Not until late at night did we return to The Hague. At the waiting room of the railway station we meet Dr. Holls. He has just come back from Germany, whither he had gone accompanied by Professor Zorn, with a mission to smooth out at the main source the difficulties that had arisen in the matter of the arbitration tribunal. “Any news? Any news?” we ask in the greatest excitement. “I cannot tell you anything yet,” replied Dr. Holls. “Only I will mention the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays, ‘All’s well that ends well.’”[39] June 21. Léon Bourgeois, who had only just come from Paris, is recalled again by Loubet and commissioned to form a cabinet. Will he be able, will he be willing, to renounce the task of being prime minister? I have it from his own lips that this is his purpose; he is going to do his very utmost to return to The Hague in order to see the business of the arbitration tribunal through to the end. To-day I went with the painter Ten Kate to the photographer. A sculptor, a friend of his, wants to chisel my bust, and for this purpose I must be taken _en face_ and _en profil_, in three-quarters profile and from behind, wrapped statuesquely in some soft, flowing white material, with my hair arranged in Grecian style and with a palm branch as an ornament for the breast. The process lasted several hours. I was posed and pulled into shape. Then the photographer, whose name is Wollrabe, goes to his camera, looks in, shakes his head, and hobbles back to me—he has a wooden leg—to pull my left shoulder a little toward the right, to lift my chin, and to twitch my draperies down; and in this he has the critical and practical aid of Master Ten Kate. “There, now it’s all right” (_So, jetzt ist es jutt_). Hop, hop, hop to the camera. Again a shaking of the head and hop, hop, hop back to me again. After a little tugging,—“There, now it’s all right.” And so half a dozen times for each exposure. And all the while I must preserve the earnest physiognomy of a statue, in spite of the great temptation to laugh at the forest-goblinlike, to-and-fro stumping of the so-hard-to-be-satisfied Wollrabe, who, by the way, has wonderfully beautiful pictures in his studio, among them the best extant portrait of the young queen. One ought to be, indeed, especially young and beautiful to be painted and chiseled. And not only the hop, hop, hop of my photographer with his funny bird name—“Wool-raven”—strikes me as comical, but also his white-draped model, adorned with the vegetable of peace—but I must not laugh! June 23. The article proposed in the programme for “an agreement concerning the use of certain weapons and forbidding new purchases and inventions” has been decided in the negative. Stead, speaking with me regarding this matter, says: