FullReads

“I was scarcely back at court with the French ambassador’s answer, when I was told that a gentleman from the Venetian ambassador had been to seek me, who, having at last found me, said that his lord desired me, that if ever I would do him favour, I would take the pains to come to him instantly. I, winding the cause to be some new buzz gotten into his brain, from some intelligence he had from the French of that morning’s proceeding, excused my present coming, that I might take further instructions from the lord chamberlain; wherewith, as soon as I was sufficiently armed, I went to the Venetian.”

But the Venetian would not confer with Sir John, though he sent for him in such a hurry, except in presence of his own secretary. Then the Venetian desired Sir John to repeat the words of his own invitation, and those also of his own answer! which poor Sir John actually did! For he adds, “I yielded, but not without discovering my insatisfaction to be so peremptorily pressed on, as if he had meant to trip me.”

The Venetian having thus compelled Sir John to con over both invitation and answer, gravely complimented him on his correctness to a tittle! Yet still was the Venetian not in less trouble: and now he confessed that the king had given a formal invitation to the French ambassador,–and not to him!

This was a new stage in this important negotiation: it tried all the diplomatic sagacity of Sir John to extract a discovery; and which was, that the Frenchman had, indeed, conveyed the intelligence secretly to the Venetian.

Sir John now acknowledged that he had suspected as much when he received the message; and not to be taken by surprise, he had come prepared with a long apology, ending, for peace sake, with the same formal invitation for the Venetian. Now the Venetian insisted again that Sir John should deliver the invitation in the same precise words as it had been given to the Frenchman. Sir John, with his never-failing courtly docility, performed it to a syllable. Whether both parties during all these proceedings could avoid moving a risible muscle at one another, our grave authority records not.

The Venetian’s final answer seemed now perfectly satisfactory, declaring he would not excuse his absence as the Frenchman had, on the most frivolous pretence; and farther, he expressed his high satisfaction with last year’s substantial testimony of the royal favour, in the public honours conferred on him, and regretted that the quiet of his majesty should be so frequently disturbed by these punctilios about invitations, which so often “over-thronged his guests at the feast.”

Sir John now imagined that all was happily concluded, and was retiring with the sweetness of a dove, and the quietness of a mouse, to fly to the lord chamberlain, when behold the Venetian would not relinquish his hold, but turned on him “with the reading of another scruple, et hinc illae lachrymae! asking whether the archduke’s ambassador was also invited?” Poor Sir John, to keep himself clear “from categorical asseverations,” declared “he could not resolve him.” Then the Venetian observed, “Sir John was dissembling! and he hoped and imagined that Sir John had in his instructions, that he was first to have gone to him (the Venetian), and on his return to the archduke’s ambassador.” Matters now threatened to be as irreconcileable as ever, for it seems the Venetian was standing on the point of precedency with the archduke’s ambassador. The political Sir John, wishing to gratify the Venetian at no expense, adds, “he thought it ill manners to mar a belief of an ambassador’s making,” and so allowed him to think that he had been invited before the archduke’s ambassador!

This Venetian proved himself to be, to the great torment of Sir John, a stupendous genius in his own way; ever on the watch to be treated al paro di teste coronate–equal with crowned heads; and, when at a tilt, refused being placed among the ambassadors of Savoy and the States-general, etc., while the Spanish and French ambassadors were seated alone on the opposite side. The Venetian declared that this would be a diminution of his quality; the first place of an inferior degree being ever held worse than the last of a superior. This refined observation delighted Sir John, who dignifies it as an axiom, yet afterwards came to doubt it with a sed de hoc quaere–query this! If it be true in politics, it is not so in common sense, according to the proverbs of both nations; for the honest English declares, that “Better be the head of the yeomanry than the tail of the gentry;” while the subtle Italian has it, “E meglio esser testa di Luccio, che coda di Storione;” “better be the head of a pike than the tail of a sturgeon.” But before we quit Sir John, let us hear him in his own words, reasoning with fine critical tact, which he undoubtedly possessed, on right and left hands, but reasoning with infinite modesty as well as genius. Hear this sage of punctilios, this philosopher of courtesies.