[Illustration: THE BURIAL OF WELLINGTON. (_See p._ 11.)] The Turks, having no interest in the religious question, proposed various arrangements, which proved agreeable to neither party. When something like the basis of an agreement had been arranged, a strong letter from the Emperor Nicholas to the Sultan forced the Porte to retract it. Learning this, M. de Lavalette said that his Government, having embarked in the question, could not stop short under the dictation of Russia. The Russian Emperor would not desist from opposition at the dictation of France. Each presented himself to the Sultan, one with the treaty of 1740, the Charter of the Latins; the other with documents, antecedent and subsequent to that date, embodying concessions made to the Greeks. The Porte, desirous of satisfying both the powerful complainants, exhausted its ingenuity in devices, yielding now to Russian, now to French menaces, and looking keenly for assurances of support in the event of danger. The Turks consulted Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; but he was powerless to aid them, for his Government had determined to take no part. Nevertheless, he did his utmost to prevent precipitate action on all sides, on a question "involving little more than a religious sentiment, and the application of a treaty permitted to be more or less in abeyance for a century." He was only partially successful, for M. de Lavalette continued to talk of breaking off negotiations unless his demands were complied with, and M. de Titoff stood out against any alteration of the _status quo_. At length, at the beginning of 1852, by the exertions of M. de Lavalette, the questions at issue seemed to be settled, and the Porte embodied the whole of the arrangements respecting the Holy Places in an "imperial firman invested with a hatti-scherif." The Turkish Ministers hoped that both parties would be satisfied by concessions. This was a delusion, for the Porte in its trepidation gave conflicting pledges to the fighting embassies. In giving the assurance by letter which calmed for a time the abounding zeal of M. de Lavalette, the Porte promised that the firman should not be publicly read, but simply registered. The Russian _chargé d'affaires_ got wind of this, and insisted, with effect, that the firman should be read. M. de Lavalette, hearing probably that the Porte had promised M. de Titoff, months before, that the key of the "great door" of the church at Bethlehem should not be given to the Latins, grew very keen in his instructions to the French Consul to see that it was given up. M. de Lavalette became extremely violent. "He more than once," wrote Colonel Rose, the _chargé d'affaires_, in November, "talked of the appearance of a French fleet off Jaffa (in case the stipulations were not fulfilled), and once he alluded to a French occupation of Jerusalem, 'when,' he said, 'we shall have all the sanctuaries.'"