CHAPTER III
PARLOUS TIMES
"We are living in parlous times," said the Chief Confidential Clerk, of the Departmental Head of the South American Section of Her Majesty's Foreign Office.
Mr. Stanley, Secretary of South American Legation, bowed and said nothing. Inwardly, he wondered just what "parlous" meant, and made a mental note to look it up in a dictionary on the first opportunity that offered.
The Chief Confidential Clerk was the most genial of men, who always impressed one with the feeling that, diplomatic as he might be at all other times, this was the particular moment when he would relax his vigilance and unburden his official heart. As a result, those who came to unearth his secrets generally ended by telling him theirs.
In this instance neither of the speakers knew anything of the subject in hand, a treaty relating to the possession of a sand bar at the mouth of a certain South American river. A matter said to have had its rise in a fit of royal indigestion, in the sixteenth century. Somehow it had never been settled. Each new ministry, each new revolutionary government was "bound to see it through," and the treaty was constantly on the verge of being "brought to an amicable conclusion," just as it had been for nearly three hundred years.
The fate of nations had, in short, drifted on that sand-bar and stuck fast, at least the fate of one nation and the clemency of another.
The Chief Confidential Clerk was not conscious that he was really ignorant of the subject in hand—no true diplomat ever is—the young Secretary was painfully aware of his own unenlightenment.
"You are to understand," his Minister had said, "that you know nothing concerning the status of the Treaty."
"But, I do not know anything, Your Excellency," admitted the Secretary.