midnight
`` I began to try to tell his Majesty that my government did not permit me to accept gifts of any kind from persons royal or otherwise , but it was not possible to do so , and twenty minutes later my audience was over and I returned to the Legation with the uncomfortable sense of having placed myself in a position where I must either violate the King 's confidence to acquire the permission of Congress to accept his gift , or break the laws by which all who are connected with the diplomatic service , directly or indirectly , are strictly governed . I assure you it was not in the least degree in the hope of personal profit that I chose the latter course . Ten days later a pair of massive golden pepper-pots came to me , and , as the King had intimated would be the case , there was nothing about them to show whence they had come . Taken altogether , they were the most exquisitely wrought specimens of the goldsmith 's artistry that I had ever seen , and upon their under side was inscribed in a cipher which no one unfamiliar with the affair of that midnight fracas would even have observed -- ` A.R. to C.C. ' -- Alphonso Rex to Carrington Cox being , of course , the significance thereof . They were put away with my other belongings , and two years later , when my activities were transferred to London , I took them away with me . `` In London I chose to live in chambers , and was soon established at No. 7 Park Place , St. James 's , a more than comfortable and centrally located apartment-house where I found pretty much everything in the way of convenience that a man situated as I was could reasonably ask for . I had not been there more than six months , however , when something happened that made the ease of apartment life seem somewhat less desirable .