he signed passports with most astonishing ardor; he exiled himself
for ten long years in a wretched German town, dancing attendance at
court-balls and paying no end of money for uniforms. And what for? At
the end of the ten years--during which period of labor he never received
a single shilling from the Government which employed him (rascally
spendthrift of a Government, va!),--he was offered the paid attacheship
to the court of H. M. the King of the Mosquito Islands, and refused that
appointment a week before the Whig Ministry retired. Then he knew that
there was no further chance for him, and incontinently quitted the
diplomatic service for ever, and I have no doubt will sell his uniform
a bargain. The Government had HIM a bargain certainly; nor is he by any
means the first person who has been sold at that price.

Well, my worthy friend met me in the street and informed me of these
facts with a smiling countenance,--which I thought a masterpiece of
diplomacy. Fortune had been belaboring and kicking him for ten whole
years, and here he was grinning in my face: could Monsieur de Talleyrand
have acted better? "I have given up diplomacy," said Protocol, quite
simply and good-humoredly, "for between you and me, my good fellow, it's
a very slow profession; sure, perhaps, but slow. But though I gained
no actual pecuniary remuneration in the service, I have learned all
the languages in Europe, which will be invaluable to me in my new
profession--the mercantile one--in which directly I looked out for a
post I found one."

"What! and a good pay?" said I.

"Why, no; that's absurd, you know. No young men, strangers to business,
are paid much to speak of. Besides, I don't look to a paltry clerk's
pay. Some day, when thoroughly acquainted with the business (I shall