The French had put in an application with the Committee on Fortifications for picks and shovels to be sent to their Legation for important night barricade work. The missionary in charge of them at the British Legation failed to send them; either they were all in use on equally important work, or there was an oversight on his part. Having failed to receive them, Herr Von Rostand, the Austrian Chargé, who has joined the French in their compound, at twelve o’clock last night returned to the British Legation, where he and his wife were accepting Lady Macdonald’s hospitality, and took it upon himself to wake Sir Claude up, and insultingly shouted that Sir Claude was responsible, and he alone responsible; that the French Legation was not being properly defended, etc. (especially the etc.). Sir Claude said that he would discuss anything relative to the safety of the Legations at any time in the proper manner, but the way that Von Rostand spoke made it impossible for him to talk to him at all. The Von Rostands then took up their abode at the French Legation, which was natural more or less, as the Austrian soldiers are helping them. A question going round the compound is: When the French and German Legations must be given up, where will the Von Rostands go? The fact that one is a Minister or Chargé does not help to find one new quarters, as every room, hall-way, and closet, was long ago appropriated. The charming doyen of the Corps Diplomatique, the Spanish Minister, Señor Cologan, sleeps on a mattress in the tiny hall of the house that was given to the French Minister for himself and official family. He has to go to bed late and get up early because people have to walk over him. He has a tiny shelf on which to put his few toilet possessions, but he sleeps in all his clothes, as everyone sees him. The Dutch Minister sleeps in a tiny storeroom of the very small Second Secretary’s house, that we now call the Russian Legation, where the fifty-one people composing M. de Giers’s official personnel are housed. As this room is a storeroom, his nights are a constant fight with cockroaches. Such is the way rank is treated when it is a fight for life. _July 16._