show him my friendship by sending him at least twice a month a report written in Turkish about public opinion in Europe; about the position of the political questions of the day; about the condition of Islam outside Turkey, and to answer the questions he would put to me. I readily promised my services, but soon realised that with all his apparent frankness, these confessions of a monarch brought up in strictly Oriental principles were not to be taken in real earnest, for when one day, in the heat of conversation, I made some slightly critical remarks, and ventured to question the expediency or the advisability of certain measures and plans of his Majesty, I noticed at once signs of displeasure and surprise on his countenance, and from that time little clouds have darkened the horizon of our mutual intercourse. And how could it be otherwise? Potentates, and above all Orientals, are far too much accustomed to incense; the coarse food of naked truth cannot be to their taste; and when an absolute ruler is superior to his surroundings, not only in actual power but also in intellectual endowments, an adverse opinion, no matter how thickly sugared the pill may be, is not easily swallowed. From the very beginning of his reign Sultan Abdul Hamid has never tolerated any contradiction; apparently he listened patiently to any proffered advice, but without allowing himself to be shaken in his preconceived opinion; and when some Grand-Vizier or other distinguished himself by steadfastness to his own individual views, as was the case, for instance, with Khaired-din Pasha, Kiamil Pasha, Ahmed Vefik Pasha, and others, they soon have had to retire. True, through his extraordinary acuteness the Sultan has mitigated many mistakes resulting from his defective education. In conversation he hardly ever betrayed his absolute lack of schooling, although he was not even well versed in his own mother-tongue. He said to me frequently, "Please talk ordinary Turkish!" His excellent memory enabled him to turn to good account a thing years after he had heard it, and his flowery language deceived many of his European visitors. But, taking him altogether, he was a great ignoramus and sadly needed to be taught, though in his sovereign dignity and exalted position of "God's Shadow on Earth," he had to fancy himself omniscient. Thoroughly convinced of this, I have, in my subsequent intercourse with the Sultan, exercised a certain amount of reserve; I learned to be ever more careful in my expressions, and when the Sultan noticed this I replied in the words of the Persian poem-- "The nearness of princes is as a burning fire,"