ABSTRACT
In what words of polite circumlocution, or of cautious diplomacy, shall we say, or hint, that the deceased ambassador’s papers were found in shameful disorder. His excellency’s executor, sir James Brooke, however, was indefatigable in his researches. He and lord Colambre spent two whole days in looking over portfolios of letters, and memorials, and manifestoes, and bundles of paper of the most heterogeneous sorts; some of them without any docket or direction to lead to a knowledge of their contents; others written upon in such a manner as to give an erroneous notion of their nature; so that it was necessary to untie every paper separately. At last, when they had opened, as they thought, every paper, and, wearied and in despair, were just on the point of giving up the search, lord Colambre spied a bundle of old newspapers at the bottom of a trunk.
