]
The position of the German Embassy in Paris was very difficult, and
unfortunately their first ambassador after the war, Count Arnim, didn't
understand (perhaps didn't care to) how difficult it was for a
high-spirited nation, which until then had always ranked as a great
military power, to accept her humiliation and be just to the victorious
adversary. Arnim was an unfortunate appointment--not at all the man for
such a delicate situation. We had known him in Rome in the old days of
Pio Nono's reign, where he had a great position as Prussian minister to
the Vatican. He and the Countess Arnim received a great deal, and their
beautiful rooms in the Palazzo Caffarelli, on the top of the Capitol
Hill (the two great statues of Castor and Pollux standing by their
horses looking as if they were guarding the entrance) were a brilliant
centre for all the Roman and diplomatic world. He was a thorough man of
the world, could make himself charming when he chose, but he never had a
pleasant manner, was curt, arrogant, with a very strong sense of his own
superiority. From the first moment he came to Paris as ambassador, he
put people's backs up.
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