A Diplomatic Adventure

On the 6th of October I found on my table a letter of introduction and the card of Captain Arthur Merton, U.S.A. (2d Infantry), 12 Rue du Roi de Rome.

The note was simple but positive. My uncle, Harry Wellwood, a cynical, pessimistic old bachelor and a rank Copperhead, wrote me to make the captain welcome, which meant much to those who knew my uncle. On that day the evening mail was large. Alphonse laid the letters on my table, and as he lingered I said, “Well, what is it?”

“Monsieur may not observe that three letters from America have been opened in the post-office.”

I said, “Yes.” In fact, it was common and of course annoying. One of these letters was from my uncle. He wrote:

I gave Arthur Merton an open letter to you, but I add this to state that he is one of the few decent gentlemen in the army of the North.

He inherited his father’s share in the mine of which I am part owner, and has therefore no need to serve an evil cause. He was born in New Orleans of Northern parents, spent two years in the School of Mines in Paris, and until this wretched war broke out has lived for some years among mining camps and in the ruffian life of the far West. It is a fair chance which side turns up, the ways of the salon, the accuracy of the man of science, or the savagery of the Rockies. You will like him.

He has been twice wounded, and then had the good sense to acquire the mild typhoid fever which gave him an excuse to ask for leave of absence. He has no diplomatic or political errand, and goes abroad merely to recruit his health. Things here are not yet quite as bad as I could desire to see them. Antietam was unfortunate, but in the end the European States will recognize the South and end the war. I shall then reside in Richmond.

Yours truly,

Harry Wellwood.

I hoped that the imperial government profited by my uncle’s letter. It was or may have been of use, as things turned out, in freeing Captain Merton from police observation, which at this time rarely failed to keep under notice every American.

I was kept busy at the legation two thirds of the following day. At five I set out in a coupÉ having Alphonse on the seat with the coachman. He left cards for me at a half-dozen houses, and then I told him to order the driver to leave me at Rue du Roi de Rome, No. 12.—Captain Merton’s address.

As I sat in the carriage and looked out at the exterior gaiety of the open-air life of Paris, my mind naturally turned in contrast to the war at home and the terrible death harvest of Antietam, news of which had lately reached Europe. The sense of isolation in a land of hostile opinion often oppressed me, and rarely was as despotic as on this afternoon. I turned for relief to speculative thought of the numberless dramas of the lives of the busy multitude among which I drove. I wondered how many lived simple and uneventful days, like mine, in the pursuit of mere official or domestic duties. Not the utmost imaginative ingenuity of the novelist could have anticipated, as I rode along amidst the hurries and the leisures of a Parisian afternoon, that my next hour or two was about to bring into the monotony of office life an adventure as strange as any which I could have conceived as possible for any human unit of these numberless men and women.

Captain Merton lived so far away from the quarter in which I had been leaving cards that it was close to dusk when I got out of the carriage at the hotel I sought.

I meant to return on foot, but hearing thunder, and rain beginning to fall heavily, I told Alphonse to keep the carriage. The captain was not at home. I had taken his card from my pocket to assure me in regard to the address, and as I hurried to reËnter my coupÉ I put it in my card-case for future reference.

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