his wife and daughters from the general
wreck, Charles Mignon returned to Paris, where the Emperor made him
lieutenant-colonel in the cuirassiers of the Guard and commander of the
Legion of honor. The colonel dreamed of being count and general
after the first victory. Alas! that hope was quenched in the blood of
Waterloo. The colonel, slightly wounded, retired to the Loire, and left
Tours before the disbandment of the army.

In the spring of 1816 Charles sold his wife's property out of the funds
to the amount of nearly four hundred thousand francs, intending to seek
his fortune in America, and abandon his own country where persecution
was beginning to lay a heavy hand on the soldiers of Napoleon. He went
to Havre accompanied by Dumay, whose life he had saved at Waterloo
by taking him on the crupper of his saddle in the hurly-burly of the
retreat. Dumay shared the opinions and the anxieties of his colonel; the
poor fellow idolized the two little girls and followed Charles like
a spaniel. The latter, confidence that the habit of obedience, the
discipline of subordination, and the honesty and affection of the
lieutenant would make him a useful as well as a faithful retainer,
proposed to take him with him in a civil capacity. Dumay was only too
happy to be adopted into the family, to which he resolved to cling like
the mistletoe to an oak.

While waiting for an opportunity to embark, at the same time making
choice of a ship and reflecting on the chances offered by the various
ports for which they sailed, the colonel heard much talk about the
brilliant future which the peace seemed to promise to Havre. As he
listened to these conversations among the merchants, he foresaw the
means of fortune, and without loss of time he set about making himself
the owner of landed property, a banker, and a shipping-merchant. He
bought land and houses in the town, and despatched a vessel to New York
freighted with silks purchased in Lyons at reduced prices. He sent Dumay
on the ship as his agent; and when the latter returned, after making a
double profit by the sale of the silks and the purchase of cottons at
a low valuation, he found the colonel installed with his family in
the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the principles of
banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of a native of
Provence.

This double operation of Dumay's was worth a fortune to the house of
Mignon. The colonel purchased the villa at Ingouv