y.

"And no great hardship either, I should call it."

"No, certainly not," said the other, hesitatingly. "To one like myself,
for instance, who has no health for the wear and tear of public life,
and no heart for its ambitions, there is a great deal to like in the
quiet retirement of a first-class mission."

"Is there really, then, nothing to do?" asked Harcourt, innocently.

"Nothing, if you don't make it for yourself. You can have a harvest if
you like to sow. Otherwise, you may lie in fallow the year long.
The subordinates take the petty miseries of diplomacy for _their_
share,--the sorrows of insulted Englishmen, the passport difficulties,
the custom-house troubles, the police insults. The Secretary calls at
the offices of the Government, carries messages and the answers; and I,
when I have health for it, make my compliments to the King in a cocked
hat on his birthday, and have twelve grease-pots illuminated over my
door to honor the same festival."

"And is that all?"

"Very nearly. In fact, when one does anything more, they generally do
wrong; and by a steady persistence in this kind of thing for
thirty years, you are called 'a safe man, who never compromised his
Government,' and are certain to be employed by any party in power."

"I begin to think I might be an envoy myself," said Harcourt.

"No doubt of it; we have two or three of your calibre in Germany this
moment,--men liked and respected; and, what is of more consequence, well
looked upon at 'the Office.'"

"I don't exactly follow you in that last remark."

"I scarcely expected you should; and as little can I make it clear to
you. Know, however, that in that venerable pile in Downing Street called
the Foreign Office, there is a strange, mysterious sentiment,--partly
tradition, partly prejudice, partly toadyism,--which bands together all
within its walls, from the whiskered porter at the door to the essenced
Minister in his bureau, into one intellectual conglomerate, that judges
of every man in 'the Line'--as they call diplomacy--with one accord.
By that curious tribunal, which hears no evidence, nor ever utters a
sentence, each man's merits are weighed; and to stand well in the
Office is better than all the favors of the Court, or the force of great
abilities."

"But I cannot comprehend how mere subordinates, the underlings of
official life, can possibly influence the fortunes of men so much above
them."

"Picture to yourself the position of