What a crowd it was at the station! Railway officials, Custom House officers, police, hotel touts, droschky drivers, indescribables of all sorts; swearing, chaffing, abusing, howling; each one straining his own lungs and the hearers’ ears as nearly to bursting point as possible, until, official patience being exhausted, a police officer wielding a stout cudgel, with a few blows indiscriminately administered about the heads of the rabble, sent them all flying in various directions, and at last the Embassy servant who had been sent to meet me was able to pilot me to a carriage and I once more tasted freedom. It was a lovely moonlit night, close upon ten o’clock, and the town looked perfectly beautiful. The canals and palaces and streets ablaze with light, the river reflecting a thousand lamps. The domes and spires of the churches, gilt and silvered, all sparkling with frost as if they had been sprinkled with diamonds and precious stones. Everything different to anything that I had ever seen before, all new, fresh and delightful—the delicious keen air driving away the last memory of the train with its stuffiness and heat and dirty, oily smells—a never-to-be-forgotten drive breathing new life into me and just putting me into that frame of mind which fits one to receive the sharpest enjoyment. Before doing anything else, travel-stained, untidy and uncomfortable as I was, I had to go to the Embassy to deliver the despatches which I was carrying. For a wonder, Lord and Lady Napier were neither dining out nor entertaining at home, and the Ambassador had given orders that I was to be shown up at once. Rather an ordeal to have to face the great man, upon whom a first impression may mean so much, without even casting off the slough of four days and nights of travel! However, Lord and Lady Napier put me at my ease at once. The diplomatist abroad is always hungry for the last news, the latest piece of gossip, social or political, and my chief kept me talking in the friendliest way. When at last it was time to say good night, he called me back and said: “By the by, tell your people at home to send you all letters in the Foreign Office bag—none by the Post Office, where all our letters are opened.” “Surely,” I said, “they would not dream of opening the correspondence of so humble a person as myself.” “Don’t be too sure of that,” broke in Lady Napier. “The other day my children’s governess received two letters by the same post from different parts of England. Each contained a photograph. The two letters came in one envelope, the two photographs in the other!”