And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay a _Charge d'affaires_, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in his button-hole.
The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one were but disposed to relate them.
Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician who obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search of his master; so quick were the fellow's movements, so rapid his transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls; and thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly sought after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The Emperor of the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by the hint, for while other nations are wasting their thousands in maintaining a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe without ceasing: thus _The Globe_ tells us one day that the Chevalier de L------, the Brazilian ambassador, has arrived in London to resume his diplomatic functions; _The Handelsbad of the Hague_ mentions his departure from the Dutch Court; _The Algeimeine Zeitung_ announces the prospect of his arrival at Vienna, and _The Moniteur Parisien_ has a beautiful article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico, under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: "_non regio terræ_," exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has managed to be not only in two, but twenty places at once, and I should not be in the least surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur at Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs in Norway. Whether he travels in a balloon or on the back of a pelican, he is a wonderful man, and a treasure to his government.
The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.