Meantime a number of the members of the different embassies were asked to dinner. At dessert, Count Stürmer led the conversation to the Sultan’s generosity and gallantry to ladies, and, turning to the Countess, asked her to show their guests the beautiful set of diamonds she had received as a present from his Highness. Great was the company’s admiration of the costly jewels—far greater their astonishment at this ocular refutation of the current tale which had transformed the brilliants into piastres. They had thought the sources of their information so sure! The ambassador noted and enjoyed their confusion. But, clever as the trick was—in political matters its author had never exhibited such ingenuity and inventive talent—its success was but temporary. The sharp noses of the Pera gossips smelled out the truth. Having served their purpose, the jewels were returned to the jeweller, and one may imagine the shout and halloo that resounded through the drawing-rooms, coffee-houses, and barbers’ shops of Pera and Galata, when the real facts of the case were at length verified beyond a doubt. The admission made by Dr Wagner in another place, that the hotel of the Austrian internuncio was remarkable for its hospitality, and was the chief place of meeting in Constantinople for foreigners and natives of distinction, should perhaps have induced him to take a more indulgent view of Count Stürmer’s dealings in diamonds. Go where you will, says a French proverb, you shall always be welcome if you take with you a fiddle and a frying-pan. Dinners and dances are amongst the most important of diplomatic duties; and the Austrian may have thought he could better dispense with diamonds than with these. At his hotel, during one of Dr Wagner’s visits to Constantinople, that singularly successful soldier of fortune, General Jochmus, was a constant guest. This fortunate adventurer, of insignificant family at Hamburg, who has been indebted, for his remarkable rise, partly to his gallantry and talents, partly to extraordinary good luck, and who has passed through half-a-dozen services, always with more or less distinction, began his career in Greece, afterwards joined the Anglo-Spanish Legion, passed thence into the native Spanish army with the rank of general, quitted it on account of an insult received from a French tailor settled in Spain, and for which the feeble and _Afrancesado_ Christino government dared not give him the satisfaction he justly demanded, and, at the time referred to by Dr Wagner, was Ferik-Pasha in the Turkish service—subsequently to become Imperial minister under the brief rule of the Archduke John. His skill as a chess-player, Dr Wagner informs us, is still more remarkable than his military talent. When in command of the Turkish army in Syria, at the time that Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptians were about to retreat through the desert, Jochmus, entering Damascus—long a stronghold of chess—challenged the best players in the