Nothing, therefore, was more natural than that in these circumstances I should undertake a journey abroad, to cheer and comfort myself by personal contact with congenial society. These motives drew me towards Germany, France, and particularly England. In Germany I made the acquaintance of distinguished Orientalists whose theoretical knowledge excited my admiration as much as their practical incapacity and awkwardness surprised me. They were kind, modest, worthy men, who, since I was outside their particular set, met me very pleasantly, but they looked very doubtful when I seemed not to be acquainted with their theories or betrayed an insufficient knowledge of their treatises, notes, and glossaries. They listened to me, but I saw at once that they looked upon me as a dilettante, outside the pale of learning. This opinion of my literary accomplishments was not altogether unjust, for I was and remained always a practical Orientalist, and these theorists might have remembered that a mere bookman could not possibly have travelled through so many Islamic lands as Dervish and faced all dangers and vicissitudes in close intercourse with the people. In France I fared somewhat better. Here the political situation had revealed the necessity of practical knowledge of Asiatic conditions, and side by side with the theoretical guardians of Oriental science there had at all times been a considerable number of practical authorities on Asia, who now received me very warmly. Of the personages with whom I became acquainted in Paris I will mention in the first place Napoleon III., who admitted me to an audience more because it was the fashion than to satisfy his scientific curiosity. When I entered the Tuileries in company with Prince Metternich, then Austrian Ambassador at Paris, and caught sight of the Emperor before the Pavillon de l'Horloge as he was taking leave of Queen Christina of Spain, the vision of this thick-set man, with his flabby features and pale, faded eyes, made a miserable impression upon me. And still more lamentable was the result of my half-hour's interview with him. He appeared to have been preparing himself for my visit, for on his writing-table, covered with papers and documents, I saw spread out the map which accompanied the English edition of my _Travels_, and, after the usual ceremonies, he told me to sit down by him and began to converse about Hungary. When I remarked that I had undertaken these travels into the interior of Asia at the request of the Academy, the Emperor replied he had heard a good deal in praise of Hungary, and after receiving some information as to the intellectual efforts of Hungary, he led the conversation on to Central Asia. At first he attempted to give the conversation a more scientific character, and, with reference to his _Jules César_, which had just appeared, he began to talk about the ethnical origin of the Parthians. Gradually he dropped into a consideration of the political condition of