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I therefore made prize of the captain, who was an intelligent man, with an abundance of fresh political chit-chat, and odds and ends of scandal from Paddington to the Bank, and from Pall-mall to Parliament-street, brimful of extracts and essences of Athenaeums, United-Services, and other hebdomadals. Formerly Foreign-Office messengers were the cast-off butlers and valets of secretaries of state.
The eighth livraison of the Tuileries papers has appeared; it contains two letters from General Ducrot to General Frossard, a despatch from the French Foreign-office to Benedetti, a report on France by Magne, and a letter from a prefect to Pietri.
With reason does the Kaiser give Ambassador von Bieberstein, "the ablest diplomat in Europe," constant access to the imperial ear, regardless of foreign-office red tape. During the heyday of the Young Turk party's power, this astute old player of the game was the dominant personality in Turkey.
When it reached the Governor, no one on his staff could decipher it, so it had to be returned to the Foreign-office. The moment for the quacks is at hand. A "General" offers to raise the siege if he be given 50,000 men. A magician offers a shell which will destroy the Prussians root and branch.
Babble, expostulation, eager politeness of innocent travelers, and outside the long crack of rifles, an occasional rip of a machine-gun. The group of soldiers paused before him. "I am an American," he spoke in English, "with the American commission." The announcement produced its usual effect. Bows, salutes, smiles. He pulled out his passport and foreign-office credentials.
When the Embassy left, a sort of deputy-consul remained here; but with a perfect ingenuity of stupidity, the Foreign-office officials ordered this gentleman to withdraw with Mr. Wodehouse, the secretary. Heine said of his fellow-countrymen, "they are born stupid, and a bureaucratic education makes them wicked."
And yet a graceful shade of dignified reserve lent color to his rumored advancement, and the schemer leaned over the writing table with quite a foreign-office air as he indited his diplomatic note of arrival to his destined prey.
The language used was the old Slaavic, now a dead language, but used to this day as the vehicle of divine service in all Greco-Slaavic communities from the Adriatic to the utmost confines of Russia, and the parent of all the modern varieties of the Southern and Eastern Slaavic languages. A Battue missed. Proceed to Alexinatz. Foreign-Office Courier. Bulgarian frontier. Gipsey Suregee. Tiupria.
Not being a man of forms and red tape, instead of going to the Foreign-office, he went to the Hôtel de Ville, found a Council sitting, shook hands all round, and then withdrew. I have serious thoughts of taking up my quarters at the English Embassy. It belongs to me as one of the nation, and I see no reason why I should not turn my property to some account.
I need hardly observe that the Foreign-office has done its best to render the question more complicated. It has sent orders to Mr. Wodehouse to provide for the transport of British subjects, without sending funds, and having told Lord Lyons to take the archives with him, it perpetually refers to instructions contained in despatches which it well knows are at Tours. Mr. Washburne remains.
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