"The greatest obstacle to this plan of a congress would come from the unexpected success of the Ottoman arms during the winter. If, owing to the rigour of the season, the want of provisions, the insufficiency of the troops, or any other cause, the Russians were obliged to abandon the Siege of Silistria, if Varna, which, however, is hardly probable, were to fall again into the hands of the Turks, the Emperor Nicholas would find himself in a position which would no longer permit him to listen to any proposal, under the penalty of descending to the lowest rank of monarchs: then the war would continue and we should come back to the eventualities inferred in this Note. If Russia lost her rank as a military power, if Turkey replaced her in this quality, Europe would only have changed one peril for another. Now, the danger which would come upon us through the scimitar of Mahmud would be of a much more formidable nature than that with which we should be threatened by the sword of the Emperor Nicholas. If fortune, by chance, seat a remarkable prince upon the Throne of the Sultans, he cannot live long enough to change the laws and manners, even if he had the intention to do so. Mahmud will die: to whom will he leave the Empire, with its disciplined, fanatical soldiers, with its ulemas holding in their hands, thanks to the initiation of modern tactics, a new means of conquest for the Koran? "While Austria, at last terrified by those false calculations, would be obliged to guard herself on frontiers where the janissaries gave her nothing to fear, a new military insurrection, a possible result of the humiliation of the Emperor Nicholas, would perhaps break out in St. Petersburg, spread from place to place, and set fire to the north of Germany. That is what the men do not perceive who, in politics, confine themselves to vulgar terrors and commonplaces. Petty dispatches, petty intrigues are the barriers which Austria designs to oppose to an all--threatening movement. If France and England adopted a course worthy of themselves, if they notified the Porte that, in case the Sultan should close his ears to all proposals of peace, he would find them on the battle-field in the spring, that resolution would soon have put an end to the anxiety of Europe." The existence of this Memorandum, having transpired in the diplomatic world, attracted to me a certain consideration which I did not decline, but which I did not either aspire to. I do not too clearly see what there was to surprise the "practical" men. My Spanish War was a very "practical" thing. The incessant work of the general revolution operating in the old society, while bringing about among ourselves the fall of the Legitimacy, has upset calculations subordinate to the permanence of facts as they existed in 1828.