Poor fellow, he had a wretched experience. Some of the "exiles" were less interesting. A lady asked to see me one day, to enlist my sympathies for her brother and plead his cause with the minister. He had been named to a post which he couldn't really accept. I rather demurred, telling her messenger, one of the secretaries of the Foreign Office, that it was quite useless, her asking me to interfere. W. was not very likely to consult me in his choice of nominations--and in fact the small appointments, secretaries, were generally prepared in the Chancellerie and followed the usual routine of regular promotion. An ambassador, of course, was different, and was sometimes taken quite outside the carrière. The lady persisted and appeared one morning--a pretty, well-dressed femme du monde whom I had often met without making her acquaintance. She plunged at once into her subject--her brother's delicate health, accustomed to all the comforts and what the books call "higher civilisation" of Europe, able to do good service in courts and society, as he knew everybody. It was a pity to send him to such an out-of-the-way place, with an awful climate,--any consul's clerk would do as well. I supposed he had been named to Caracas, South America, or some other remote and unhealthy part of the globe, but when she stopped for a moment, I discovered that the young man was named to Washington. I was really surprised, didn't know what to say at once, when the absurdity of the thing struck me and I answered that Washington was far, perhaps across the ocean, but there were compensations--but she took up her argument again, such an impossible place, everything so primitive, I really think she thought the youth was going to an Indian settlement, all squaws and wigwams and tomahawks. I declined any interference with the minister's appointments, assuring her I had no influence whatever, and she took leave of me very icily. I heard the sequel afterward--the young man refused the post as quite unworthy of him. There were several others ready and pleased to take it, and M. de X. was put en disponibilité.