My Dear Madam: I intend to call upon you to-morrow (Friday), for the purpose of handing to you ten thousand francs, with whose use you are acquainted, according to the notice which Mr. Peyton has given me. I beg you to wait for me about one o'clock p. m. I shall be charmed to press your hand, and to renew to you the assurance of my sincere friendship. Mocquard.
Ten thousand francs fell far short of the sum to be paid Mr. F., and poor Peyton gave him notes of hand for the remainder of the debt—if such it might be called. Of course, Mocquard supposed that the advanced subsidy went for the legitimate expenses of the paper, never imagining that Peyton had put his fingers in a trap for the second time.
Mr. F. was replaced by Mr. Thornton Hunt, son of Leigh Hunt, the poet (and who now occupies a similar position on the "Daily Telegraph"), whose salary was fixed at the somewhat extravagent figure of twelve guineas a week. The affair of Mr. F. naturally suggested to Peyton's mind the advisability of a plan which his wife had often urged upon him—the removal of his residence at once to London, where he might have a daily personal supervision of the workings of what might and should have been this magnificent property, and to no longer trust it to other hands. But this was a sacrifice which Peyton found himself unable to make. Loving Paris with an ardor which no words can paint, hating London with ludicrous force, Peyton preferred the life of anxiety he was now leading, with its only occasional supervisionary visits to the newspaper office in the Strand, to the calmest existence in the hated and murky British capital. Mocquard consulted about the change, good-naturedly gave up the question, telling Peyton to use his own judgment in the matter (as if Peyton had any to use), adding, as an additional excuse for Peyton's lingering in Paris, that "in case he went to London to live, in all probability the money would have to go through the French Embassy there, and the Emperor did not want the Embassy to know anything about it."
This remark formed sufficient pretext for Peyton to at once abandon the dreaded idea of removing to London, and the consequence was that the affairs at the office in the Strand went on in the same reckless and disastrous way as before.
During all this time Peyton kept up the farce of writing a biography of the Emperor, and many opportunities were afforded him to facilitate a work which in reality had ceased after a dozen pages. Notable among these facilities was what was called the "Times' Scrap Book" (Mocquard pronounced it Le Teemes), which contained a collection of political articles cut from the columns of the London "Times," all treating of Napoleon III., and enunciating the most diverse and opposite opinions which it were possible for the brain of man to conceive, or pen to indite. These the Emperor had carefully gathered together, and with his own haud written
