Let me tell you a tale of two girlfriends.

The first girlfriend dreamt of marrying a prince, only to be dumped in a blaze of publicity. The second girlfriend dreamt of helping her beloved to bring democracy to the Islamic world, only to find herself the unwitting instrument of a malicious plot to destroy him.

Apart from the fact that the hysteria surrounding both cases is being fuelled by anonymous briefings, the two cases do not appear to have much in common. Yet both stories are driven by prejudices that nobody will admit to. In the case of Kate Middleton and Prince William, the problem is the old English vice of class prejudice. No sooner had it become clear that the romance between Ms. Middleton and the prince was over than the press was full of unpleasant innuendo about this blameless young woman and her equally blameless family.

In particular, we were told that Ms. Middleton was “too middle-class,” i.e., not upper-class enough, to marry the heir to the throne. The evidence cited for this was that she used words like “toilet,” whereas the royal family would say “lavatory,” and “pardon,” whereas the royals would say “I beg your pardon.”

Her mother was accused of chewing gum in public, which solecism was attributed to the fact that she was a former flight attendant. Whenever they saw her, some of the prince’s cronies are said to have whispered: “Doors to manual!”

The Middletons were alleged to be socially ambitious and eager to make the most of Kate’s connection with the world’s most eligible bachelor.

Now, I don’t know any better than you do who put these nasty insinuations into the public domain. I would like to think that neither friends of the prince nor palace officials, let alone the royal family itself, had anything to do with it.

But the British monarchy has become as much of a playground for spin-doctors as any other political institution. So somebody ordered a ruthless press blitz to establish two things in the public mind: first, that William had broken off the relationship with Kate Middleton, not the other way round; and, secondly, that she was anyway unworthy to be the bride of the future king of England.

Do you want to know what I think of this modus operandi? I think it stinks. It would have put the royal family in a far better light if nothing had been said. It was an event such as befalls countless others: the gradual cooling of a campus love affair between two very young people.

By not saying a word, the Middleton family has come out of it with dignity. I wish the same could be said about the unchivalrous snobs whom the prince tolerates in his circle. The dumping of Kate Middleton displayed a ridiculous side of the British establishment. But it doesn’t really matter.

The Wolfie-hunt at the World Bank, by contrast, is an even more ridiculous spectacle — and it does matter. Here the unspoken prejudices involved are much uglier, ranging from the obsessive neoconophobia of the Europeans to Islamist fantasies about American Jews taking over the world.

As far as one can tell from the carefully managed drip-drip of information so far released, Paul Wolfowitz seems to have done his best to handle the awkward situation of being his girlfriend’s boss strictly by the rules, as he understood them.

He was naturally concerned that Shaha Riza’s career should not be damaged by her relationship with him and he offered to recuse himself from involvement in her promotion. He requested and followed the advice of the bank’s ethics committee.

Unless further evidence comes to light, it would seem that Mr. Wolfowitz acted openly and honestly throughout. He did, however, make two mistakes. The first was to trust his colleagues, many of whom hate his guts and were just looking for an opportunity to trip him up — as, sure enough, they did.

Compared to the charges routinely made in courts of law against a Jacques Chirac or a Silvio Berlusconi, the accusations against Mr. Wolfowitz are of course very small potatoes.

Under the tyranny of corporate governance, though, even minor infringements of business etiquette can be magnified into major crimes. If you are regarded as the devil incarnate, you have to think in as Machiavellian a manner as your enemies in order to survive.

The other mistake Mr. Wolfowitz has made was to have taken the job in the first place. The World Bank, like almost all international bodies, is a nest of vipers. Assuming that he survives the immediate threat, Mr. Wolfowitz will still want to go after a decent interval — and he will be well out of it. The only useful thing he could have done at the World Bank was to preside over its dissolution.

What is more, there are too few public servants as able as Mr. Wolfowitz to waste them on the Sisyphean task of eliminating corruption from international aid.

Why doesn’t President Bush invite him to do a worthwhile job — such as turning NATO into a serious organization again, or advising the White House on the next phase of the war on terror, or the nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea?

Paul Wolfowitz, your country needs you.