Lord Napier was deeply moved, as well he might be. They were indeed “pretty words,” and in them, I think, we may see what lay at the bottom of Prince Gortchakoff’s subsequent foreign policy—especially in Central Asia—until he was finally checkmated by Lord Beaconsfield, at the Berlin Congress in 1878. On that morning of February, 1864, the Prince’s well-known keenness for an alliance with England died the death; in his estimation England need no longer be taken into account. Bismarck had now a free hand. His carefully laid schemes, of which the war in the Duchies was only an instalment, were all to bear their fruit. Austria was to be crippled, France to be humbled and dismembered, Germany to be a naval Power of the first magnitude. And England? That is how the keel of the first Dreadnought was laid at St. Petersburg in the month of February, 1864. The Baltic and the North Sea are united as Siamese twins. Germany, possessed of ports and a huge navy, is straining every nerve to wrest the trident from the hands of Great Britain, and the tragedy of 1914, which sooner or later was bound to come, is even now upon us. Black is the ingratitude of mankind! There is no statue of Lord Russell, the great benefactor, the true founder of the German navy, standing unter den Linden in Berlin. CHAPTER XII THROUGH THE WINTER Happily our life at the Embassy was not all made up of political miscarriages and diplomatic rebuffs. On the 6th (18th) of January we all received a summons to attend the ceremony of the blessing of the waters. For some days past a little shrine of green wood had been in process of construction on the side of the Neva opposite the Winter Palace; a picture of a saint surmounted it on each side, the place of honour being assigned to the image of St. John the Baptist. As soon as daylight broke on the 6th vast crowds of people of both sexes, soldiers in many uniforms, and, of course, as at all public ceremonies, dogs, were flocking to catch as near a sight as possible of the shrine.