Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/331

Rh took the purchase-money, went to London, and to this day stands registered in the Somerset House as owner and proprietor of the "Morning Chronicle." The purchase was effected through the agency of Messrs. Mangham & Dixon, Solicitors, Bedford Row, London; and we may state that Mr. Peyton has always blamed this firm for the disasters which followed the sale.

For at the sale began the troubles. Relying on the penetration of his solicitors for a careful and conscientious examination of the deeds, and a rigid exclusion of any line or word which would unfavorably affect the interests of their client, Mr. Peyton signed the deed without having sufficiently acquainted himself with its contents, and, to his amazement and dismay, afterward found that the sellers of the property had inserted a clause by which Mr. Peyton made himself responsible for all the "debts of the 'Chronicle, when his previous understanding was that eight thousand pounds was the price of the "Chronicle," free from debt. Within a week began Peyton's tortures on the score of money. It was understood that the subsidy which the "Chronicle" was to receive should be fixed at the sum of twenty thousand francs a month, being eight hundred pounds, or exactly eight times what it had received during the ownership of Mr. Moore, and it was hoped that in less than a year the journal would pay its own expenses, and in a twelvemonth after that, perhaps—delusive hope!—make money. Speeding back to Paris, Peyton laid before Mocquard the sad state of the case in regard to the unfortunate clause of the debts, and, as perplexed as Peyton himself, Mocquard counselled secrecy on this head. "We must not tell the Emperor just yet," said he; "wait till some day when I find him in a perfectly good humor"—a day which never came.

The aphorism of the Dead Sea fruit was now illustrated in Peyton's daily life. Tortured beyond expression to procure money enough to enable the "Chronicle" to "coach over" (to use the English phrase) from week to week, he was also in continual hot water with Mocquard, whose impatient nature manifested itself in reproaching Peyton for his lack of shrewdness in allowing that unfortunate clause to be inserted in the deed, and his want of editorial tact in permitting so fine a journal, backed by so much money, to languish so completely.

The greatest cause of strife between Peyton and Mocquard in the affairs of the "Chronicle" was in the date of the payment of the subsidy—Mocquard contending that the twenty thousand francs should be paid every calendar month, Peyton that it should be paid every four weeks. About this time, too, another evidence of Peyton's want of tact was made evident, and affected him, as usual, in the "Chronicle's" weak point—its exchequer. On taking the "Chronicle" out of the hands of Messrs. Glover & Moore, Mr.