nstead of allowing it to be diverted to the sins of each
other, as was very apt to be the case when there was an antagonist
interest to oppose.

Shortly after, the king and queen gave us all our conges. Noah and
myself got through the crowd without injury to our trains, and we
separated in the court of the palace; he to go to his bed and dream of
his trial on the morrow, and I to go home with Judge People's Friend and
the brigadier, who had invited me to finish the evening with a supper. I
was left chatting with the last, while the first went into his closet
to indite a dispatch to his government, relating to the events of the
evening.

The brigadier was rather caustic in his comments on the incidents of
the drawing-room. A republican himself, he certainly did love to give
royalty and nobility some occasional rubs; though I must do this worthy,
upright monikin the justice to say, he was quite superior to that vulgar
hostility which is apt to distinguish many of his caste, and which is
founded on a principle as simple as the fact that they cannot be kings
and nobles themselves.

While we were chatting very pleasantly, quite at our ease, and in
undress as it were, the brigadier in his bob, and I with my tail aside,
Judge People's Friend rejoined us, with his dispatch open in his hand.
He read aloud what he had written, to my great astonishment, for I had
been accustomed to think diplomatic communications sacred. But the judge
observed, that in this case it was useless to affect secrecy, for two
very good reasons; firstly, because he had been obliged to employ a
common Leaphigh scrivener to copy what he had written--his government
depending on a noble republican economy, which taught it that, if it did
get into difficulties by the betrayal of its correspondence, it would
still have the money that a clerk would cost, to help it out of the
embarrassment; and, secondly, because he knew the government itself
would print it as soon as it arrived. For his part, he liked to have
the publishing of his own works. Under these circumstances, I was
even allowed to take a copy of the letter, of which I now furnish a
fac-simile.

"SIR:--The undersigned, envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary
of the North-Western Leaplow Confederate Union, has the honor to inform
the secretary of state, that our interests in this portion of the earth
are, in general, on the best possible footing; our national character is
getting every day