New-York tribune., 1908-07-03
VINO nave made 1t their business to study him for
'he information Of their respective governments.

TINKER WHO BECAME AMBASSADOR
'n Ernest Satow, representative of England at
me last peace conference at The Hague and long
Aiihister Plenipotentary at Toxic and at Pekns,
ias peen iecturing at the University of Cambridge
On Dlplomacy, and devoted much of his dis
course to the career of Count Alexander Hubner.
VINO closed his service Austrian Ambassador IN
faris In 1889 and who later wrote very interest
ing oook about his travels In the United States.
nut notice that Sir Ernest, who is totally devoid
vi hunor, neglected to mention some of the most
entertaining features of the counts history.
mus Count Hubner's originally
Hafenhroedel. He was the son of village cobbler.
ana ne owed his admission to the diplomatic
vice and his subsequent rise in its ranks to pc
cuiar KIND of poodle dog. The third of the
wives OF the great Prince Metternch, the Austrian
chancellor of the Napoleonic and of the first
hVe decades of the nineteenth century. pas
sionately fond of poodles. The Mops of the
princess died, and, inasnuch the particular
breed was believed to have become extinct, she
was quite inconsolable. BY some means other,
whlch-perhaps acknowledgements clouded in OBJ
scurty. young Hafenbroedel. who had just started
on MS career as peddlng tinker, able to
cure for the princess another Mops exactly
sembling the one she had lost. Her Joy in
tense. and she testified her gratitude to the young
tinker by not only paying him handsomely. but
also by finding him a place as messenger in the
office of her husband. The latter eventually dis
covered in the extinker the qualities of perfect
af1ectlOn
him. caused him to abandon the somewhat ridicu-
lous paternal name of Hafenbroedel for that of
Hubner. and eventually gave him a good berth in
the diplomatic service.
After Louis Bonaparte had made himself EN-
peror of the French Napoleon III, Prince
Schwartzenberg, who had succeeded Metternich
chancellor was much embarrassed to whom to
send as Austrian representative to Paris Young En-
peror Francis Joseph at the time following in
the wake Of Car Nicholas, who refused to address
ldp
frere'' to recognize him in any way as brother
monarch. Finally Francis Joseph and Schwartzen-
berg pitched upon Hubner a suitable repre-
sentative, with the idea that while his abili-
ties and his diplomatic skill and tact would be of
great value In difficult post his lack of lineage
and of birth would emphasize the determination
of the House of Hapsburg to discriminate against
a monarch who had obtained his throne by such
questionable means those employed by Napoleon
Ill
The French government protested against the
nomination of Hubner, declaring that it would
prefer Hohenlohe EsterhaZy or some other
great Austrian magnate to the ci-devant Hafen-
broedel and eX-tinker. To this suggestion the Aus
trian Foreign Office replied, with characteristic
impertinence, that to have sent member of an
ancient and iustrious house to Paris as ambas-
sador would not have constituted sufficient recoS-
milton of the crowned democracy established in
France.
Hubner managed to retain his place until 1859,
when Napoleon, the occasion Of the New Years
Day reception OF the great digntaries OF the realm
and of the foreign ambassadors at the Tuileries.
addressed to him those pointed sharp and un-
friendly remarks which led to his recall and
precipitated the war which eliminated in the bat
tie of Solferino and in the peace or Nlllafranca
So crushing the defeat sustained by Austria
that Napoleon must have felt himself fully avenged
for the affront placed upon him in connection with
Count Hubner, whose place taken on the
restoration of peace by the son and heir OF the
latter's old master. namely, Prince Richard Met
ternich. MARQUlSE DE FUN ihINo1'