When he was at Washington, President Peirce broke off relations with him on account of his recruiting activities—when there were men wanted for the Foreign Legion in the Crimean War. It was the one case in which he overcame his constitutional indolence, and it was not lucky. He had to leave the United States, but Lord Palmerston, always the generous defender of his subordinates, stood up for him, and sent him as Minister to Hanover, at the same time decorating him with the K.C.B., and thence he was transferred to St. Petersburg, a post where the members of the diplomatic body, unless they were prepared to face all the requirements of a delightful but rather exacting society, were bound to become mere cyphers. That is what happened to Sir John Crampton, and that, too, at a moment when it was very important to bury the hatchet and establish relations of cordial friendship and sympathy with the Tsar and his ministers. It was at last the tame cat nature to which I have alluded above brought about his retirement from Russia in 1860, and his transfer to Spain, where at that moment there was little urgency for activity. In an unlucky moment for all concerned, Balfe came to St. Petersburg, with his beautiful young daughter Victoire, who had been engaged at the Opera. Naturally the Irish Minister and the Irish composer forgathered, and Balfe’s rooms were a delightfully congenial place, where, when the young lady was not singing at the theatre, Crampton could pass the lazy evenings, free from the cramping fetters of a tailcoat and from all the irksome restraint and exigencies of a diplomatist’s life. Balfe, whom I knew well for many years, was himself endowed with all the fascination of Irish wit and bonhomie, while his daughter was as attractive as youth, beauty and talent could make her. They must have been a delightful trio—but the lotus-eating was not to last. There came a day when Balfe, in the character of the _père noble_, told Sir John that his visits must cease—the old story, his daughter’s happiness was at stake—and so the veteran diplomatist hoisted the white flag, surrendered unconditionally, and January and May were united for a very brief time, at the end of which the marriage was annulled, and the lady married the Duc de Friar, a grandee of Spain.