At Bayonne, in ordinary cases, the custom was for prisoners to wait on the authorities and receive passports for Verdun; this was done; the letter was purposely delayed, and Grant with sagacious boldness refrained from escaping towards the Pyrenees. Judging, that if the governor did not recapture him at once he would entirely suppress the letter, and let the matter drop, he asked at the hotels if any French officer was going to Paris, and finding General Souham, then on his return from Spain, was so bent, he introduced himself, requesting permission to join his party. The other readily assented, and while thus travelling the general, unacquainted with Marmont’s intentions, often rallied his companion about his adventures, little thinking he was then an instrument to forward the most dangerous and skilful of them all. In passing through Orleans, Grant by a species of intuition discovered a secret English agent, and from him received a recommendation to another in Paris. He looked upon Marmont’s double-dealing, and the expressed design to take away his life, as equivalent to a discharge of his parole, which was moreover only given with respect to Spain; hence on reaching Paris he took leave of Souham, opened an intercourse with the Parisian agent, and obtained money. He would not go before the police to have his passport examined, but took lodgings in a public street, frequented the coffee-houses and visited the theatres boldly, for the secret agent, intimately connected with the police, soon ascertained that his escape had been unnoticed. After several weeks, the agent told him a passport was ready for one Jonathan Buck, an American who had died suddenly on the day it was to be claimed. Grant coolly demanded this passport as for Jonathan Buck and instantly departed for the mouth of the Loire, where, for reasons not necessary to mention, he expected more assistance. New difficulties awaited him, yet they were overcome by fresh exertions of his surprising talent, which fortune seemed to delight in aiding. Having taken a passage in an American ship its departure was unexpectedly delayed; then he frankly told his situation to the captain, who desired him to become a discontented seaman, gave him sailor’s clothing with forty dollars, and sent him to lodge the money in the American consul’s hands, as a pledge that he would prosecute for ill usage when he reached the United States: this being the custom, the consul gave him a certificate to pass from port to port as a discharged sailor seeking a ship.