Working in conjunction with two or three devoted friends, whom this ever-popular man never lacked wherever he might be, he succeeded in inspiring confidence in the two soldiers who guarded him, and who, moreover, watched over him with the consideration due to his rank. One morning the door of the little Hungarian house in which Count Seilern had been imprisoned for a little less than a week was found open, and there, before the entrance, was the evidence of the means which the prisoner's friends had adopted to rescue him. Stretched on the ground were the unconscious bodies of the two sentinels, heavily drugged by Seiler's accomplices. Shortly before this occurrence, which, though it naturally created a great sensation in the immediate circle of the Staff, was thrown into the background by military events of considerable importance and the consequent long-desired removal of headquarters to a place nearer the Front, there occurred an event which I cannot but regard as connected with it. A certain Baron A----, one of Seilern's intimate friends, found the means of obtaining permission to return to Vienna. The alleged reason for his departure was urgent family business--some sudden illness or similar call for his presence at home; but I am convinced that its real object was to prepare a sure hiding-place for the fugitive Count. It matters not what my reasons may be for so thinking; suffice it to say that information received from a sure source led me not only to that conclusion but to many other inferences. I learnt, for instance, that the particulars of what was now known as the "Seilern Affair" had leaked out, that the hiding-place of the Count was already known to the police of the Austrian capital, but that _no attempt was being made to arrest him_. It was evident, indeed, that powerful influences were at work, and that every possible means was being taken to hush up the scandal. Later, I learnt that recourse was had to the advice of the aged Princess M----, the oracle of the higher society circles of Vienna, whose wisdom has been brought to bear on every "good" scandal at the Court of the Hapsburgs during more than the half-century she has made the laws of the fashionable world there. Whilst Princess M---- was setting her acute wits to work, the Archduchess Valeria, more and more determined never to return to her ignoble husband, and realizing that the great crisis in her life had at last come, took refuge at the house of some faithful family retainers. The outcome of Princess M----'s ingenious reflections was that Baron A---- was found a further useful mission in conjunction with the affair. This trusted emissary was sent to Berne as a diplomatic messenger, the alleged bearer of confidential documents for Count von G----, a high Austro-Hungarian official and the representative of our Government with the Swiss Confederation.