Pierre-César was sent by Mr. John Hope to England to see Sir Francis Baring on some business, and fell in love with Sir Francis's third daughter Dorothy. Before leaving England he asked Sir Francis to permit him to become engaged to his daughter. Sir Francis refused. Pierre-César then said: "Would it make any difference to your decision if you knew that Mr. Hope was about to take me into partnership?" Sir Francis unhesitatingly admitted that {3} it would. Pierre-César then went back to Holland and suggested to Mr. Hope that he might be taken into partnership. On Mr. Hope discouraging the idea, he said: "Would it make any difference to your decision if you knew that I was engaged to the daughter of Sir Francis Baring?" Mr. Hope replied, "Certainly." Whereupon the wily clerk said: "Well, I am engaged to Miss Dorothy Baring." That very day he was able to write to Sir Francis announcing the news of his admission to partnership in the house of Hope, and in the same letter he claimed the hand of his bride.[3] The following picture of Pierre-César by a contemporary is interesting. The writer was Vincent Nolte, for many years a clerk in the house of Hope at Amsterdam. "Mr. Labouchère was at that time but twenty-two, yet ere long assumed the highly respectable position of head of the firm, the first in the world, and studied the manners of a French courtier previous to the Revolution: these he soon made so thoroughly his own, that they seemed to be a part of his own nature. He made a point of distinguishing himself in everything he undertook by a certain perfection, and carried this feeling so far that, on account of the untractable lack of elasticity of his body and a want of ear for music which nature had denied him, he for eighteen years deemed it necessary to take dancing-lessons, because he saw that others surpassed him in the graceful accomplishment. It was almost painful to see him dance. The old school required, in the French quadrille, some _entrechats_ and one or two pirouettes, and the delay they occasioned him always threw him out of time. I have often seen the old gentleman, already more than fifty, return from a quadrille covered with perspiration. Properly speaking, he had no refined education, understood but very {4} little of the fine arts, and, notwithstanding his shrewdness and quickness of perception, possessed no natural powers of wit, and consequently was all the more eager to steal the humour of other people. He once repeated to myself as a witty remark of his own to one of his clerks, the celebrated answer of De Sartines, a former chief of the French police, to one of his subordinates who asked for an increase of pay in the following words: 'You do not give me enough--still I must live!' The reply he got was: 'I do not perceive the necessity of that!' Now, so hard-hearted a response was altogether foreign to Mr. Labouchère's disposition, as he was a man of most excellent and generous feeling. He had,