The poor Sultan, meanwhile, who might well exclaim ‘A plague o’ both your Churches!’ was the unwilling arbiter of this dispute between his Christian subjects, and was urged by the great champion on each side to decide in favour of his protégé. Who might have the key, or whether there was any key at all, or any sanctuary at all, or any Greek or Latin Church, was to this hapless potentate a matter of profound indifference. The French envoy put on the strongest pressure, and the Sultan inclined to the side of the Latins; the Russian minister thereupon squeezed from him a concession to their adversaries; and between the two he managed, as might be expected, to disgust both sects, and to anger the Czar without satisfying the Emperor. The displeasure of Nicholas was extreme, and he prepared to support his further arguments by marching a large army towards the Turkish frontier. And the first use of this force was to give momentum to the mission of Prince Mentschikoff, who was sent to Constantinople as the organ of his Imperial master’s displeasure. The selection of the envoy showed that the Czar wished to take the most direct and violent course to the fulfilment of his aim; for the Prince’s diplomacy was of that simple kind—the only kind he seemed capable of employing—which regards threats as the best means of persuasion. These strong measures were the first indications that war was possibly impending. And as they appeared to spring from the religious fervour of the Czar, which had been roused to this pitch by the gratuitous intermeddling of Napoleon in the question of the Holy Places, it would at first seem as if it were indeed the French ruler who had first blown the coal which presently caused such a conflagration. But in the interval between the decision of the Sultan about the churches, and the appearance of Mentschikoff at Constantinople, Nicholas had held with Sir Hamilton Seymour the remarkable conversations which explain the real designs cloaked by the religious question. In these interviews he uttered his famous parable of “the sick man,” representing that the Turkish Empire was dying, and might fall to pieces any day, and proposing that the event should be provided for by an immediate arrangement for dividing the fragments. Provided he had the concurrence of England, the Czar would not, he said, care what any other Powers might do or say in the matter.