Lamartine, it will be remembered, married an English lady, a most charming, lovely woman; but he had never learned to speak English. He was like Hugo in this respect, and thought it was not worth while to struggle through the intricacies and difficulties of the spelling and pronunciation. But Madame Lamartine spoke French very fluently and accurately.
I have observed as an invariable rule, from one end of the world to the other, that if one person addresses another in a language the second person does not understand, the talker thinks he can make himself understood by simply bawling out his sentences like a town-crier. Mr. Seward was no exception to this common frailty among mankind. When he saw that Lamartine did not understand his English, he placed his hand over his mouth, and shouted into M. Lamartine's ear. The great Frenchman smiled at each discharge, but could not reply. At last I said, "Mr. Seward, M. Lamartine is not deaf, but he does not understand English. If you will permit either Madame Lamartine or myself to interpret for you, there will be no difficulty." Mr. Seward continued to shout for some time, but finally broke down. Madame Lamartine and I then translated his remarks to Lamartine. After this we got along finely, and a most delightful conversation followed between the two men.
It had been my intention, when I came to Paris, to go on to Australia; but as I passed through the various countries of Europe I saw that the shadow of panic and failure rested upon all. I had, indeed, completed many arrangements for going back to Melbourne, and I had got a letter of credit from the representative in London of the Bank of New South Wales for £20,000; but the project fell through, because of the panics and disasters of the year '57.
In '58--I may mention at this place--I had a few months' leisure on my hands, and decided to give my wife and her stepmother, Mrs. George T. M. Davis, a trip about Europe. We traveled through France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. At Leghorn we went to witness a spectacular exhibition of the storming of Sebastopol. It was a magnificent spectacle, realistic in the extreme. No one was astonished, when, at the very point where the city was taken and the fort blown up, a terrific burst of light appeared. Instantly thereafter we discovered that the explosion had been too real. The theater was ablaze. Of course there was a wild rush for the doors. Panic followed, and while we were crushed and trampled in the press, we got off finally with only severe bruises. The official report next morning gave the casualties as forty killed and one hundred injured; but the Government suppressed the facts. The dead and injured far outnumbered these figures.