Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/204

180 you see sales by auction in some of the streets.

A good many other personages besides "the electors of 1789," and who when in France had cut quite another figure, were to be found walking about the streets of Philadelphia, as the Vicomte de Noailles, Due de L——, M. S——, Volney, the Bishop of Autun, and tutti quanti.

Some of them gambled on the Stock Exchange, and nearly always successfully. Others were not so fortunate, and their speculations were more risky; nor were they above laying traps for those of their countrymen who had newly arrived in America.

Senator Morris had conceived a vast and adventurous undertaking. The celebrated Burke had written somewhere or other that Europe was about to totally collapse, and that North America was destined to receive the refugees and all the goods they were able to save. The Senator, in company with M. S—— and Vicomte de Noailles, speculated on this prophecy. They acquired more than a mil-