The unfortunate Prime Minister, urged on to violence by Victoria on one side, had to deal, on the other, with a Foreign Secretary who was fundamentally opposed to any policy of active interference at all. Between the Queen and Lord Derby he held a harassed course. He gained, indeed, some slight satisfaction in playing off the one against the other--in stimulating Lord Derby with the Queen's missives, and in appeasing the Queen by repudiating Lord Derby's opinions; on one occasion he actually went so far as to compose, at Victoria's request, a letter bitterly attacking his colleague, {266} which her Majesty forthwith signed, and sent, without alteration, to the Foreign Secretary.[51] But such devices gave only a temporary relief; and it soon became evident that Victoria's martial ardour was not to be side-tracked by hostilities against Lord Derby; hostilities against Russia were what she wanted, what she would, what she must, have. For now, casting aside the last relics of moderation, she began to attack her friend with a series of extraordinary threats. Not once, not twice, but many times she held over his head the formidable menace of her imminent abdication. 'If England,' she wrote to Beaconsfield, 'is to kiss Russia's feet, she will not be a party to the humiliation of England and would lay down her crown,' and she added that the Prime Minister might, if he thought fit, repeat her words to the Cabinet.[52] 'This delay,' she ejaculated, 'this uncertainty by which, abroad, we are losing our prestige and our position, while Russia is advancing and will be before Constantinople in no time! Then the Government will be fearfully blamed and the Queen so humiliated that she thinks she would abdicate at once. Be bold!'[53] 'She feels,' she reiterated, 'she cannot, as she before said, remain the Sovereign of a country that is letting itself down to kiss the feet of the great barbarians, the retarders of all liberty and civilisation that exists.'[54] When the Russians advanced to the outskirts of Constantinople she fired off three letters in a day demanding war; and when she learnt that the Cabinet had only decided to send the Fleet to Gallipoli she declared that 'her first impulse' was 'to lay down the thorny crown, which she feels little satisfaction in retaining if the position of this country is {267} to remain as it is now.'[55] It is easy to imagine the agitating effect of such a correspondence upon Beaconsfield. This was no longer the Faery; it was a genie whom he had rashly called out of her bottle, and who was now intent upon showing her supernal power. More than once, perplexed, dispirited, shattered by illness, he had thoughts of withdrawing altogether from the game. One thing alone, he told Lady Bradford, with a wry smile, prevented him. 'If I could only,' he wrote, 'face the scene which would occur at headquarters if I resigned, I would do so at once.'[56]