The speech which he then delivered was a speech of minute detail, but of accurate detail. In twenty-four hours he had mastered an enormous Blue Book. No one could contradict him at any point. ‘So far as I know,’ said Lord Salisbury later, ‘that description [of Russian proceedings] is historically unimpeachable.’ Into the entanglements of General Komaroff’s action, of the strategic value of Merv, of the opinions of Baron Jomini, or of the territorial rights of the Amir in the disputed regions of the Murghab and Khushk rivers it is not, fortunately, necessary to enter. But one episode in Lord Randolph’s second speech on May 11 is worthy of record. The complacency with which the Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, had abandoned, in the Soudan, enterprises for the sake of which so many lives, British and Arab, had been sacrificed, had excited general wonder and even disgust. ‘I was reading in the _Times_ this morning,’ said Lord Randolph, dropping his voice and buttoning up his coat--‘does the Prime Minister ever read the _Times_?’ Mr. Gladstone tossed his head disdainfully. ‘It is a pity, because if the Prime Minister had read the _Times_ this morning he could not have failed to notice the review of a very interesting book--“The Home Letters of Lord Beaconsfield”--edited by Mr. Ralph Disraeli, who is, I believe, a friend of the Prime Minister’s.’ (‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Mr. Gladstone.) ‘Lord Beaconsfield, it appears, went many years ago to Yanina, where he had an interview with a very celebrated Minister--Redschid Pasha. There had recently been a great insurrection in Albania which had been put down by the Turks. This is Lord Beaconsfield’s account of the interview: “I bowed with all the nonchalance of St. James’s Street to a little, ferocious-looking, shrivelled, careworn man, plainly dressed, with a brow covered with wrinkles and a countenance clouded with anxiety and thought. I seated myself on the divan of the Grand Vizier (‘who,’ the Austrian Consul observed, ‘has destroyed in the course of the last three months--not in war--upwards of four thousand of my acquaintance’) with the self-possession of a morning call. Our conversation I need not repeat. We congratulated him on the pacification of Albania. He rejoined that the peace of the world was his only object and the happiness of mankind his only wish.”’ Here there was a long pause, intensified by the hush with which the House awaited the delayed conclusion. ‘There,’ cried Lord Randolph, raising his voice suddenly, hissing his words and pointing savagely across the House at Mr. Gladstone--‘there, upon the Treasury Bench, is the resuscitated Redschid Pasha.’