passport!—you could not get one, sir,—you are too well known to our agents.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, indeed. You Englishmen fancy that we know nothing about you. The fact is, we know more about you than you do yourselves: we have our agents in England, who know more of your affairs than you imagine. It is an important part of my duty to prevent improper persons from entering Russia; and how am I to know that you are not an improper person?—indeed, you look very much like one.”
Up to this time I had been perfectly cool; but at this point I was roused into uttering some strong expressions, which I had cause to repent afterwards. I had forgotten that (as will soon be seen) I was still in the ambassador’s power. Leaving him under a strong feeling of irritation, I proceeded to the English Embassy, and had an interview with Sir Henry Wynn. I was delighted to find a frank, bluff, fine old English gentleman, who heartily expressed his wish to help a fellow-countryman to the utmost of his power. Still, he was rather incredulous at first, and made the same objections to my story, though in politer terms, as the Russian minister had done.
“Of course I don’t mean to doubt your word, sir; but your story is strange—very strange;” was the substance of his comment. When I alluded to the Secretary of Legation, he said: “It is very strange and very unfortunate that the only gentleman you know at the Embassy should happen to be the very man that is away.”
However, I succeeded at last in convincing him that I was no impostor, and that my statement, however strange, was true. Forthwith I received a passport; nay, the dear old gentleman was so very kind as to fill up the form in his own handwriting. Perhaps you suppose that my difficulties were now over. Far from it: they had only commenced. I had to go back to the Russian Embassy to have my passport counter-signed; and this was the necessary process which I had forgotten in the warmth of my indignation. How to face his Russian Excellency again? that was the question. There was no help for it; so, putting a bold face on the matter, I went to the office. A clerk disappeared with my passport: and, in his absence, my solitary reflections were anything but pleasant. After the scene which had taken place that morning, it was but a forlorn hope to expect that I should be more favourably received now. I remember distinctly that there was a clock in the office, which, in the death-like stillness, worried me by so deliberately ticking off my precious moments. I looked up at the dial: it was close upon ten o’clock. In a few minutes the steamer would be gone. Presently, the clerk returned, and told me that the Baron wanted to see me himself. “Oho!” thought I, “in this case, even such a simple thing as the visé of a passport cannot be managed by a clerk.”
When I entered the room where the ambassador sat, I found him conversing in an undertone with a gentleman whom I supposed to be his secretary. I was the subject of their conversation; and they evidently did not intend that I should understand what they said, for they chose the Russ to talk in. Now, though an Englishman by race, I was born in the Russian empire, and the Russian tongue was familiar to me from my childhood; was, indeed, something like a second mother-tongue. So I understood every word they said.
“It is very curious,” said his excellency: “if the English Ambassador had not known him, he surely would not have given him such a passport as this; and yet, if the fellow had known the ambassador, he would not have been fool enough to come here first this morning.”
I could not gainsay the logic; it was evidently a deep mystery to the ambassadorial intellect. Unable to solve the mystery, he looked up, and, fixing his stern searching eyes on me, seemed as if he would read me through and through. I met his eye without quailing before it. Clever diplomatist as he was, I felt that I had checked him; and the consciousness gave me assurance and strength. For a few moments, the scrutinising looks that passed between us seemed likely to merge into a battle of eyes. Thanks to a singular power I have of keeping my eyes open without flinching, I gained the victory in this preliminary skirmish. Finding that he could not frown me down, the Baron proceeded to question me; and the diplomatic fencing commenced in right earnest.
“Are you acquainted with Sir Henry Wynn?” he asked.
Now I knew, from his conversation with the secretary, which way that question tended; and, feeling that it was dangerous, I resolved to parry it.
“Your Excellency has already informed me,” I said, “that you know more about us than we do ourselves: you surely need not apply to me for such a paltry piece of information; about a matter, too, relating not to England, about which you know so much from your agents, but to Copenhagen, which lies under your Excellency’s own eyes.”
“If you know Sir Henry Wynn, why did you apply to me for a passport this morning, instead of going to him at once?”
“Your Excellency must pardon me for presuming to correct you: I did not tell you that I knew Sir Henry; I merely left it to your Excellency’s universal knowledge.” Not that I could not satisfactorily answer his question; but I began to feel a sort of malicious pleasure in teasing him; and, moreover, by irritating him, I hoped to divert his attention from the original question which was so dangerous.
“Answer my question, sir! Why did you not go first to Sir Henry?”
“Aha!” thought I, “I have gained my object: his Excellency has forgotten the most dangerous and most important part of the question.” Aloud I said: “Simply because your Excellency happens to be an earlier riser than Sir Henry; and the steamer by which I came was to have sailed at ten o’clock.”
After some more passes between us, in which I twitted him again, and more than once, about his universal knowledge—and this time not merely because I was amused at his official sensitiveness, but because I thought that that was the way in which I could the soonest bring the interview to a close—the ambassador gave up the cross-exami-