The two men talked together for some time in the smoking-room, recalling all sorts of schoolboy exploits.  Another school friend was Sir Francis Adams, first secretary and “counsellor” at the British Embassy.  When the ambassador took his holiday, Adams replaced him, and had the rank and title of minister plenipotentiary.  He came every Wednesday, the diplomatic reception day, to the Quai d’Orsay to talk business.  As long as a secretary or a huissier was in the room, they spoke to each other most correctly in French; as soon as they were alone, relapsed into easy and colloquial English.  We were very fond of Adams—­saw a great deal of him not only in Paris, but when we first lived in London at the embassy.  He died suddenly in Switzerland, and W. missed him very much.  He was very intelligent, a keen observer, had been all over the world, and his knowledge and appreciation of foreign countries and ways was often very useful to W.

We continued our dinners and receptions, which always interested me, we saw so many people of all kinds.  One dinner was for Prince Alexander of Battenberg, just as he was starting to take possession of the new principality of Bulgaria.  He was one of the handsomest men I have ever seen,—­tall, young, strong.  He seemed the type of the dashing young chief who would inspire confidence in a new independent state.  He didn’t speak of his future with much enthusiasm.  I wonder if a presentiment was even then overclouding what seemed a brilliant beginning!  He talked a great deal at dinner.  He was just back from Rome, and full of its charm, which at once made a bond of sympathy between us.  Report said he had left his heart there with a young Roman.  He certainly spoke of the happy days with a shade of melancholy.  I suggested that he ought to marry, that would make his “exile,” as he called it, easier to bear.  “Ah, yes, if one could choose.”  Then after a pause, with an almost boyish petulance:  “They want me to marry Princess X., but I don’t want to.”  “Is she pretty, will she help you in your new country?” “I don’t know; I don’t care; I have never seen her.”

Poor fellow, he had a wretched experience.  Some of the “exiles” were less interesting.  A lady asked to see me one day, to enlist my sympathies for her brother and plead his cause with the minister.  He had been named to a post which he couldn’t really accept.  I rather demurred, telling her messenger, one of the secretaries of the Foreign Office, that it was quite useless, her asking me to interfere.  W. was not very likely to consult me in his choice of nominations—­and in fact the small appointments, secretaries, were generally prepared in the Chancellerie and followed the usual routine of regular promotion.  An ambassador, of course, was different, and was sometimes taken quite outside the carriere.  The lady persisted and appeared one morning—­a pretty, well-dressed femme du monde whom I had often met without making her acquaintance.  She plunged at once into her