Note 63 — Chapter 4

The Italian exiles were above all suspicion. There was one very amusing incident among the French refugees. B., who is mentioned in the account of Barthélemy’s duel, collected some money on instructions from Ledru-Rollin and spent it. His desire to return to London was greatly diminished thereby, and he began to ask permission to remain at Marseilles. Billier replied that B. was so harmless in a political sense that he might have remained, but that his dishonesty in connection with his own party showed that he was an undesirable person, for which reason he refused him permission.

In this matter too the Germans carry off the palm. They gathered by collections in America and Manchester, I remember, twenty thousand francs. This sum, destined for the purposes of agitation and propaganda, legal expenses and so on, they put into one of the London banks and elected as trustees Kinkel, Ruge and Count Oscar Reichenbach, three irreconcilable enemies. They had at once grasped what a rich source of unpleasantness for one another had been put into their hands, and so hastened to make it a condition that the bank should give no payment without all three signatures. One or two of them had only to sign a cheque for the third to refuse to do so. Whatever the German refugee society might do, one signature was not sufficient. So the sum lies untouched in the bank to this day, probably destined for the future Teutonic republic.—(Author’s Note.)