ffair. According to the prince,
Baron Holstein, while first secretary of the German embassy at Paris,
and though treated by Count Arnim as an inmate of his home, living
in fact under his roof, and eating at his table, was in the habit
throughout an entire year of sending secret reports to Berlin against
the chief under whom he was serving--reports which subsequently
furnished the basis of the charges upon which Count Arnim was tried,
convicted and disgraced.

It is true that some mention was made in the Parisian and English
press at the time of the Arnim trial of the questionable role which
Baron Holstein had played in the affair, and there were a number of
Parisian papers that did not hesitate to hold up the baron to, at
any rate, French obloquy, as a man guilty of the base betrayal of the
kindest and most indulgent of chiefs. The only person on that occasion
who had the courage to take up the baron's defence was M. de Blowitz,
French correspondent of the London _Times_, of which he is described
on the banks of the Seine, as the "ambassador," and who possesses
an immense amount of influence with the Parisian press. Blowitz's
championship of the baron's cause was sincerely appreciated by the
latter. He called upon the correspondent, thanked him effusively, and
declared that it was his intervention alone that had made his stay at
Paris possible.

During the conversation that followed, Blowitz opened his heart to his
visitor, telling him that his own position as the Paris correspondent
of the _Times_ was in danger owing to some changes in the
administration of the London office. A fortnight later, Blowitz
received from the managing editor of the _Times_ in London a letter
sixteen pages long, addressed to Printing-House Square, and entirely
written and signed by Baron Holstein. It denounced Blowitz as being
one of the creatures of the late Duc Decazes, as wilfully ignoring
and concealing for interested purposes of his own, a number of matters
that should have found their way into the columns of the _Times_, and
urging the managers of the latter to send to Paris some fitter and
more impartial person, who would be better able to keep the great
English newspaper _au courant_ of what was going on below as well as
above the surface, than so unscrupulous a person as M. de Blowitz.
This letter was dated exactly three days after the latter's visit of
gratitude to the correspondent, and the incident may be regarded as
being in p