"VERY HONOURED FRIEND!--His Imperial Majesty, my sublime Master, has always held in high esteem your feelings of friendship in the interests of Turkey, and your attacks on Russia, which has done so much harm to Turkey, have not remained unnoticed. But you know full well that nothing in this world happens without cause, and that the war Russia waged against us was also founded on certain causes. All this belongs to the past. To-day the Sublime Porte is on the best of terms with _all_ the Powers; there is no necessity for any private treaties, and when the newspapers speak of a private treaty between Turkey and Russia, this is nothing more or less than a groundless and idle invention. In case such a treaty had been necessary, Turkey, being in no way restricted in its movements, would have notified and published the facts." Later on I also touched upon this subject in conversation with the Sultan. We were speaking about the comments made in Europe regarding the negligence in the fortifications at the entrance to the Black Sea, when the Sultan interrupted me and said, "Why should Europe criticise this? I have a house with two doors; what does it matter to anybody if I choose to close the one and open the other?" In a word, the Sultan has given me several irrefutable proofs that the persistent anti-Russian tendency of my publications was inconvenient to him, and that he would be better pleased if I attacked England or kept quiet altogether. Of course he would like best of all to banish pen and ink altogether from the world, and as it was impossible for me to support him in his absolute autocratic principles, a cooling of our mutual relationship was unavoidable.