Prince Galitzen of Russia gave me a dinner at the Café Philippe, where I met some of the Russian nobility. These men were the cleverest I have ever seen. All were good linguists, artists, statesmen, soldiers, men of the world. At Prince Czartoryski's I met leading Poles, who were still revolutionists, plotting against Russia. One of these, a man of about eighty, said to me: "In my teens I went to St. Petersburg, saw Alexander and told him the condition of Poland. I asked him what he was going to do. He asked me what I should recommend. 'There are two ways of governing Poland,' I said; 'through interest or through fear.' Fear was the policy adopted. When I was forty, I again went to St. Petersburg. Nicholas was Czar, and he repeated the same question. I again answered, 'through interest or through fear.' When I was sixty I met another Emperor, and the same question was put to me, and I made the same reply. Poland is partitioned," he added; "and we are now only a memory." At Leon Lillo's I met many Spaniards of the nobility and the ruling family. I still think that Lillo was the son of Queen Cristina, by her husband the Duke of Rianzares, a common soldier, of physical beauty, whom she had taken from the ranks and made a Duke. I used to meet him at Lillo's. Cristina, who was then probably the richest woman in the world, had bought Malmaison, the palace of Josephine. It was through this connection that I met Salamanca, the Spanish Rothschild, her banker. I shall speak later of how I got the funds to build the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, connecting the Erie Railway with the Ohio and Mississippi Railway. At the Marquis del Grillo's I met his wife, the great Italian tragedienne, Ristori, whom I had seen on the stage in "Elizabeth." I met leading men of the Second Empire at the house of the Count de Rouville, including Persigny, the Foreign Minister, Count de Morny, the Minister of War, Walewski, Prince "Plon-Plon," and Mocquard, private secretary to the Emperor. At Triat's Gymnase I met the men who afterward organized the Commune. At the house of Mrs. Winfield Scott, who was then living in Paris, I met many Americans, and at Castle's I saw "Bohemia." Meeting all these different persons, distinguished in the great world of Paris, I was gaining the knowledge that would make me a walking library of political affairs in Europe. This made up for the loss of a college career. Practical experience and observation were my university.