About this time I received a kind letter from Lord Islington in reply to the letter I had sent in the water-bottle. It contained, to my joy, the signal I had asked him to put if the letter was ever received and dealt with, and contained also some personal inquiries about my health. This letter landed me in for another inquiry, which I survived all right. In fact, I pointed out that it was known in London I had been neglected, and so I was allowed to visit Dr. König again and extend my visit to the baths. The German doctor was now quite angry with the Turks. I got my bi-weekly bath at Pera, and built up a regular visit to certain places. De Nari and I were now well acquainted. He was a very able and strenuous worker, and although keen on Turkish affairs, and fond of Turks even to the point of being hand in glove with the Union and Progress party, he was a keen and loyal Italian from all I saw of him. Politics progressed rapidly. The second German offensive was well under way. So successful was it that, according to de Nari, my chance of going home on a special embassy grew less. The Turk in victory does not do himself bare justice. He revives instincts from his uplands in Central Asia. The Germans would be in Paris in two weeks, and Turkey would have back Egypt! etc., etc. This man, de Nari, was a type to admire. An adventurer, brave, fearless, able, far-seeing, yet with much of the gambler in his nature, he belonged to the strain of Italy's brightest history. I remember one day having left the posta downstairs, and I came up by another door. De Nari's tall figure entered the room where a piano and 'cello lay amongst his papers and plots. He pulled his small black beard, and said with an anxious sigh, "Eh, bien! Un jour plus!" I noticed a revolver in his hip pocket. This man had just been to a meeting with the chief spirits of the Union and Progress Committee, and had had to talk around the big heavy Telaat. Apart from our political moves I tried to the very best of my powers to persuade him to get d'Arici out of prison. But d'Arici's machiavellian spirit had so many ramifications that I think he was commonly feared by all parties. I knew him, however, as a brave and reliable man once one understood his code. He was still within measurable distance of death, yet he dared to give me written information to carry outside. This would have completed the noose, and I was fully conscious of it when I carried the packet around. In fact, the day I took it I had resolved that at any cost I wouldn't allow the posta to get it. [Illustration: GENERAL TOWNSHEND ON HIS ISLAND (PRINCIPO) WITH VISITORS]