The breach between us was made still wider by the publication of my pamphlet _La Turquie d'aujourd'hui et d'avant quarante ans_, Paris, 1898, in which I tried to refute the thesis--so constantly and erroneously advanced in Europe--that the Turks as a nation are incapable of being civilised, by comparing the state of their culture as it is now and as it was forty years ago. Naturally in a study of this kind I had to draw the connection between the progress of culture and the political decline of the land, and the question why, if the Turks are really advancing in culture, they should politically be overtaken by Rumania, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece, I could only answer by pointing to the autocratic and absolutist tendencies of the Sultan. Only the court and the unconscionable clique reigning there are to blame for the present decline of Turkey. With this article I increased my popularity in Turkey, but at court they were, of course, anything but pleased. Nevertheless the Sultan invited me to pay him a visit; I did so, and the reception I had was highly characteristic. While the Padishah thanked me for the service I had rendered to the Turkish nation, the offended autocrat took my measure with angry looks, without, however, betraying his anger. It was interesting to watch the internal struggle of the offended tyrant, and I consider it only reasonable that henceforth he would have no more to do with me. Thus ended my intimate intercourse with Sultan Abdul Hamid. The only benefit it has been to me was a rubbing up of my impressions of life in the Near East, a renewal of old relationships, and the editing of a few valuable old Slav manuscripts which I found in the treasure-house of the Sultan, and which were lent me for a considerable length of time. But the renewal of my acquaintance with the Orient was void of that charm which it had for me on my first visit. The East and myself are both thirty years older; the East has lost much of the glory of its former splendour, and I have lost the vigour of my youth. I fancied myself an elderly man who, after thirty years meeting again the adored beauty of his youthful days, misses the wealth of her locks, the fire in her eyes, the brightness of her rosy cheeks. Old Stambul, the Bosphorus, and Pera--everything was changed. The Sultan's mad love of extravagance, the unfortunate war of 1878, and above all the loss of Bulgaria--in fact nearly the whole of Rumania--had reduced the dominating class almost to beggary. Gone were the rich Konaks in Stambul, empty the once glorious yalis (villas) on the Bosphorus, and of the Effendi world, flourishing and well-to-do in my time, only a few miserable vestiges remained.