1884–1885: (Inflation, Peculation, and the Affaire des Mandats): In a perverse way Bazelais had won — by clawing the country apart, forcing the government to…

1884–1885: (Inflation, Peculation, and the Affaire des Mandats): In a perverse way Bazelais had won — by clawing the country apart, forcing the government to spend millions for arms, killing commerce, and polarizing society and the races, the insurrection inflicted wounds on Salomon and his programs that could never be healed. Paper money and inflation followed on the heels of rebellion: on October 6, 1884, two million gourdes were contracted to be run off by an American banknote company for $45,000. A second blow was the Affaire des Mandats, a gamy scandal in the National Bank that ultimately implicated its French director Vouillon, its British chief accountant Coles, alleged French and British confederates, and a ring of Haitian accomplices. The modus operandi could have succeeded only in Port-au-Prince: due bills issued by government departments and redeemed by the Banque were simply filed rather than canceled, and at the propitious moment during any given riot, insurrection, or conflagration, thieves would steal into the Banque and spirit away the coffer while accomplices in the streets raised the cry to burn down the bank — the mob would then torch the Banque and Finance Ministry, destroying all records and allowing the mandats to be presented again, some for the third or fourth time around. Despite peculation and inflation, Salomon toiled on: ably assisted by François Légitime as Minister of Agriculture, he conducted two national agricultural expositions — the first such gatherings in Haitian history — patterned on American state fairs. Two years earlier he had opened the rebuilt National Palace designed by Léon Laforesterie, a superb example of Port-au-Prince’s nineteenth-century gingerbread architecture, where Salomon conducted business with two loaded revolvers as paperweights in full sight and handy reach. His home and chosen retreat, Villa Solitude, remained up the hill in cool Turgeau, where Mme Salomon — a Parisienne whose chit-chat charmed visitors — presided over the intimate, impeccably French dinners and soirées that provided the setting for her husband’s adept manipulation of people and events.