But, independently of the object lesson in veracity that this narrative inculcates, it gives the measure of the value attached by the Emperor of Russia to the European concert, and the degree to which it was likely to hamper his own liberty of action whenever he thought proper to liberate himself from it. The _procédé_ with regard to the British Ambassador only concerns the British Government. The Porte had yielded to the ultimatum. In the meantime negotiations for assembling a Conference continued. The Czar had expressed to the English Ambassador “a very earnest wish that the Conference should meet with the _least possible delay_, and that instructions should even be immediately sent by the several Governments to enable the Ambassadors at Constantinople to deliberate _at once_ on the necessary preliminaries of peace.”[53] Prince Gortchakoff, too, _expressed his anxious wish_ that on the arrangement of the armistice _no time should be lost_ in organising a Conference.[54] But Austria was coy. The term “local autonomy” accompanied by no matter what gloss, seriously perturbed her; and yet this was the very point on which Russia insisted the most. In reporting his conversation with Prince Gortchakoff at Orianda, Lord A. Loftus said: “It is evident to me that Prince Gortchakoff does not wish to make the question of the armistice the ground for a rupture with the Porte, and that he _looks to the question of the ‘autonomy of the three Provinces’ as being the important deciding point of peace or war_.”[55] Until Count Andrassy received guarantees that no kind of _political_ autonomy was meant, he would have nothing to do with a Conference, and it was only when, after a good deal of fencing, this guarantee was at last accorded him, that he gave his consent to the proposal. Although there had been a serious proposal to exclude Turkey from the Conference to be held in her own capital to decide on the administration of her provinces, the cynical incongruity of the proposition had procured its rejection, and now the Porte was asked to adhere to it. Without any illusion, since Russia’s ultimatum, as to whither the Conference would lead, the Porte, on the 18th November, with the sanction of a Grand Council, gave her assent to a proposal, the rejection of which would have meant immediate war.