Explore "The Emperor's Candlesticks" by Baroness Emmuska Orczy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It had already been settled, some little time ago, that his Eminence Cardinal d'Orsay would leave Vienna on the day following -- Thursday -- to take two or three weeks' relaxation from his diplomatic duties, under the strictest incognito, somewhere among the mountains of Bohemia. He had terminated his mission from his Holiness Leo XIII. to his Catholic and Apostolic Majesty Franz Jozef I. with that ease and tact which characterised all his Eminence's methods of procedure, whether diplomatic or otherwise, and would presently be going to St. Petersburg also on a diplomatic mission, but one of a most intricate character, which would require all his Eminence's skill and knowledge of the world and of that Imperial enigma -- the Czar.
Iván Volenski had been kept incessantly at work all that day, ever since his Eminence had returned from Low Mass, classifying and arranging the diplomatic correspondence relating to the concluded mission, and preparing the documents that the Nuncio would require when, having returned from his well-earned holiday, he would be ready to start for St. Petersburg.