of a more important and profitable employment,
"like a bird," he sentimentally says, "I quitted
my happy nest to seek adventures"—and to
feather another nest of his own making.

At eighteen years of age, then, the world was
to Jules Mirès the "oyster," which he sought,
in the best way be could, to open. On leaving
Monsieur Beret be entered the office of
Monsieur Ledentu, a commission-agent; but, at the
end of three years, the business assumed proportions
which the young clerk's limited education
disqualified him from conducting, and he was,
consequently, dismissed. His next employment
was a clerkship in a government office, specially
formed for ascertaining house and property value
in and around Bordeaux, and the experience he
acquired in this position enabled him to support
himself and his three sisters, after the office was
suppressed, for several years. But it was a
bare struggle for existence, and at last, in the
year 1841, when he bad completed his thirty-
first year, Jules Mirès took that step which is
taken by nine Frenchmen out of ten when they
are out of luck—he went to Paris.

A native of Bordeaux, his first thought
was to do something in wines; but as he had
neither capital, credit, nor friends, he gave up
that idea in less than a month. He then tried
to turn to account the knowledge he had gained
of house-surveying, but the civic authorities of
Paris were so little desirous of having their
property looked up by an itinerant Jew, and were,
moreover, so generally hostile to his project,
that he was obliged, after trying it on for nearly
two years, to give that up also. A third
attempt, to get up a special agency for collecting
direct taxes, was no more successful than either
of the preceding ventures, and at the end of
1844 Jules Mirès was, as it were, high and dry
in the streets of Paris.

Our speculator had hitherto kept as closely
within the limits of honesty as circumstances
and his natural tendencies would admit of;
but, when, after roughing it for five-and-thirty
years, he found himself without the cash of
which be stood in need, he determined to trade
upon the money of others. The very best opening
for one who wishes to cultivate this line of business
is the Bourse of Paris, and on the Bourse
of Paris Jules Mirès accordingly went,
commencing his speculative career as a dabbler in
promissory shares. "This commerce," says
Monsieur Mirès, in his recently published
Account of his Life and his Affairs, "was at that
time in a very flourishing condition, and from
the very first of my adopting it I obtained a
relative success, which gave me a taste for
financial operations which I had never before
experienced for any other kind of business."

The year 1845 was, as many have good reason
to remember, a year of crisis. The railway
fever was at its height, collapse followed, and
the law against over-speculation was accompanied
by the express interdiction of promissory share
negotiation. Those who had profited by this
mode of conducting affairs—and Monsieur Mirès
seems to have been one of them—were exposed
—most unjustly, of course—to all sorts of virulent
accusations; and some of these share dealers,
Monsieur Mirès tells us, went the length of
actually "blushing like guilty persons, if it
became known that they had gained money by
shares, or the promise of shares!" But, as hard
words break no bones, so, blushing at irregular
profits does not empty the full pocket; and a
change having taken place in the manner of share
dealing, which passed into the hands of the
regular "agents de change," Monsieur Mirès
associated himself as an intermediate with one of
these brokers, and occupied this position when
the revolution of February broke out,
completely upsetting every species of "financial
operation"—a phrase of most convenient
application, and one which Monsieur Mirès greatly
delights in.

The ground again cut from under his feet—
for intermediates seem no longer wanted when
the principals had left off doing business—
Monsieur Mirès listened to a proposition made to
him by a certain Monsieur Millard, to purchase
in conjunction a newspaper called the Journal
des Chemins de Fer, and then, he says, he
began "that series of enterprises which has cost
me so much unfriendly criticism, partial minds
never considering that the very publicity to
which I had recourse was the real proof of my
sincerity." It is in this spirit of perfect openness
that Monsieur Mirès goes on to relate the
history of all the speculations in which he has
been engaged, firmly convinced—or, at all events,
appearing to entertain the conviction—that
nothing could be more legitimate or financially
correct than the operations which have ruined so
many and brought him within the grasp of the
law.

To "brazen it out" seems, in fact, to be an
essential feature of the system which Monsieur
Mirès acted upon, for the benefit of the public—
and of himself; and, drawing a marked line
between "Ma Vie" and "Mes Affaires"—as if
the mere physical had nothing in common with
the financial existence—he enters into the
amplest details, with a sincerity that would be
truly astonishing, if he only revealed the truth.
"At the moment," he says, "of speaking of the
affairs and enterprises which I have conducted
from 1848 to 1860, I am naturally led—in order
that the history of my financial career may be
complete—to describe what my participation
has been in the principal financial events which
have occurred during this period. I may say
with pride that I have greatly contributed to, if
I have not actually initiated, them; and that I
have been at least the instigator of the practical
thought which has brought them about." Let
individuals suffer as they may, to the country at
large Monsieur Mirès declares he is its greatest
benefactor. "Happily for France," he
continues, "the three great financial facts cannot
be destroyed which have marked the last few
years, and which both now and for the future
will contribute to her greatness. These three
facts are: the creation of the Crédit Mobilier;
the adoption of the system of public subscription