In a speech he made in the House of Commons,[4] protesting against a sum of nearly £50,000 being voted for the salaries and expenses of the department for Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Labouchere said, {54} referring in particular to Foreign Office messengers, that very often these gentlemen were sent abroad, at a very large cost to the country, for no practical object whatever. They went on a certain route, and the business was made up for them as they went. He had had the honour to serve at one time under Sir Henry Bulwer at Constantinople. Now Sir Henry Bulwer was always ill; and on one occasion he remembered making a calculation that a box of pills Sir Henry was anxious to obtain, and which was sent out by a Foreign Office messenger, cost the country from £200 to £300. Probably the pills did Sir Henry good, and pills were much more useful than a good deal of the stuff sent out by the Foreign Office. He went on to tell the House that he had himself been in the diplomatic service for ten years, and he had spent a great deal of his time in ciphering and deciphering telegrams, and that he could not remember half a dozen of them that any man, woman, or child in the whole world would have taken any trouble to decipher for any information that could have been derived from them. Labouchere used always to say that, while he was attaché at Frankfort, he spent most of his time at Wiesbaden, Homburg, or Baden, because he found the Diet of the German Confederation "rather a dull sort of affair." He managed, however, to make a great many very staunch friends at this period of his life. One of these was the old Duchess of Cambridge. He was a frequent visitor at the Schloss of Ruppenheim, which was the summer meeting-place of the main stock and branches of the Hesses. The old Duchess made a great fuss over him, for he could speak the German of Hanover so well that she could understand his banter and enjoy it. His popularity at Frankfort, according to his own account, rested on a very simple basis. Great Britain was represented at the Diet by Sir Alexander Malet, one of the most popular chiefs to be found in the Service. "But I was even more appreciated than my chief," he would relate, "and this is why. Sometimes there was a ball at the {55} Court, which we were expected to attend. At my first ball supper I found myself next to a grandee, gorgeous in stars and ribbons. The servant came to pour out champagne. I shook my head, for I detest champagne. The grandee nudged me, and said, 'Let him pour it out.' This I did, and he explained to me that our host never gave his guests more than one glass, 'So you see, if I drink yours, I shall have two.' After this there used to be quite a struggle to sit near me at Court suppers."