m of German ambassadors. Such is the
story imparted by Lord Odo Russell, our Ambassador at Berlin, to his
brother, and by him communicated to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. It
concerns an interview between Gortchakoff and Bismarck in which the
German Chancellor inveighed against the Russian Prince for blurting out,
at a State banquet held the day before, the news that he had received a
letter from Queen Victoria, begging him to work in the interests of
peace. Bismarck thereafter sharply upbraided Gortchakoff for this
amazing indiscretion. Lord Odo Russell was present at their interview
in order to support the Russian Chancellor, who parried Bismarck's
attack by affecting a paternal interest in his health:--

"Come, come, my dear Bismarck, be calm. You know that I am
very fond of you. I have known you since your childhood. But
I do not like you when you are hysterical. Come, you are
going to be hysterical. Pray be calm: come, come, my dear
fellow." A short time after this interview Bismarck
complained to Odo of "the preposterous folly and ignorance of
the English and all other Cabinets, who had mistaken stories
got up for speculations on the Bourse for the true policy of
the German Government." "Then will you," asked Odo, "censure
your four ambassadors who have misled us and the other
Powers?" Bismarck made no reply[247].

[Footnote 246: _Bismarck: his Reflections_, etc., vol. ii. pp. 191-193,
249-153 (Eng. ed.); the _Bismarck Jahrbuch_, vol. iv. p. 35.]

[Footnote 247: Sir M. Grant Duff, _Notes from a Diary, 1886-88_, vol. i.
p. 129. See, too, other proofs of the probability of an attack by
Germany on France in Professor Geffcken's _Frankreich, Russland, und der
Dreibund_, pp. 90 _et seq._]

It seems, then, that the German Chancellor had no ground for suspicion
against the Crown Princess as having informed Queen Victoria of the
suggested attack on France; but thenceforth he had an intense dislike of
these august ladies, and lost no opportunity of maligning them in
diplomatic circles and through the medium of the Press. Yet, while
nursing resentful thoughts against Queen Victoria, her daughter, and the
British Ministry, the German Chancellor reserved his wrath mainly for
his personal rival at St. Petersburg. The publication of Gortchakoff's
circular despatch of May 10, 1875, beginning with the words, "Maintenant
la paix est assuree," was in his eyes the crowning off