Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/171

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 129 an enforcement of hard toils and painful sacrifices chap, IX of many kinds, and a long farewell to repose. It 1_ was the angry return of a king whose realm had been suffered to fall into danger. Before a day was over, the Grand Vizier and the Eeis Effendi had begun to speak, and to tell a part of what they knew to the English Ambassador. They did not yet venture to tell all. Things which they had told to Colonel Eose they did not yet dare to tell to the great Eltchi. They did not, perhaps, mean to conceal from him, but they shrank from the terror of seeing his anger when he came to know of Prince Mentschikoff's de- mands for a Protectorate of the Greek Church. If they were to confess that they had borne to hear such a proposal, the Eltchi might think that they had dared to listen to it. Lord Stratford, observing their fear, imagined that it was Prince Mentschikoff who had disturbed their equanimity. ' This combination,' said he, ' of alarm, seeking ' for advice, and of reluctance to entrust me frank- ' ly with the whole case, is attributable to the ' threatening language of Prince Mentschikoff, ' and to the character of his proposals.' But ' his view of the cause of this tendency towards suppression is displaced by observing the frank- ness of the disclosures which the Turkish Min- isters had long before made to Colonel Pose : * the truth is that Lord Stratford was unconscious of exercising the ascendancy which he did, and, imagining that men gave way to him because ho VOL. L I
 * 'Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 107 ct seq.