Calling one day in the summer of 1896 at the British Embassy, at Therapia, the late Sir Michael Herbert, who was in charge during Sir Philip Currie’s absence, told me that about a hundred years ago the Ambassador of the French Republic at Constantinople, in writing home to his Government, wound up his letter by declaring that the prospects of Turkey looked so desperate that he would not be surprised if the Turkish Empire had ceased to exist before the arrival of his letter. During a visit I paid to Constantinople in January 1907 something occurred which impressed me forcibly with the conviction that the Hamidian régime, the desire of one man, however well-intentioned and industrious, to do single-handed all the directing work of an empire, was doomed to failure; and this in spite of the many evidences I had had, both in Europe and in Asia, of the personal popularity of the Sultan. It was the talk of Pera that the Chief of the Secret Police, Fehim Pasha, had been guilty of some extraordinary pranks; among them the instigation of sham conspiracies which he pretended to nip in the bud in order to give proof of his devotion to the Sultan. All attempts to draw the Sultan’s attention to this man’s misdeeds had apparently failed, owing, it was said, to His Majesty’s indulgence towards one who was the son of his own foster-brother. Emboldened by success, Fehim Pasha had extended his sphere of black-mailing operations to members of the European colony, while several murders were put to his account as having been their instigator. Still he managed to elude the arm of justice. At last he took upon himself to lay an embargo on a ship, either belonging to a German or in the cargo of which some German firm was interested. Here, however, he came into conflict with the German Ambassador, the late Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who promptly took the part of his countrymen, saw that the embargo on the ship in question was removed, and, distrustful of the dilatoriness of the officials at the Sublime Porte, lodged a strongly worded complaint direct at the Palace. This ultimately resulted in Fehim Pasha being banished to Asia Minor, where he was subsequently assassinated by a mob in the street. This tragic development, however, only took place after I had left Constantinople. The German Ambassador, who was always very friendly and frank with me, one day discussed the situation created by Fehim Pasha’s delinquencies. He convinced me that the man was a scoundrel, and that he himself had done no more than what he was perfectly entitled to do in endeavouring to bring one to book who was neither more nor less than a criminal miscreant, fully deserving to be given over to the public hangman.