however, I begged to be excused. Of the various ambassadors I have only attended a public court dinner with the Persian Ambassador (Prince Maurocordato), the plenipotentiary of Greece, and with Baron Marshal von Bieberstein, and these diplomatists were not a little surprised to notice the attention with which the Sultan treated me. For several years I thus enjoyed the Sultan's favour and occupied this exceptional position at his court. As long as the Grand Seigneur saw in me a staunch Turcophile and defender of Islam, who, led by fanaticism, palliated all the mistakes and wrong-doings with which Europe charged all Oriental systems of government; as long as I regarded Turkey as an unwarrantably abused State, and European intervention as unjustifiable at all times, he gave me his undivided confidence and astonished me by his unfeigned candour. Many years of experience in Turkish society had taught me that the Sultan is regarded as an almost Divine being, and consequently this extraordinary affability was all the more surprising. He treated me, so to speak, as a confidential friend, talked with me about State concerns, and the interests of his dynasty, as if I had been an Osmanli and co-regent of the empire. He conferred with me about the most delicate political questions, with a candour, which he never displayed even before his Grand-Vizier and his Ministers; and consequently my letters to him from Budapest were free and unrestrained, and such as this sovereign had probably never received before.