Barnato In The Commune

. A writer of stories about Barney Barnato says, in the Phüadelphia Buletin, that there is a circumstantially definite account of his presenoe in Paria during the commune of 1871. In the utter break up of all social fabric he 'ound hi aapacitieg of a paying order. Por there is little doubt that his was the craft tjbat enabled the shrewder communards to realize the money needed to supply the sinews of war. One day, during the gloom and stress of the government siege, the president of the Bank of France was confronted jy an unkempt ruob. The deraand was explicit. They wanted all the gold in the bank's vaults. The spokesman flourished a bloody saber and the mob accentuated the demand by all sorts of ferocious threats. It was in the height of this melee that a man who had been counseling the flnancial deputy of the commune rode up, adorned byaredsash and other insignia of the terrorists. He made his way through the vociferous throng and haiided the governor of the bank a large envelope. While the official was reading it the besashed emissary turned to the clamoring nomads and, in a tongue unknown to the officials and probably to many of the mob, addressed them a few sentences. A singular event followed. A dozen of the ringleaders at once began haranguing the rioters. In a few minutes every one of them withdrew. The besashed personage remained in consultation with the governor and when it was euded withdrew. An hour later six covered wagons came to the bank and were laden with bags such as the bank always makes use of in transporting specie. When Barnato appeared as the diamond king in South África, a score of the communards, who had fled ' from France, were in exile in the región where Barnato had cornered the mines. One day in the plenittide of his affluence he was wuylaid, riding in the Rand, by a company of miners. One of them, by a few words, succeeded in gaining his private ear. This man was kuown as the most ferocious of the bloodthirsty gang who had taken part in the killing of the hostages in La Roquette. He recognized Barnato as the emissary sent by the commune to the Bank of France, and the knowledge enabled him to get in on the ground floor of the diamond deal. The tale goes on to teil that Barnato, who figured as Felix Barnette, had fallen desperately in love with a figurante in the Folies Bergeres just as the war of 1870 broke ont; that he had lingered in Paris, becarae a member of one of the "Red" societies, exploited the ardeut patriotism of his coworkers and succeeded in getting severai millions of the cash he had forced from the Bank of France. The tale, whether true or not, is by no means so improbable as the actual facts known in the man 's mastery of the African diamond yields, for to do that he was forced to put himself against such schemers as Ceoil Rhodes and to contend with the "dour" shiftiness of the Boers, and particularly with that astute-old fox üncle Kruger.