"It is a funny thing," Labouchere would often say, speaking of treaties and diplomatic negotiations in general, "to notice on what small matters success or the reverse is dependent"; and he would then relate how, when he was attaché at Washington, he went down with the British Minister to a small inn at Virginia to meet Mr. Marcy, the Secretary of State for the United States, for the purpose of discussing a reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States. Mr. Marcy, in general the most genial and agreeable of men, was as cross as a bear, and would agree to nothing. Labouchere asked the secretary to tell him, in confidence, what was the matter with his chief. The secretary replied: "He is not getting his rubber of whist." After that the British Minister proposed a rubber of whist every night, which he invariably lost. Mr. Marcy was immensely pleased at beating the Britishers at, what he called "their own game," and his good humour returned. "Every morning," Labouchere related, "when the details of the treaty were being discussed, we had our revenge, and scored a few points for Canada." Labouchere was transferred to the Legation at Munich in December, 1855. "Old King Louis was then alive," he wrote thirty years later, "although he had been deposed for making a fool of himself over Lola Montes. I used frequently to meet him in the streets, when he always stopped me to ask how Queen Victoria was. I had at last respectfully to tell him that Her Majesty was not in the habit of writing to me every day respecting her health." {50} From Munich he went to Stockholm in 1857. I cannot resist quoting in full his account of the duel he fought while at Stockholm with the Austrian chargé d'affaires, it is so extremely characteristic of him both in spirit and style.