“I'll teach you, Bernard! There are few secrets in my craft. We deal with smugglers,--we buy from them, and sell to them! For the pedler that comes to us in our shop in the 'Rue des Sol,' we care little; for our customers who drop in after nightfall, we have a sincere affection. You have hitherto regarded them in the light of visitors and friends. You little suspected that through them we carried on all our business; and just as little did it ever occur to you that you yourself are already a great favorite with them. Your stories, your remarks, the views you take of life, all your observations, are quite novel and amusing to poor fellows whose whole experience of the world is picked up in stormy nights in the Channel, or still more perilous adventures on shore. Many have already asked me when you would be with me of an evening, that they might come; others have begged they might bring friends along with them; and, in short, they like you; and they are fellows who, when they have fancies, don't grudge the price they pay for them.” I laughed heartily as I heard this. Assuredly it had never occurred to myself to observe the circumstance, still less to make it a matter of profit or speculation; but, somehow, the coarse flattery of even such admiration was not without a certain charm for my mind. Still, it was a part I could not have condescended to practise for gain, nor, perhaps, had such been my intention, could I have been equally successful. Dubos, however, assigned me a duty which made a happy compromise between my self-esteem and my desire for employment. This was to make acquaintance with all of that adventurous race comprised between the buccaneer and the smuggler; to learn their various wants, when they voyaged, and for what, became my province. They were a wild, wasteful, and reckless class, who loved far better to deal with one who should stand to them in the relation of a companion than as a chapman or a dealer. If I am free to own that my occupation was not very dignified, I am equally able to assert that I never prostituted any influence I obtained in this way to personal objects of profit. On the contrary, I have repeatedly been able to aid, by good counsel and advice, men whose knowledge of adventurous life was far greater than my own; and oftentimes has it occurred to me to obtain for them quadruple the value they had themselves set upon objects they possessed. I can scarcely account to myself for the extraordinary interest the pursuit engendered,--the characters, the places they frequented, the habits, were all of the strangest, and might reasonably have amused one ardently fond of adventure; but there was, besides all this, a degree of danger in the intercourse that imparted a most intense degree of interest to it.