Gambetta was seated at his desk in a large and handsomely furnished room. He made not the slightest sign of being aware that I was present. He did not even turn his face toward me. I did not learn until afterward that the distinguished Italian-Frenchman had one glass eye, and could see me just as well at an angle as he could full-face. But I grew tired of standing there silent, and was already weary from my long incarceration. I decided, after taking in this strange character, then at the top of the seething pot of French politics, that the best course for me was to put on a bold front. "When a distinguished stranger calls to see you, M. Gambetta, I think you might offer him a chair." The great man smiled, and motioned me to a seat with considerable graciousness. I took a chair, and said: "M. Gambetta, you are the head of France, and I intend to be President of the United States. You can assist me, and I can assist you." He looked at me with a curious regard, but did not smile. "Send me to America, and I can help you get munitions of war, and win over the sympathy and assistance of the Americans." I knew, of course, that he was going to send me out of France in any event, and I wanted to discount his plan. The Dictator smiled again, and said: "You sent Cluseret to Paris, and bought him a uniform for 300 francs." "You are only fairly well informed, M. Gambetta. I paid 350 francs for the uniform." "Cluseret is a scoundrel," he said. "The Communards call you that," I replied. He ended our interview by saying a few pleasant words, bowing me out of the room, and sending me out of France forthwith. I went straight to London, then to Liverpool, and sailed for New York in the Abyssinia, which, curiously enough, was afterward the pioneer ship on the line of boats between Vancouver and Yokohama, it having been bought by the Canadian Pacific. CHAPTER XXVI A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 1872 I have passed a great many days in jail. A jail is a good place to meditate and to plan in, if only one can be patient in such a place. Much of my work was thought out and wrought out while living in the fifteen jails of which I have been a tenant. It was in a jail in Dublin, called the Four Courts' Marshalsea, that a feeling of confidence that I might one day be President of the United States first came into definite form. It was in this prison, also, that I planned Train Villa, which was to be built in Newport. As my life in that Villa, which in its day was one of the most famous and luxurious in America, was a sort of prelude to my campaign for the Presidency, I may fitly say here what I have to say about it in this book. [Illustration: Train Villa, George Francis Train's summer home in Newport from 1868 to 1872.]