the Exchange were, for a few days previous, very
apprehensive, and the funds were therefore in a rapidly sinking
condition. The good news could not, however, in the common course of
despatch, be publicly known for another day. Rothschild therefore
planned to order his brokers to buy up, cautiously, all the stock that
should be in the market by twelve o'clock the following day. He sent for
his principal broker thus early, in order to entrust him with the
important instruction.

The broker was rather tardier than Rothschild's patience could brook; he
therefore determined to go himself. As soon as Rothschild was gone,
Lucas began to recover, and by degrees was able to get up, though
distracted, as he said, "with a violent headache," and insisted, in
spite of the housekeeper's expostulations, upon going home. But Lucas
went to his broker, and instructed him to buy up all the stock he could
get by ten o'clock the following morning. About eleven o'clock Lucas met
Rothschild, and inquired satirically how he, Rothschild, was off for
stock. Lucas won the day, and Rothschild is said never to have forgiven
"the base, dishonest, and nefarious stratagem."

Yet, with all his hoardings, says Mr. Margoliouth, Rothschild was by no
means a happy man. Dangers and assassinations seemed to haunt his
imagination by day and by night, and not without grounds. Many a time,
as he himself said, just before he sat down to dinner, a note would be
put into his hand, running thus:--"If you do not send me immediately the
sum of five hundred pounds, I will blow your brains out." He affected to
despise such threats; they, nevertheless, exercised a direful effect
upon the millionaire. He loaded his pistols every night before he went
to bed, and put them beside him. He did not think himself more secure in
his country house than he did in his bed. One day, while busily engaged
in his golden occupation, two foreign gentlemen were announced as
desirous to see Baron Rothschild _in propria persona_. The strangers had
not the foresight to have the letters of introduction in readiness. They
stood, therefore, before the Baron in the ludicrous attitude of having
their eyes fixed upon the Hebrew Croesus, and with their hands rummaging
in large European coat-pockets. The fervid and excited imagination of
the Baron conjured up a multitudinous array of conspiracies. Fancy
eclipsed his reason, and, in a fit of excitement, he seized a huge
ledger, which he aimed and hu