Sir Horace Rumbold writes charmingly of Henry Labouchere at Constantinople in 1863. "In August," he says, "the torrid heat drove me to seek for a while the cool breezes of the Bosphorus, and I then, for the first time, became acquainted with the wonders of Constantinople. Here I found at the Embassy Edward Herbert and got to know that remarkable, _original_, and most talented and kind-hearted of would-be cynics, Henry Labouchere."[16] Later on, in the same volume of reminiscences, he gives another picture of {64} the young secretary, whose diplomatic career was, however, soon to come to a close. "The Pisani dynasty were still masters of the situation when I arrived. Under the, in many ways, unfortunate tenure of the Embassy by Sir Henry Bulwer, Alexander Pisani, best known as the 'Count,' who was simply the Keeper of the Archives, had been made head of the Diplomatic Chancellerie of the Embassy, to the intense disgust of successive secretaries properly belonging to the Service. Pisani, it was said, had extorted this abnormal appointment from his chief by threatening to resign and write his memoirs. Henry Labouchere, among others, greatly resented the arrangement. Some years before, he had a passage of arms with the 'Count,' who had reproved him, so to speak, officially for absenting himself for the day from the Chancery on some occasion, without applying to him for leave to do so. The ridiculous affair was referred to Sir Henry Bulwer, and gave my friend Labby a charming opportunity of describing the 'Count' in a formal letter to the Ambassador. 'It seems to me,' he wrote, 'a singular dispensation that places a Greek nobleman of Venetian extraction, who profited by the advantages of a Pera education, in authority over a body of English Gentlemen.'" Mr. Labouchere was always very amusing on the subject of his chief at Constantinople. He said that Lord Balling could not understand the value of money. He was so generous that he was always in financial difficulties. At one time the Embassy was reduced to such straits that there was no money to buy any decent wine. The difficulty was met in the following manner: At official dinners the grand-looking _maître d'hôtel_ would solemnly say before pouring out the wine, "Château Lafitte '48," or "La Rose '52," and so on, all through dinner. As a matter of fact, the wine had really come from the neighbouring Greek isles, and had been doctored with an infusion of prunes to tone down the flavour of tar, which is inseparable from these insular vintages. Lord Dalling himself was so anxious to please that he would {65} quaff glass after glass of the horrible beverage, swallowing numberless pills the while as an antidote.