this time. I
appeared to have no suspicion of the good faith of his suggestion, and
said, with an air of surprise:

"Max von Sempach! Why, how is he suitable?"

With great gravity he gave me many reasons, proving not that Max was
very suitable, but that everybody else was profoundly unsuitable, except
the unmentioned candidate whose name was so well understood between us.

"These," I observed, "would seem to be reasons for looking elsewhere--I
mean to the other side--for a suitable man."

He did not trouble to argue that with me. He knew that his was not the
voice to which I should listen.

"If your Majesty comes to that conclusion, my friends and I will be
disappointed," he said, "but we must accept your decision."

There was much to like in Wetter. Men are not insincere merely because
they are ambitious, dishonest merely because they are given to intrigue,
selfish merely because they ask places for themselves. There is a
grossness of moral fibre not in itself a good thing, but very different
from rottenness. Wetter was a keen and convinced partisan, and an ardent
believer in himself. His cause ought to win, and, if his hand could take
the helm, would win; this was his attitude, and it excused some want of
scruple both in promoting the cause and in insuring to it his own
effective support. But he was a big man, of a well-developed nature,
hearty, sympathetic, and free from cant, full of force, of wit, of
unblunted emotion. He would not, however, have made at all a good
ambassador; and he would not have wanted to be one had he not run into
debt.

Max von Sempach, on the other hand, would fill the place respectably,
although not brilliantly. Wetter knew this, and the fact gave to the
mention of the Count's name a decent appearance without depriving it of
its harmlessness. He named a suitable but an impossible person--a person
to me impossible.

Soon after the meal I left him, telling him that I should come in again
later, and had ordered my carriage to call for me at his house at five
o'clock. Turning down the quiet lane that led to the Countess's, I soon
reached my destination. I was now in less agitation than on the day
before. My mind was made up; I came to give what she asked. Wetter
should have his Embassy. More than this, I came no longer in
trepidation, no longer fearing her ridicule even while I sought her
love, no more oppressed with the sense that in truth she might be
laughing while she seemed to en