hours in the office, just for a little gossip and a glance through the newspapers and despatches--Hatzfeldt, for instance, and Keudell, who was incapable to boot.”... “Hatzfeldt rarely came before two o’clock,” said Bucher, “and often went away again at three. While they lived upstairs he usually came to play a game of croquet. He would ask Wartensleben, ‘Now what do you think of a little game of croquet to-day?’ Wartensleben used then to say he would go up and see whether the Countess would care to join them, and when he came back with the message that the Countess begged to be excused as she had something else to do, Paul would remark, ‘Well, then, one may as well say good bye,’ and take himself off.... And Keudell could really do nothing. I suppose I have already told you the story about Taglioni and Keudell’s thirty arrears of work? Well, at Versailles I was told by Wiehr--you remember him, the fat, bald deciphering clerk--it was simply frightful how little Keudell managed to do. When he sat down he wrote two or three lines, then pulled out his watch, took the rings off his finger and played with them, put them on again, wrote another few lines, stopped once more, and finally rose, leaving his work unfinished. On one occasion Taglioni took pity on him and offered to assist the Councillor. The latter was delighted with such an amiable fellow, and Taglioni actually disposed of some thirty items of work which were in arrear. But in spite of that a number of even sensible people had a high opinion of his power of work and his intelligence--people such as Gneist, for example, whom I know well, as we studied together. I always meant to enlighten him, but have not done so yet. It is necessary, however, that people should know Keudell if he is to be a Minister one day.” Bucher then came to speak of Count Herbert again, and I said that the Prince had once observed to me that he had thought of promoting him to be Secretary of State, as he had worked for seven years under his own personal supervision, but that he was too young. “Yes,” rejoined Bucher, “and so he is still. Paul Hatzfeldt will not remain. Things will go on for the present in the same way. He comes at two o’clock and disappears again at five, attends to nothing beyond the interviews with foreign diplomatists, and troubles himself very little with the other business--which, for the matter of that, is no loss. But when the Prince comes back, and he is summoned to receive instructions two or three times a day, it will not be at all to his liking, and he will go back to Constantinople. He will be replaced by Herbert, that haughty and incapable fellow, and more than one of the officials will leave.”