was a very short one. Whether it was shyness or sea-sickness I know not. But she complained of the heat, began to cry, and I had to send her away.
I merely passed through Constantinople on my way back. It was the middle of Ramadan, all the mosques lighted up at night, and the women promenading in the square of the Seraskier in the daytime--a regular persil. I went there one day with Paul Daru, Lavalette and Cyrus Gerard, all members of the embassy M. de Sercey was taking to Persia. They came from Paris and told me the news from there. In my turn I told them all about the battle of Nezib, a very interesting description of which I had had the good luck to hear from two young Prussian officers, eye-witnesses of it, one of whom became the celebrated Marshal von Moltke; and also all I learnt about the Eastern question on my visits to the Embassies, to Therapia and Buyukdere. There I had met all the chief members of the diplomatic corps, which consisted during my stay of two French ambassadors, succeeding each other, both of them instability personified--one was Admiral Roussin, a distinguished sailor, the other M. de Pontois, a professional diplomat--both of them very kind, but neither, as a result of their instability, having any real influence. Beside them two men of tenacity and steadfastness admirably personified two great powers. Lord Ponsonby, a tall, blunt, haughty, unsociable old man, represented British perseverance and Lord Palmerston's prejudices, while M. de Boutenieff, a charming, kindly, and witty man, liked by everybody and making game somewhat of all, stood for the great destinies of the Russian people, and the mighty will of the Emperor Nicholas. An armed Russian intervention in the Bosphorus was no longer in question, but it was unforeseen as yet that Russia and England would agree to ruin the work of Mehemet Ali, the last strength in reality of the Mussulman world, and that the whole of Europe would join these two powers in their willing alliance for the isolation and humiliation of France, revolutionary France! No more allies for us, since we have gone into that mill! We sacrificed 200,000 men in the Crimea. What did we get by it? The garter for Napoleon III. One word or deed of sympathy for all our reverses? Not the shadow of one! Revolutionary France has been asked for help. But none has ever been given her. Would it be rendered her now? God grant it!