He was a prisoner for debt, he said, within the rules of the King's Bench, and he had come to Lord Cochrane to implore him to release him from his difficulties and carry him to America in his ship. His request was refused--it could not be granted, indeed, according to naval rules; and de Berenger was dismissed. But before he left he urged piteously that to return to the King's Bench prison in full uniform would attract suspicion. It was not stated how he had left it, but he no doubt implied that he had escaped and changed into uniform somewhere. Why he did not go back to the same place to resume his plain clothes did not appear. Lord Cochrane only knew that in answer to his urgent entreaty he lent him some clothes. The room was at that moment littered with clothes, which were to be sent on board the _Tonnant_, and he unsuspiciously gave de Berenger a "civilian's hat and coat." This was a capital part of the charge against Lord Cochrane.
De Berenger had altogether lied about himself. He had not come from within the rules of the King's Bench but from Dover, where he had been seen the previous night at the Ship hotel. He was then in uniform, and pretended to be an aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, the bearer of important despatches. He made no secret of the transcendent news he brought. Bonaparte had been killed by the Cossacks, Louis XVIII proclaimed, and the allied armies were on the point of occupying Paris. To give greater publicity to the intelligence, he sent it by letter to the port-admiral at Deal, to be forwarded to the Government in London by means of the semaphore telegraph. The effect of this startling news was to send up stocks ten per cent., and many speculators who sold on the rise realised enormous sums.
De Berenger, still in uniform, followed in a post-chaise, but on reaching London he dismissed it, took a hackney coach, and drove straight to Lord Cochrane's. He had some slight acquaintance with his lordship, and had already petitioned him for a passage
[Illustration: BOW STREET POLICE COURT IN 1808.
(_From a Contemporary Print by Rowlandson and Pugin._)]
to America, an application which had been refused. There was nothing extraordinary, then, in de Berenger's visit. His lordship, again, claimed that de Berenger's call on him, instead of going straight to the Stock Exchange to commence operations, indicated that he had weakened in his plot, and did not see how to carry it through. "Had I been his confederate," says Lord Cochrane in his affidavit, "it is not within the bounds of credibility that he would have come in the first instance to my house, and waited two hours for my return home, in place of carrying out the plot he had undertaken, or that I should have been occupied in perfecting my lamp invention for the use of the convoy, of which I was in a few days to take charge, instead of being on _the only spot_ where any advantage to be derived from the Stock Exchange hoax could be realised, had I been a participator in it. Such advantage must have been immediate, before the truth came out; and to have reaped it, had I been guilty, it was necessary that I should not lose a moment. It is still more improbable that being aware of the hoax, I should not have speculated largely for the special risk of that day."