When a physician has to treat a case of consumption, his first care is to prevent his patient from breathing poisoned air. If he has to perform an operation, he sees to it that the room in which the operation is to take place is purified of every contagious germ. Exactly the same principle holds with regard to national diseases. No state can think of curing its internal ills before the European room is disinfected. Certainly it is the duty of every nation to do everything possible to modify the ills of its own people; but to claim that serious internal reforms can be carried out without having first secured European federation is just like caring for wounded men in a hall filled with microbes. I kept up a correspondence with Admiral Réveillère for a long time. Of late years our letters fell off in frequency. A short time ago—in March, 1908—he died. Ah, when we have grown old, how often we have to report of our friends that they are no more! In childhood life is like a nursery; in youth, like a garden; in old age, like a cemetery. Tidings of a death which affected us painfully—I am now telling of what happened in the year 1895—came to us suddenly from the Caucasus,—Prince Achille Murat had shot himself. Was it suicide or an accident? I never learned the exact truth. It happened in Zugdidi, in the villa which My Own had built for the Murats. Princess Salomé, who was sitting in the next room, heard the report of a shot in her husband’s room. She hastened in and found the unfortunate man fallen back in an easy-chair, with a pistol between his legs, the barrel pointing up in the air. Had he been cleaning the weapon carelessly, or was it weariness of life? As I said, I do not know. And still another loss: On the 17th of October, 1895, Duke Elimar von Oldenburg departed this life, in his fifty-second year, at his castle of Erlaa. A short time before, he had given me a second article by his uncle, Prince Peter, entitled “Thoughts of a Russian Patriot,” which ends with these ringing words: Let me be permitted to express the dearest wish of my heart, as I face God and Eternity,—an agreement of all governments in the interest of peace and humanity! May that happy day dawn when men can say, War between civilized nations is at an end. Duke Elimar’s widow was completely overwhelmed by this sudden and premature bereavement. To my letter of condolence she wrote me the following answer, which throws a brilliant light on the noble characteristics of the departed and his consort: Brogan, October 29, 1895 Dear Baroness: