He prefers music and walking in his garden to being rattled by busybody courtiers trying to get him to receive visiting ambassadors.
Conversations between visiting ambassadors and leaders of the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are, as a diplomatic courtesy, conveyed to the Foreign Office.
In a subsequent speech to the 180 visiting ambassadors, Mr. Kouchner veered from his prepared remarks to say he had apologized to Mr. Maliki on Monday morning.
Before Israel's elections in January, Mr. Peres was accused of meddling in politics after telling a group of visiting ambassadors that Israel must reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians "without further delay" and that he considered President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority a suitable partner for negotiations.
In Rome the Galleria of the Vatican displayed earth-bound Papal wealth while in Florence the Corridoio Vasariano was (and is) a splendid overground gallery linking the Pitti with Uffizi, designed to display Medici art with the intention of boggling the minds of visiting ambassadors and supplicants.
He was a man of frugal habits, taking a meal of boiled beef and beer every day; in the state dining room, we are told, formal dinners never lasted more than an hour, and visiting ambassadors often fled to the Sacher Hotel for something to eat.
In May, Klaus-Peter Klaiber, a visiting European Union ambassador, compared the malnutrition at Shibarghan to conditions at Auschwitz.
Soon after the earthquake, Mr. Perkins made the rounds, visiting the ambassador to the United States, Haitian ministers and the country's president.
At Bakhchisarai, the ancient capital of the Tatar kingdom which once ruled this region, Ilmi Umarov, the head of the regional administration, was holding urgent talks with the visiting Lithuanian ambassador.
On Friday, visiting British ambassador Hamish Cowell laid a wreath at a freshly installed memorial at the site of the killing, then stopped to speak to tourists Paul and Barbara Young from Ipswich.
