Labouchere used to tell a good story of how he got at the secrets of the Russian Government. His laundress was a handsome woman, and having made friends with her on {59} other than professional grounds, she happened to mention that her husband was a compositor in the government printing office. The minutes of the Cabinet councils were printed in French, of which the printers, of course, understood nothing. Labouchere persuaded her, for a consideration, to obtain from her husband the loose sheets from which the minutes had been printed. They were brought to him by the faithful woman every week, concealed among his starched shirts and collars. As soon as Lord John Russell discovered the source of the interesting information that reached him from Petersburg, he put a stop to the simple intrigue. Labouchere would always wind up his narrative of this episode with the words: "For what reason, I wonder, did Russell imagine, diplomacy was invented?" After Petersburg, Dresden was Labouchere's next appointment. He had previously assiduously studied the German language, in which, being a born linguist, he was remarkably proficient. He had been for a time to Marburg to reside in a German family for the purpose of acquiring conversational fluency. All through his life one of his fads consisted in working out on how small an income an economical family might live in comfort, and he used frequently to commend the management of means practised in the bourgeois family at Marburg where he boarded. It consisted of a mother, two daughters, a father, and an elementary maid-of-all-work. The daughters did the housework alternately. The daughter, whose turn it was to be the young lady, used to dress herself gorgeously every afternoon and evening, receiving visitors or paying calls. She would play Chopin and Beethoven on the pianoforte, and make herself an exceedingly agreeable social personage. The following week she would retire to the domestic regions and be an excellent servant, while her sister took her turn as _femme du monde_. Occasionally the whole family, including Labouchere, would be invited to a party. It was the custom on such occasions for both the daughters to be "young {60} ladies." The maid-of-all-work would accompany them to the neighbour's house whither they had been bidden, carrying their suppers in paper bags--for the hospitality proffered at Marburg was intellectual, not material. All the guests brought similar paper bags, and at the conclusion of the repast the remains of the various meals were carefully collected by their respective owners, and carried home to figure at the next day's _mittagessen_. Labouchere used often to assert that the evening parties at Marburg were the most delightful and amusing ones he ever attended. While there he frequented the hospital, and attended the lectures given for the instruction of the medical students. He was always fond of developing extraordinary