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.
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