Rochefort, brave enough on the duelling-ground, fainted away, and was
carried off in a vehicle, his position as a member of the Legislative Body
momentarily rendering him immune from arrest. Within a month, however, he
was under lock and key, and some fierce rioting ensued in the north of
Paris.
During the spring, my father went to Ireland as special commissioner of
the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Pall Mall Gazette_, in order to
investigate the condition of the tenantry and the agrarian crimes which
were then so prevalent there. Meantime, I was left in Paris, virtually "on
my own," though I was often with my elder brother Edward. About this time,
moreover, a friend of my father's began to take a good deal of interest in
me. This was Captain the Hon. Dennis Bingham, a member of the Clanmorris
family, and the regular correspondent of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in Paris.
He subsequently became known as the author of various works on the
Bonapartes and the Bourbons, and of a volume of recollections of Paris
life, in which I am once or twice mentioned. Bingham was married to a very
charming lady of the Laoretelle family, which gave a couple of historians
to France, and I was always received most kindly at their home near the
Arc de Triomphe.
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