It was at noon—­there was a heavy sea, but not a gale.  He saw a large ship steer full on the reef.  She struck, fell over on one side till her yards were in the water, righted herself, fell over on the other, parted in the middle, and broke up.  It did not take five minutes, but during those five minutes there was the appearance of a violent struggle on board, and several shots were fired.  From the papers which were washed ashore it appeared that she was from New York, bound for Havre, with a large cargo and eighty-seven passengers, principally returning emigrants.  No passenger escaped, and only two of the crew:  one was an Italian speaking no French, from whom they could get nothing; the other was an Englishman from Cardiff, speaking French, but almost obstinately uncommunicative.  He said that he was below when the ship struck, that the captain had locked the passengers in the cabin, and that he knew nothing of the causes which had led the ship to go out of her course to run on this rock.

The captain may have been drunk or mad.  Or there may have been a mutiny on board, and those who got possession of the ship may have driven her on the coast, supposing that they could beach her, and ignorant of the interposed reefs, which, as I have said, are not betrayed by breakers.

Our informant accounted for the loss of all, except two persons, by the heavy sea, the sharp reefs, and the blows received by those who tried to swim from the floating cargo.  The two who escaped were much bruised.

A man and woman were found tied to one another and tied to a spar.  They seemed to have been killed by blows received from the rocks or from the floating wreck.

In the evening Ampere read to us the ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme.’  His reading is equal to any acting.  It kept us all, for the first two acts, which are the most comic, in one constant roar of laughter.

’The modern nouveau riche, said Beaumont, ’has little resemblance to M. Jourdain.  He talks of his horses and his carriages, builds a great hotel, and buys pictures.  I have a neighbour of this kind; he drives four-in-hand over the bad roads of La Sarthe, visits with one carriage one day, and another the next.  His jockey stands behind his cabriolet in top-boots, and his coachman wears a grand fur coat in summer.  His own clothes are always new, sometimes in the most accurate type of a groom, sometimes in that of a dandy.  His talk is of steeple-chases.’

‘And does he get on?’ I asked.

‘Not in the least,’ answered Beaumont.  ’In England a nouveau riche can get into Parliament, or help somebody else to get in, and political power levels all distinctions.  Here, wealth gives no power:  nothing, indeed, but office gives power.  The only great men in the provinces are the prefet, the sous-prefet, and the maire.  The only great man in Paris is a minister or a general.  Wealth, therefore, unless accompanied by the social talents, which those who have made their fortunes have seldom had the leisure or the opportunity to acquire, leads to nothing.  The women, too, of the parvenus always drag them down.  They seem to acquire the tournure of society less easily than the men.  Bastide, when Minister, did pretty well, but his wife used to sign her invitations “Femme Bastide.”