In those days, our social circle varied from year to year according to the political and military conditions of the hour. Occasionally the arrival of some distinguished newcomer on a special mission from abroad would create a stir among us. The advent, toward the close of the year 1865, of M. Langlais, the fifth financier sent by Napoleon III to organize the finances of the empire, caused considerable excitement and aroused the hopes of the court. His appointment to succeed M. de Bonnefons had been heralded by the French official papers with much pomposity. He came ostensibly to act as minister of finance (without a portfolio), at an enormous salary, and was supposed, by those who sent him, to take the full direction of Mexican financial affairs. He was a councilor of state, and was possessed large experience of French politics. A ministerial official, methodical, precise, fresh from the well-appointed offices of the French government, he arrived at Vera Cruz just as a guerrilla band, after taking up the rails of the only railway then laid upon Mexican soil, had attacked a train and massacred its escort of French soldiers. The poor man's stereotyped ideas of existence were considerably shaken up by the occurrence; but he was a firm believer in his own capacity, and was disposed to attribute the failures of his predecessors to their inferiority to himself. He won the confidence and personal regard of the young sovereigns, and unhesitatingly undertook to raise the public revenue, then of eighty-four millions of dollars, to one hundred and twenty millions. How far he might have gone toward fulfilling his promise it is impossible to tell, for he died suddenly on February 23, 1866.* * M. Langlais is stated to have said that he was working to give Maximilian the chance to abdicate honorably; but the favor in which he was held at court makes such a statement doubtful. His death was a blow to the court, where he stood in high favor. The Empress Charlotte especially is said to have detected in it the finger of a fate adverse to the empire. This calamity was soon followed by another, well calculated to cast the gloom of a dark shadow across the path of the young princess.