It is strange to recall, in the light of all that has happened since, how silently that momentous change announced itself. We knew that there were disturbances in Macedonia; but there were always disturbances in Macedonia. We gathered that there were dissensions at the Palace, for on the very day of his decoration by William II with the Black Eagle, Ferid Pasha, the Albanian Grand Vizier, fell. But there were usually dissensions at the Palace. And when, two days later, we read at the top of our morning papers a bare official announcement that the constitution had been re-established, that long-suspended constitution, the promise of which had brought Abd ül Hamid to the throne, we asked each other what it meant. Apparently no one could tell—least of all the diplomats supposed to sit at the fountain-heads of information. The most frequent conjecture was of a trick to gain time. It was only later that rumours began to run about, in the true Constantinople way, of the revolt of Macedonia; of the telegrams exchanged between Salonica and Yîldîz, and the memorable night council at which Abd ül Hamid, fainting with exhaustion and rage, acknowledged himself beaten at last; of the mysterious Committee of Union and Progress that had performed the miracle, and of the men who had gone about the country, disguised as pedlers and dervishes, feeding the hunger for liberty and the courage to demand it, and of the women who carried messages from harem to harem and so delivered them without writing, and of the revolutionary circles that flourished under the eyes of spies, subordinate to the larger circles of Constantinople, Salonica, and Paris, wherein only one or two members knew of the definite existence of another circle, and then of only one or two of its members.