But there is an amusing epilogue to the affair, which was not without its importance to the Wilhelmstrasse, and in which I had a small part. To tell it, I must pass over several months of work of one sort or another, until I come to the following winter—that of 1911. I was on a real vacation this time and had selected Nice as an excellent place in which to spend a few idle but enlivening weeks. The choice was not a highly original one, but as it turned out, chance seemed to have had a hand in it after all. Almost the first person I met there was a man with whom I had been acquainted for several years, and who was destined to have his share in the events which followed. People who have visited Europe many times can hardly have avoided seeing upon one occasion or another, a famous riding troupe who called themselves the “Bishops.” They were five in number—Old Bishop, his daughter and her husband, a man named Merrill, and two others—and their act, which was variously known as “An Afternoon on the Bois de Boulogne,” “An Afternoon in the Thiergarten,” etc. (depending upon the city in which they played), was a feature of many of the famous circuses of seven or eight years ago. At this time they were helping to pay their expenses through the winter, by playing in a small circus which was one of the current attractions of Nice. I had bought horses from old Bishop in the past and knew him for a man of unusual shrewdness, who besides being the father of a charming and beautiful daughter, was in himself excellent company; and I was consequently pleased to run across him and his family at a time when all my friends seemed to be in some other quarter of the earth. We talked of horses together and it was suggested that I might care to inspect an Arab mare, a recent acquisition, of which the old man was immensely proud. That evening I heard of the arrival in Nice of a young British diplomat, an undersecretary of one of the embassies, whom, I remembered I had once met at a hotel in Vienna. I called upon him the following day—but I did so, not so much to renew our old acquaintance, as because that very morning I had received a rambling letter from my chief, commenting upon the imminent arrival of the Englishman and suggesting that I might find him a pleasant companion during my stay on the Riviera. More work, in other words. My chief did not waste time in encouraging purposeless friendships. As I read the letter, it was a hint that the Englishman had something which Berlin wanted and I was to get it. It was not difficult to recall myself to the Undersecretary. We became friendly, and proceeded to “do” Nice together; and in the course of our excursions we became occasional visitors at the villa of Maharajah Holkar, who, with his secretary (and his seraglio) lived—and still lives, for all I know—at 56 Promenade des Anglais.