Dr. Weitz readily agreed to carry this message, and he was so pleased with the frankness of my conversation that he made no concealment of his own position. He went on to tell me that he was a confidential adviser to the German ambassadors, and frequently was commissioned to carry on unofficial negotiations in which, for reasons of delicacy or of policy, it was not advisable either that the Ambassador should appear in person, or that he should make use of one of his official family. He explained to me that the reason he was used in this capacity was his intimate acquaintance with Turkish life and officials, and he offered to undertake similar commissions for me at any time I might care to make use of him. For obvious reasons, I never availed myself of the offer. Dr. Weitz faithfully repeated my message to the German and Austrian ambassadors who afterward told me that they were greatly delighted with it. The very next afternoon, Baron Wangenheim paid me a call; and the following morning, his Austrian colleague, Marquis Pallavicini, arrived to improve my acquaintance. They both greeted me in the spirit of my message, and we entered at once upon an acquaintanceship which removed the formality of an official relation. Both of them were very useful to me during my first weeks in Constantinople. The Marquis was the doyen of the diplomatic corps. He was a nobleman of ancient family, had grown old in the diplomatic service, and was an authority on every point of diplomatic usage, from the most subtle phrasing of a threat of war to the refinements of precedence in placing guests at table at a diplomatic dinner. In this latter direction, indeed, he was invaluable to me in teaching me the relative rank of the bewildering array of officers and title holders among my visitors. Baron Wangenheim I have described at great length in my earlier volume, “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.” Unlike Pallavicini, who was quiet, formal, conventional, and a typical diplomat of the old school, Wangenheim was a perfect representative of Prussia. He was not a native of Prussia--but his bearing was that of an excitable Hindenburg. He was a man of great stature, in the prime of life, overflowing with physical vitality, energetic in person, opinionated and positive in manner, voluble and aggressive in conversation, somewhat flirtatious, proud, overbearing--he was Prussia and modern Germany embodied.