Читать книгу Secret History of To-day: Being Revelations of a Diplomatic Spy онлайн

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I was looking on at the negotiation without any very great interest, sharing, as I did, in the general impression that Spain would give way before long, when I was surprised one morning by receiving a visit from a very remarkable character.

Ludwig Kehler was a Bavarian, who had begun life as a candidate for the priesthood. A disgraceful affair, the particulars of which I had never learned, had caused his dismissal from the seminary, and, after drifting about the world for a time, and mixing in very shady company, he suddenly appeared in Berlin in the character of a police agent.

The exact nature of the services which he rendered to the police was a mystery, but I had formed the theory that he was employed as a spy on the German Catholics, whose attachment to the House of Hohenzollern has always been suspected in Berlin.

The presence of this man in Paris was in itself an unusual event. It did not occur to me to connect it with the Spanish-American question, and that for a very simple reason. Germany is the one country in Europe which has never possessed a foot of soil in the New World. Spain, Portugal, England, France, and even Holland and Denmark have planted their flags across the Atlantic, but the German Michael has been content to remain at home while his neighbours were colonising the globe.


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