“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.”