morning the doctor and I went on to England. A week after I took up the ‘Illustrated News.’ There was an account of the accident, with an illustration of the cabin of the sunken boat. The bodies of passengers were depicted as the divers had found them.
On the very day the peace was signed I chanced to call on Sir Anthony Rothschild in New Court. He took me across the court to see his brother Lionel, the head of the firm. Sir Anthony bowed before him as though the great man were Plutus himself. He sat at a table alone, not in his own room, but in the immense counting-room, surrounded by a brigade of clerks. This was my first introduction to him. He took no notice of his brother, but received me as Napoleon received the emperors and kings at Erfurt—in other words, as he would have received his slippers from his valet, or as he did receive the telegrams which were handed to him at the rate of about one a minute.
The King of Kings was in difficulties with a little slip of black sticking-plaster. The thought of Gumpelino’s Hyacinthos, alias Hirsch, flashed upon me. Behold! the mighty Baron Nathan come to life again; but instead of Hyacinthos paring his mightiness’s Hühneraugen, he himself, in paring his own nails, had contrived to cut his finger.
‘Come to buy Spanish?’ he asked, with eyes intent upon the sticking-plaster.
‘Oh no,’ said I, ‘I’ve no money to gamble with.’
‘Hasn’t Lord Leicester bought Spanish?’—never looking off the sticking-plaster, nor taking the smallest notice of the telegrams.
‘Not that I know of. Are they good things?’
‘I don’t know; some people think so.’
Here a message was handed in, and something was whispered in his ear.
‘Very well, put it down.’