Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/184

 142 ORIGIN OF THE "WAR OF 1853 chap. Government before he crossed the Channel, from x ' his sojourn at Paris, and from the tenor of the despatches from England, Lord Stratford had gathered means of inferring that France no longer intended to keep herself apart from England by persisting in her pressure upon the Sultan ; and, supposing that she had made up her mind to enter upon this new policy, Lord Stratford might well entertain a hope that the question whether a Greek priest should be allowed to control the repair of a Cupola at Jerusalem, or whether the doorkeeper of a Church should be a Greek or a Latin, would not be fought with undue obstinacy by the quick-witted countrymen of Voltaire. He spoke with M. de la Cour, and found that he was prepared for concession, if matters could be so arranged as to satisfy what Lord Stratford, in his haughty and almost zoological way, liked to call ' French feelings of honour.' * By means of his communications with the Turks, the English Ambassador easily ascertained the points on which Prince Mentschikoff might be expected to be inexorable. These were : — the repair of the Cupola, the question of precedence at the Tomb of the Virgin, and the question about the Greek doorkeeper in the Church of Bethle- hem. Furnished with this clue, Lord Stratford saw M. de la Cour, and dissuaded him from com- mitting himself to a determined resistance on any of these three questions. He also gave his French colleague to understand that, in his opinion, the
 * 'Eastern Papers,' part i. >. 13f.