Rest and the society of his relations—the best of all restoratives to a man of Lord Lyons’ affectionate nature—in contrast to the strenuous labours of those four exhausting years, soon effected a cure. He was out of the service, but such a man could hardly be spared, and in the month of July, 1865, he was appointed to the Embassy at Constantinople, in succession to Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling). It would have been difficult to find two men more different than Bulwer and Lord Lyons. Bulwer was a clever curiosity, and a born intriguer. On leaving Cambridge, he had been successively a Greek patriot, a cornet in the Life Guards, an ensign in the 58th Foot, had retired upon half-pay, had achieved success as a gambler and dandy (not quite of the first water), and finally entered the diplomatic service. In appearance, in his old days, he was a small shadow of a man, as wizened as Tithonus, with an insane desire to show the frame of an athlete. To this end he used to encase himself in numberless great-coats, from which, when he came to the Foreign Office and the heat became intolerable, he would pray some kindly clerk to set him free, and the poor old mummy was unrolled. As Ambassador at Constantinople he had ample opportunities for the exercise of his peculiar talents; he was often in hot water, but, like a famous bishop, always contrived to come out with his hands clean.[29] His methods were not those of Lord Lyons, they were far more nearly in accord with those of the Russian Ambassador, General Ignatieff, whom the Turks called “the father of lies.” Lord Lyons’ transparent honesty must have been an astonishment to Constantinople, which was used to being a hotbed of underhand machinations, plots and counterplots, and where no diplomatist trusted anybody else, least of all the colleagues with whom he was supposed to live in brotherly love. However, it was a time of comparative calm, and Lord Lyons, accompanied by his two trusty henchmen, Malet and Sheffield, whom, with his usual affection for his friends, he had insisted upon taking with him, was able to enjoy all the charm of that most captivating city in a peace of mind to which he had long been a stranger. The Danubian principalities were a worry, as they always had been, and as, now that they have been exalted into Kingdoms with a rich importation of ready-made monarchs from abroad, they continue to be. Crete was another difficulty, as it has been ever since the days of the three evil Kappas. Still there were troubles which, after the years of perpetual pin-pricks and imminent international dangers on the other side of the Atlantic, must have been looked upon by Lord Lyons as no more than enough to keep his armour from growing rusty.