'I am to give the signal,' said the Prussian; 'I shall count one, two, three, and then at the word fire, you will both fire. Gentlemen, are you ready?' We both nodded. 'One, two, three, fire!' and both our pistols went off. No harm had been done. I felt considerably relieved when to my horror the Frenchman stepped up to me, and said: 'I think that I ought to demand a second shot for you, but mind, if nothing occurs again, I shall not allow a third shot.' 'Ye--es,' I said; so we had a second shot, with the same result. Knowing that my Frenchman was a man of his word, I felt now that I might at no risk to myself display my valour, so I demanded a third shot. The seconds consulted together; for a moment I feared that they were going to grant my request, and I was greatly relieved when they informed me that they considered that two shots were amply sufficient. I was delighted, but I pretended to be most unhappy, and religiously kept up the farce of being an aggrieved person."[6] {52} He was at Frankfort and St. Petersburg between November, 1858, and the summer of 1860. While he was at Frankfort he made the acquaintance of Bismarck, who was the Prussian representative at the restored Diet of Frankfort. Labouchere had a constitutional dislike of the German people, with the exception of the great Chancellor. He wrote some years later: "The only Prussian I ever knew who was an agreeable man was Bismarck. All others with whom I have been thrown--and I have lived for years in Germany--were proud as Scotchmen, cold as New Englanders, and touchy as only Prussians can be. I once had a friend among them. His name was Buckenbrock. I inadvertently called him Butterbrod. We have never spoken since!" Bismarck was an eminently social person, fond of drinking and smoking, and many a time did Labouchere listen to his jovial loud-toned talk in the cafés at Frankfort. "Bismarck," he wrote in later life, "used to pass entire nights drinking beer in a garden overlooking the Main. In the morning after a night passed in beer-drinking he would write his despatches, then issue forth on a white horse for a ride, and on his return, attend the Diet, of which he was a member."[7] It is interesting to note how very similar were the judgments of these two exceedingly different characters upon the subject of diplomacy and its aspects of absurdity and pomposity. Bismarck wrote from Frankfort: "Frankfort is hideously tiresome. The people here worry themselves about the merest rubbish, and these diplomatists with their pompous peddling already appear to me a good deal more ridiculous than a member of the second chamber in all the pride of his lofty station. Unless external accidents should accrue, ... I know exactly how much we shall effect in one, two, or five years from the present time, and will engage to do it all myself within four-and-twenty hours, if the others will only be truthful and sensible throughout one single day. I never doubted that, one and