or an embassy, they assemble in
Downing Street like a Reform demonstration. I declare to you I had to
make my way through a lane of creditors from the Privy Council Office
to the private entrance to F. O., my hands full of their confounded
accounts--one fellow, a boot-maker, actually having pinned his bill to
the skirt of my coat as I went. And the worst of these impertinences
is, that they give a Minister who is indisposed towards you a handle for
refusing your just claims. I have just come through such an ordeal: I
have been told that my debts are to be a bar to my promotion."

The almost tremulous horror which he gave to this last expression--as of
an outrage unknown to mankind--warned Bramleigh to be silent.

"I perceive that you do not find it easy to believe this, but I pledge
my word to you it is true. It is not forty-eight hours since a Secretary
of State assumed to make my personal liabilities--the things which, if
any things are a man's own, are certainly so--to make these an objection
to my taking a mission of importance. I believe he was sorry for his
indiscretion; I have reason to suppose that it was a blunder he will not
readily repeat."

"And you obtained your appointment?" asked Bramleigh.

"Minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the court of
Hochmaringen," said Culduff, with a slow and pompous enunciation.

Bramleigh, pardonably ignorant of the geography of the important state
alluded to, merely bowed in acknowledgment. "Is there much--much to do
at one of these courts?" asked he, diffidently, after a pause.

"In one sense there is a great deal. In Germany the action of the
greater cabinets is always to be discovered in the intrigues of the
small dukedoms, just as you gather the temper of the huntsman from the
way he lashes the hounds. You may, therefore, send a 'cretin,' if
you like, to Berlin or Vienna; you want a man of tact and address at
Sigmaringen or Kleinesel-stadt. They begin to see that here at home, but
it took them years to arrive at it."

Whether Bramleigh was confounded by the depth of this remark, or annoyed
by the man who made it, he relapsed into a dreamy silence that soon
passed into sleep, into which state the illustrious diplomatist
followed, and thus was the journey made till the tall towers of Castello
came into view, and they found themselves rapidly careering along with
four posters towards the grand entrance. The tidings of their coming
soon reached the drawing-ro