Through all his brief Ambassadorship Lichnowsky had shown these same friendly traits.

The mere fact that he had been selected as Ambassador at this time was little less than a personal calamity.

His appointment gives a fair measure of the depths of duplicity to which the Prussian system could descend.

For more than fourteen years Lichnowsky had led the quiet life of a Polish country gentleman; he had never enjoyed the favour of the Kaiser; in his own mind and in that of his friends his career had long since been finished; yet from this retirement he had been suddenly called upon to represent the Fatherland at the greatest of European capitals.

The motive for this elevation, which was unfathomable then, is evident enough now.