was playing Germany’s game, announced that he had already practically completed the transaction. In the silence that followed his statement this young Napoleon pulled out his pistol and laid it on the table. “If anyone here wishes to question this purchase,” he said quietly and icily, “I am ready to meet him.” A few weeks after the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ had taken up permanent headquarters in the Bosphorus, Djavid Bey, Minister of Finance, happened to meet a distinguished Belgian jurist, then in Constantinople. “I have terrible news for you,” said the sympathetic Turkish statesman. “The Germans have captured Brussels.” The Belgian, a huge figure, more than six feet high, put his arm soothingly upon the shoulder of the diminutive Turk. “I have even more terrible news for you,” he said, pointing out to the stream where the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ lay anchored. “The Germans have captured Turkey.” CHAPTER VI WANGENHEIM TELLS THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR HOW THE KAISER STARTED THE WAR But there was one quarter in which this transaction produced no appreciable gloom. That was the German Embassy. This great “success” fairly intoxicated the impressionable Wangenheim, and other happenings now aroused his _furor Teutonicus_ to a fever-heat. The _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ arrived almost at the same time that the Germans captured Liège, Namur, and other Belgian towns. And now followed the German sweep into France and the apparently triumphant rush to Paris. In all these happenings Wangenheim, like the militant Prussian that he was, saw the fulfilment of a forty years’ dream. We were all still living in the summer Embassies along the Bosphorus. Germany had a sumptuous palace, with elaborate buildings and a beautiful park, which the Sultan had personally presented to the Kaiser’s Government, yet for some reason Wangenheim did not seem to enjoy his headquarters during these summer days. A little guard-house stood directly in front of his Embassy, on the street, within twenty feet of the rushing Bosphorus, and in front of this was a stone bench. This bench was properly a resting-place for the guard, but Wangenheim seemed to have a strong liking for it. I shall always keep in my mind the figure of this German diplomat, in those exciting days before the Marne, sitting out on this little bench, now and then jumping up for a stroll back and forth in front of his house. Everybody passing from Constantinople to the northern suburbs had to pass this road, and even the Russian and French diplomats frequently went by, stiffly ignoring, of course, the triumphant ambassadorial figure on his stone bench. I sometimes think that Wangenheim sat there for the express purpose of puffing his cigar smoke in their direction. It all reminded me of the scene in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, where Tell sits in the mountain-pass, with his bow and arrow at his side, waiting for his intended victim, Gessler, to go by: