was received
at once, and upon the production of his letters was treated with the
utmost consideration. He asked for 50,000 gulden ($20,000), which was
given him at once. The amount for fair time at Leipsic was not large. In
a very short time the business was done. The money being paid in gulden
notes, it made a pretty big bundle. As agreed upon, he went direct to
the cafe, carrying the money, while I stopped at a broker's office and
bought French money, notes and gold, for my new Saxon thalers. There the
transformation scene was re-enacted, but we could not leave town until 5
o'clock. We spent the time visiting the famous fair. Leipsic overflowed
with the fair. It was fair on the brain with every one. This annual fair
has been a yearly feature of the old city for four centuries, and draws
to it people from all over the European world, even from furthest
Russia. Soon after 5 o'clock we were on the train, but, for some reason
which I now forget, we did not arrive until 10 o'clock the next day at
Frankfort.

Frankfort, the home and still the fortress of the Rothschilds.

In Frankfort the Bourse opens at 10 a.m., and closes at 2. During those
hours the bankers are to be found on the Exchange only, and not at their
offices. Many of the offices are then deserted and fast locked. It
proved to be the case with the firm to which our letters were addressed,
and if we were to do any business in Frankfort we had of necessity to
wait until 2 p.m., but as it was now Wednesday and the third day since
our affair in Berlin, the first draft drawn on London, if promptly
mailed, would probably have been delivered at the Union Bank this
morning. Of course, as soon as the manager of the foreign department
found a draft for a large sum drawn by a stranger and made payable to
their correspondent in Berlin, he would at once surmise that a fraud had
been committed and undoubtedly would send a telegram to Germany to that
effect. The forgery once known in Berlin, the rumor of it, with a
thousand exaggerations, might easily fly to every Bourse in Europe, and
I feared that by 2 o'clock the story might possibly become known on the
Frankfort Exchange. So far we had $43,000, the result of our two days'
operations, but we had from the first great hopes of Frankfort, chiefly
because it was the money centre of the Continent, therefore the bankers
were used to handling large sums of money, and so long as everything was
all right they would hand out any