Now, I desire to speak to you as a friend, and as a gentleman. If England and I arrive at an understanding in this matter, as regards the rest it little matters to me. It is indifferent to me what others do or think. Frankly, then, I tell you plainly that, if England thinks of establishing herself one of these days at Constantinople, I will not allow it. For my part, I am equally disposed to take the engagement not to establish myself there—as proprietor, that is to say—for as occupier I do not say; it might happen that circumstances, if no previous provisions were made, if everything should be left to chance, might place me in the position of occupying Constantinople. On the 20th February, in a further conversation, the Emperor said:— If your Government has been led to believe that Turkey retains any element of existence, your Government must have received incorrect information. I repeat to you, the sick man is dying, and we can never allow such an event to take us by surprise. We must come to some understanding. The next day he added:— The principalities are, in fact, an independent State under my protection. This might so continue. Serbia might receive the same form of government. So again with Bulgaria; there seems to be no reason why these provinces should not form one independent State. As to Egypt, I quite understand the importance to England of that territory. I can thus only say that if, in the event of a destruction of the Ottoman succession upon the fall of the Empire, you should take possession of Egypt, I shall have no objection to offer. I could say the same thing of Candia. That island might suit you, and I do not see why it should not become an English possession. Sir Hamilton Seymour, in reply to the Emperor, said to his Government:— I simply observed that I had always understood that the English views upon Egypt did not go beyond the part of securing a safe and ready communication between British India and the Mother Country. “Well,” said the Emperor, “induce your Government to write again upon this subject—to write more fully and do so without hesitation. I have confidence in the British Government. It is not an engagement or convention which I ask of them; it is a free interchange of ideas in case of need—the word of a gentleman—that is enough between us.” In reporting these conversations to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Hamilton Seymour expressed his own opinion as follows:— It can hardly be otherwise but that the Sovereign who insists with such pertinacity upon the impending fall of a neighbouring State must have settled in his own mind that the hour, if not _of_ the dissolution, at all events _for_ the dissolution, must be at hand.