NOTE

Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, the writer of these letters, is the wife of the recently retired Danish Minister to Germany.  She was formerly Miss Lillie Greenough, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lived with her grandfather, Judge Fay, in the fine old Fay mansion, now the property of Radcliffe College.

As a child Miss Greenough developed the remarkable voice which later was to make her well known, and when only fifteen years of age her mother took her to London to study under Garcia.  Two years later Miss Greenough became the wife of Charles Moulton, the son of a well-known American banker, who had been a resident in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe.  As Madame Charles Moulton the charming American became an appreciated guest at the court of Napoleon III.  Upon the fall of the Empire Mrs. Moulton returned to America, where Mr. Moulton died, and a few years afterward she married M. de Hegermann-Lindencrone, at that time Danish Minister to the United States, and later periods his country’s representative at Stockholm, Rome, Paris, Washington and Berlin.

THE ALPHABET OF A DIPLOMAT

Ambassador             A man, just a little below God.
Attache                The lowest rung of the ladder.
Blunder                How absurd!  Why, never!...
Chancellery            The barn-yard where he is plucked.
Chief                  The cock of the walk.
Colleagues             A question merely of time and place.
Court                  Where one learns to make courtesies.
Decorations            The balm for all woes.
Dinners                The surest road to success.
Disponsibility         The Styx, whence no one returns.
Esprit (de corps)    The corps is there, but where is the esprit?
Etiquette              The Ten Commandments.
Finesse                A narrow lane where two can walk abreast.
Friendships            Ships that pass in the night.
Gotha (almanack)     The Bible of a Diplomat.
Highness               His, Her_, make a deep courtesy.
Ignoramus              A person who does not agree with you.
Innuendo               An obscure side-light of truth.
Joke                   Something beneath the dignity of a diplomat
to notice.
Knowledge (private)    News which every one already knows.
Legation               Apartments to let.
Letters (de creance) The first impression.
Letters (de rappel)  The last illusion.
Majeste (lese)       Too awful to think of.
Majesties              Human beings with royal faults.
Nobodies               People to be avoided like poison.
Opulence               When in service.
Pension                Too small to be seen with the naked eye.