letter from one great
personage to another to say with what regret he countersigns a policy
so distasteful, and how sincerely he preserves the tie of personal
friendship. Believe me," said he, laughing, "we are the professed
traitors of the world; but we are simple-hearted and honest, if weighed
in the scale with those who employ us!"

If I was amused by much of what he said, I was also piqued at the tone
of superiority he assumed towards me, as he very frankly intimated that
by the low estimation in which I held my walk in life I had contrived to
make it still meaner and lower.

"It rests with ourselves," said he, "to be the diplomatists of Europe.
Your men who pore over treaties and maps and protocols may plan and
scheme to their hearts' content; but we can act. If I choose to change
the destination of this letter, and deliver it at Berlin or Vienna; or
if I go forward now to Moscow, and convey the answer to Paris, instead
of London, do you not suppose that the world would feel it, and to its
very centre, too?"

He paused for a minute or two, and then added,--

"You are wondering all this while within yourself why one who knows so
well the price of treason has not earned it; and shall I tell you? I
am not always aware of the value of my tidings. I may be charged with
a secret treaty. It may be a piece of court gossip, the mishap of
an archduchess, or the portrait of a court favorite. This very
letter--whose contents I believe I know--I am perhaps deceived in. Who
can tell, till it be opened, if my treachery be worth a farthing?"

If there was anything wanting to the measure of abhorrence with which
I regarded my career, it was amply supplied by such doctrines as these;
but probably much of the disgust they were calculated to inspire was
lost in the amusement the narrator afforded me. Everything about him
bespoke levity rather than systematic rascality; and yet he was one who
appeared to have thought profoundly on men and the world.

"I 'll wager a crown," said he, as we jumped into the boat that was to
row us on shore, "that you are fully bent on hiding yourself and your
shame in the 'Golden Plover,' or the 'Pilot's Rest,' or some such
obscure hotel; but this you shall not for the present. You are my guest
while we stay at Hamburg. Unfortunately, the time must needs be brief to
both of us. To-morrow we shall be on the road; but to-day is our own."

I did not consent without reluctance; but he would not take a r