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On the signing of the deed Ouvrard received drafts from the Treasury of Madrid to the extent of 52,500,000 piastres; making 262,500,000 francs; but the piastres were to be brought from America, while the terms of the treaty required that the urgent wants of the Spanish Government should be immediately supplied, and, above all, the progress of the famine checked.
The embarrassment of the Treasury, and the well-known integrity of the Minister, M. de Barbe Marbois, induced Ouvrard to remit the 10,000,000 piastres.
I observed the greater number of the facts to which I shall refer in their origin, and the rest I learned from M. Ouvrard himself, who, when he visited Hamburg in 1808, communicated to me a variety of details respecting his immense transaction with the King of Spain.
As Ouvrard had a great number of friends they bestirred themselves to get some person of influence to speak to the First Consul in his favour. But this was a commission no one was willing to undertake; because, prejudiced as Bonaparte was, the least hint of the kind would have appeared to him to be dictated by private interest.
I was in the cabinet at the time, and I think I still hear the dry and decided "No," which was all the answer M. de Talleyrand obtained. When we were alone the First Consul said to me, "Do you not see, Bourrienne, this Ouvrard must have made a good thing of his business with the Prince of the Peace? But the fool! Why did he get Talleyrand to ask me for a passport?
Some spectators laughed, and others smiled, but M. Ouvrard remained perfectly grave, saying that he could not understand how people could be so unfeeling as to laugh at a misfortune, for the man would probably take cold. Perhaps the reader thinks he had no sense of humor.
She thought it at least probable, if not certain, that I should return after long years; she waited patiently, and when at last I did return there was no need to tell on what errand. An incident occurred that might have been a partial revelation to me and a clear one to her. Before my departure from Paris, M. Ouvrard said to me that he had been told I was engaged to "une Francaise."
To this security, with which M. Ouvrard impressed all official persons who rendered him services, I attribute the facility with which he obtained the direction of the numerous enterprises in which he engaged, and which produced so many changes in his fortune.
His brother went to Mexico in his stead. In 1802 a dreadful scarcity afflicted France. M. Ouvrard took upon himself, in concert with Wanlerberghe, the task of importing foreign grain to prevent the troubles which might otherwise have been expected.
Tall, well-built, fair, with beautiful blue eyes full of irresistible fire and life, his elegant appearance made him remarkable by the side of d'Orsay, Forbin, Ouvrard; in short, in the battalion of fine men that surrounded the Emperor.
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