After settling up with Nickell on the Don Carlos expedition I devoted myself, for a few months, to legitimate commerce. I had bachelor quarters on Russell Square, in London, and divided my time between that city and Paris, where I opened a branch of my mercantile and shipping house at 30 Rue Vivienne. While in Paris I lived at the Grand Hotel and loafed at Charley Wells’ American restaurant nearby on the Rue Scribe. In both London and Paris I read and heard considerable about a picturesque South American named Guzman Blanco. He had been driven out of Venezuela, of which country he was Vice-President, and was said to be then planning a revolt through which he expected to gain the presidency. I was anxious to meet him but was unable to do so, as both of us were moving about a great deal. I had thought of Venezuela before I visited Europe and, attracted by the promised revolt, I decided that I would go to that country as soon as the Franco-Prussian War, which then was almost ready to break out, was over, or before that if it lasted longer than I thought it would. Just before the war began I bought three cargoes of wines at Bordeaux and sent them to London, where I sold them later at a good profit. During the brief war, which began on July 19, 1870, and ended in the capitulation of the French at Sedan on September first, I had three ships busy with honest cargoes, but I did not get a chance to do any contraband running until just before its close. The Austrian Army was then being rearmed with the improved Werndle rifle, and thousands of the old guns were stored in the arsenal at Vienna. Nickell had bought a lot of them at a bargain but on account of the war Austria would not release them without a guarantee that they were not to be used against Germany. I was led to believe I could sell five thousand of these rifles to the Committee of Safety at Bordeaux; so I bought that number from Nickell and, with an order for their delivery, I went to Trieste in the “Leckwith.” Charles Lever, the novelist, was then the British consul at Trieste, where he died a year or two later. On the pretence that the arms were for Japan, and that I would be able to establish that fact within a few days, I secured the removal of the guns from Vienna to the Trieste arsenal, which was only a few hundred yards from the dock at which the “Leckwith” was tied up. However, to get them over that short distance and then to get away with them was a problem that puzzled me. I was mulling over it one day in a _café_ when a maudlin young Englishman, who was sitting at the table with me and had been trying to talk to me, pulled out a passport, all plastered with red seals and wax in the old Continental fashion. It was a most formidable and ceremonious looking document and the instant I saw it an inspiration seized me. From the most taciturn I became the most jovial of companions and plied the Englishman with wine until he fell sound asleep.