Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/232

 with me there. The Sultan is unhappy if he acts without my advice, and when I go to Byzantium my first, my longest, visit is to the Queen Mother. When she will see no one else she sees me.'

"'Good gracious!' I murmured, 'there is no scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?'

"'Gossips will be gossips, of course; but assuredly there is no ground for scandal in the conduct of that excellent woman.'

"'Is that your whole clientèle?&apos; I inquired.

"'No,' he said. 'The Servians, the Walloons, and the Moldavians go to make up the forty million without counting the Druses of Lebanon, who have no reliance but on me.'

"During this colloquy Urquhart kept his fiery Celtic temperament under complete control, and I tried to follow his example.

"'With such allies,' I ventured to suggest, 'I wonder you have not struck some great stroke in the world.'

"'And haven't I?' he replied. 'I saved England from a Chartist revolution; there would have been a great explosion, and probably a general overturn, but for my influence with the leaders.'

"'In that case,' I suggested, 'the explosion is only postponed.'

"'No, I am taking measures to render it impossible. When the leaders are educated they will understand they can get all they want at a cheaper rate than violence. After four years in a Workman's College they will be familiar with history, philosophy, and political science, and not likely to commit bélises.'

"'It will be a costly experiment,' I suggested, 'to create, endow, and maintain such a system of education for a whole people!'

"'No,' he said, 'they will learn all they need by conversation with me.'

"Mr. Urquhart uttered these marvels in a level voice, without rhetoric or emphasis; very much indeed like the ordinary gossip of a morning call. It is not a bee the man has in his bonnet, but a beehive! " The sum and substance of Urquhartism was—Russia has