ministers were trying to make their office do its full effect upon all
occasions in "the dress of an American gentleman." The morning after his
arrival Mr. Motley came to me with a handful of newspapers which,
according to the Austrian custom at that day, had been opened in the
Venetian post-office. He wished me to protest against this on his behalf
as an infringement of his diplomatic extra-territoriality, and I proposed
to go at once to the director of the post: I had myself suffered in the
same way, and though I knew that a mere consul was helpless, I was
willing to see the double-headed eagle trodden under foot by a Minister
Plenipotentiary. Mr. Motley said that he would go with me, and we put
off in his gondola to the post-office. The director received us with the
utmost deference. He admitted the irregularity which the minister
complained of, and declared that he had no choice but to open every
foreign newspaper, to whomsoever addressed. He suggested, however, that
if the minister made his appeal to the Lieutenant-Governor of Venice,
Count Toggenburg would no doubt instantly order the exemption of his
newspapers from the general rule.

Mr. Motley said he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon the
Lieutenant-Governor, and "How fortunate," he added, when we were got back
into the gondola, "that I should have happened to bring my court dress
with me!" I did not see the encounter of the high contending powers, but
I know that it ended in a complete victory for our minister.

I had no further active relations of an official kind with Mr. Motley,
except in the case of a naturalized American citizen, whose property was
slowly but surely wasting away in the keeping of the Venetian courts. An
order had at last been given for the surrender of the remnant to the
owner; but the Lombardo-Venetian authorities insisted that this should be
done through the United States Minister at Vienna, and Mr. Motley held as