I had no difficulty in getting an introduction to Collingrey, and he invited me to dine at the British House of Commons. In a few words over a post-prandial cigar I explained the object of my visit. The good friend whose letter of introduction had procured the interview had smoothed my path by representing me to be an agent of a South American rancher (name unknown) who desired to break into London society, and in tones of gentle but amused tolerance I hinted at my client’s vanity. It was a difficult interview, because Mr. Collingrey paid very little attention to what I said, but launched forth into a diatribe against the Italian Government. He was a monomaniac on the subject. He thumped the table so that all the other members in the dining-room looked round. He pounded his hand with his fist. He waved his finger in my face. He sat back, he sat forward, and all the time he spoke of the Italian Government and its iniquities. So much the better, my friend, thought I. I give you my word you shall have your fling at false Italia. It gave me an opening to the exposition of the policy which the newspaper would support, particulars of which reached me providentially on the morning of my meeting the gentleman. Very gently and delicately I laid down the lines on which the paper would be conducted, and he agreed. Of course I did not give him all the details, for I did not desire to scare him. “If you asked me to run a pro-Government paper I should have refused it,” he said violently, “this is a Government of nincompoops, a Government of charlatans, a Government of Enemies of the People. I regard the war as a crowning iniquity and its continuance inexcusable but for the fact that our Ministers have sold themselves body and soul to Italy. Take my own case, for instance.…” And so I had it all over again, the story of his purchase of the di Vinci pictures from the Montimi collection, the story of the embargo, the story of the lawsuit. What bores these English members of Parliament are, how childish; what a contrast to the staid members of our own Reichstag with their serious politics and their love of the Fatherland! Mr. Collingrey readily undertook to act as go-between. He entered into the spirit of the matter with great enthusiasm, and when I met him two or three days later he produced two manuscripts dealing with the Italian Government, which he read to me in the lobby of the House of Commons. When the purchase was completed and the _Post-Herald_ had passed into the possession of a certain syndicate, which it is not advisable to name, he had a manuscript on Italy in every pocket. Having done my part of the work and taken the small commission which was my right, and having seen Mr. Heigl safely on his journey back to Stockholm, I had little time to bother about the newspaper, the more so since Berlin in its folly had decided that I was not to interfere in its management.