“My lord, I have a favour to ask, perhaps, indeed in all likelihood the last I shall ever ask of your lordship, it is this—what are you alluding to all this while, and for what especial reason do you suggest my immediate departure from Munich?”
“Bless my heart and soul—you surely cannot mean to carry the thing on any further—you never can intend to assume your ministerial functions by daylight?”
“My what!—my ministerial functions.”
“Oh no, that were too much—even though his majesty did say—that you were the most agreeable diplomate he had met for a long time.”
“I, a diplomate.”
“You, certainly. Surely you cannot be acting now; why, gracious mercy, Lorrequer! can it be possible that you were not doing it by design, do you really not know in what character you appeared last night?”
“If in any other than that of Harry Lorrequer, my lord, I pledge my honour, I am ignorant.”
“Nor the uniform you wore, don’t you know what it meant?”
“The tailor sent it to my room.”
“Why, man, by Jove, this will kill me,” said Lord Callonby, bursting into a fit of laughter, in which Kilkee, a hitherto silent spectator of our colloquy, joined to such an extent, that I thought he should burst a bloodvessel. “Why man, you went as the Charge d’Affaires.”