Everything was rude, as in frontier towns, but here could be found all kinds of people. Bertrand, Comte Clausel, the distinguished opponent of Wellington in Spain, lived for a number of years after 1816 on the bay, near present Arlington, the possible site of Bienville’s villa. Here he wrote his _Exposé Justificatif_, explaining that defection to Napoleon during the Hundred Days for which the Bourbons condemned him to death; and here he raised vegetables and carried them to market in his own wagon. Through Mobile passed those other Napoleonic exiles who, in 1818, ascended the Bigbee to found the unfortunate Vine and Olive company, in what was called for them Marengo County. Near Clausel lived Lakanal, the regicide, the creator of the educational system of revolutionary France. He was for a short time president of the Orleans College of Louisiana; but with his wife, Marie Barbe, he also spent most of his American life raising market vegetables in Garrow’s Bend. Tradition says that he and his neighbor Clausel brought their political differences with them, and would not associate. He was violently opposed to Lafayette. That great Frenchman was enthusiastically welcomed to Mobile in 1825. Arches were erected on Royal Street, and he is said to have been entertained at the house on Government Street opposite the Presbyterian Church. Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, included America in his _grand tour_, and in January, 1826, he also was at Mobile. He does not mention Lakanal at all, nor the Protestant Union Church, built a few years before where Christ Church stands. But the Catholic Church on Royal and Conti, with its tin altar service, and the three thousand people,--French, American, Indian and negro,--interested him; the compress, which by a vise reduced the bale one third; the thirty vessels in the harbor waiting for cotton; the volunteer company celebrating the battle of New Orleans; the wooden houses and brick public buildings, the plank walks and the gambling-houses, the prison, with its whipping-post, are all recorded. This marks a great advance on Hodgson’s unpleasing description of the place in 1820, and, in fact, Mobile had begun that progress which soon distanced the progress of her rivals and made her in the thirties a great city.