us? It cannot-it must not be! Otherwise, it would be almost a disgrace to be a Russian. It is the poorspirited and pliant, believe me, who always lose in these matters. The compliance is too steep. If once we roll down it, we shall never stop till we get to the bottom. And we are to yield now, after such a campaign, after so many sacrifices? Allons donc !'

The celebration of the armistice was no triumph here! It gave him no pleasure. The quiet, rest, and safety bored him. He would have preferred fresh slaughter and more bloodshed, provided only that the affair should end honourably for Russia.

The line of demarcation and the neutral strip of land, an uninhabited waste, attracted Skobeleff. The villages within the specified twelve miles were deserted; there was not a single sentinel or soldier in the forts and redoubts, not an old woman in the villages. Nothing but wild, mad curs remained in the empty houses. Nevertheless the Turks might be justly proud of the defences of their side of the strip. Even the works at Adrianople were not to be compared with them.

Skobeleff was enthusiastic about them.

"If we could get this engineer to join us! He is a genius!"

Skobeleff subsequently made his acquaintance at Constantinople. He was a Turk by birth, AkhmetPasha, a fat, blown-out fellow, who looked very inactive. He was but half-educated, and knew not a single foreign language. The Turks have distanced European military science in this one particular. During the

last two centuries they have waged none but defensive wars; they had time to learn. Skobeleff got on very well with the Turkish Todleben. The latter, indeed, even showed him the fortifications of Constantinople and the plan drawings of the projected additions.

"How did you get him to do that ? '

"I made him drunk. Like most Turks, he has not quite steeled his heart against champagne."

The chief part of this strip was sketched by Skobeleff himself.

"Do you know, the key to this position is a key with which you can open nothing. It is difficult of approach, five large forts must be taken before we can get at it. And when we have taken it, we shall find that this key does not fit the lock, for there are ever so many more such keys."

We soon discovered that the order not to march on Constantinople had been received from St. Petersburg. It had not emanated from the head-quarters of the active army. Later it was explained by the alleged altered political circumstances.

"I am sorry the Emperor is not here amongst his troops," Skobeleff said.

"It would make no difference. Diplomacy would go on the same.”

"No; his surroundings here would have balanced the influence of diplomatists. It is all the same to them. Those diplomatists have their own science and their own mysteries; and ours, besides that, are not embarrassed with patriotism. Their chief aim is that they may not be considered Russian barbarians but refined

Europeans. And to attain this they will stick at nothing. You do not know them; but I was brought up amongst them. For them Russia does not signify at all. There is no more egotistical set than they. It is easily explained;—a foreign education, constantly living abroad."

"But you were also educated abroad."

"Under Girardé, yes. But you know what sort of an education I had? Have I never told you?" "Never."

Then once he struck presence of a girl I

"My first tutor was a German; an unjust, rude, mean fellow, thoroughly mean. I hated him as much as anyone can hate another. From that time Germans have not been my bosom friends. me, a boy of thirteen, in the admired immensely; struck me without the slightest provocation on my part. I forgot what I did. I sprang on him, seized him, and remained petrified. And do you know what this fellow taught me? taught that Germany was everything to Russia; that everything in Russia had been done by Germans, and that Russia must either obey Germany or perish. There was no universe, there was nothing but Germany. And I hated it from my heart."

"Had that hatred shown itself long ago?

He

"Oh yes! and then my father turned the German out, who had been given me to discipline me, but who had only succeeded in hardening me. I was sent to Girardé, in Paris. What a contrast! I love Girardé till now, more than my own relations. He taught me to love my country, showed me that there was