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Title: A Diplomatic Adventure

Author: S. Weir Mitchell

Release Date: December 2, 2009 [EBook #30585]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A DIPLOMATIC
ADVENTURE

BY

S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D.

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1906

Copyright, 1906, by

THE CENTURY CO.

_Published April, 1906_

THE DE VINNE PRESS

[Illustration: "She was in an agony of alarm."]

A DIPLOMATIC ADVENTURE

I

No man has ever been able to write the history of the greater years of
a nation so as to include the minor incidents of interest. They pass
unnoted, although in some cases they may have had values influential
in determining the course of events. It chanced that I myself was an
actor in one of these lesser incidents, when second secretary to our
legation in France, during the summer of 1862. I may possibly
overestimate the ultimate importance of my adventure, for Mr. Adams,
our minister of the court of St. James, seems to have failed to
record it, or, at least, there is no allusion to it in his biography.
In the perplexing tangle of the diplomacy of the darker days of our
civil war, many strange stories must have passed unrecorded, but
surely none of those remembered and written were more singular than
the occurrences which disturbed the quiet of my uneventful official
life in the autumn of 1862.

At this time I had been in the legation two years, and was comfortably
lodged in pleasant apartments in the Rue Rivoli.

Somewhere about the beginning of July I had occasion to engage a new
servant, and of this it becomes needful to speak because the man I
took chanced to play a part in the little drama which at last involved
many more important people.

I had dismissed a stout Alsatian because of my certainty that, like
his predecessor, he was a spy in the employ of t