The tone of the journals in Italy has very little to do with public opinion. All the world knows that, with the exception of two or three dailies, the Italian papers are the organs of purely personal interests, ambitions, and opinions,--not even of parties, which do not exist except in the form of fossil fragments; and when a journal emits an opinion or formulates a policy, everybody knows that it is the opinion or policy of the man who has a dominant or entire control of its columns. Crispi had his own journal, "La Riforma," which frankly and entirely expressed his views, and he paid no attention to the others. I happened to be on the way to the Foreign Office the day after Crispi assumed the reins of government, and by the way fell in with the foreign editor of one of the journals of the Left, exulting in the accession of a minister of his old party. He said to me, "I will wager you, Stillman, that in six weeks we are recognized as official,"--which meant subsidized. He had his audience first, and it was short, but within the fortnight his paper was one of the most violent opponents of the ministry. I had my audience, and in five minutes I turned my back on the premier and walked out of the office, and never put my foot in it again until, many weeks after, some trouble on the African frontier between English and Italian officers brought me a request from Crispi to come and receive a communication. I finally conquered his respect by showing him that I was the sincere friend of Italy, and our relations became confidential as far as his very rigorous sense of his official limitations permitted, but not a line beyond. I have seen in his hands the copy of the treaty of Triple Alliance, but I never drew from him the faintest hint of its provisions except that it was purely defensive and contained no stipulation for any aggressive movement under any circumstances. I learned them from other sources, and, with the changes of ministries and the diversities of their policies, foreign as well as domestic, there is no doubt that all the powers are fully informed of the details of the treaty. But personal intimacy, in the sense of that friendship which obtains amongst equals, could never have existed between us. Crispi is extremely reticent and reserved in his personal relations and has very few intimate friends, and those, so far as I know, entirely amongst the faithful few who were his intimates in the days of insurrection and conspiracy; but I know him as well as any one out of that circle, and I know him to be an absolutely honest and patriotic statesman, the first of Italy since Cavour. It is my opinion, too, that he is the ablest man not only in Italy but in Europe, since the death of Bismarck. In 1893 he was urged to assume the dictatorship, and the King in the general panic was willing to accord it, but Crispi refused, saying, "I am an old man with few years to live, but I will not give my countrymen an example of unconstitutional government."