My colleagues seem very well disposed to be cordial and easy to deal with, but M. de Monstier, whom they all seem to regard as the great difficulty, is not yet here.
The Constantinople Embassy, justly regarded as one of the big prizes in the British Diplomatic Service, is, under ordinary circumstances, the most onerous post of all; and, as past occupants know to their cost, the distinguished position occupied by the British ambassador, the almost princely state in which he lives, the magnificence of his residences, the charm of the Bosphorus and the pleasure derived from living in what is at once one of the most beautiful and one of the most interesting cities in the universe, are somewhat dearly bought by the constant, thankless, and fruitless labour in which they are habitually engaged. Their time is ceaselessly occupied in combating the intrigues of other Powers, in ineffectual attempts to redress the real or fictitious grievances of British subjects, in the urging of nebulous schemes vaguely described as reforms, and in hopeless efforts to avert the inevitable doom awaiting a people, who, in spite of some admirable qualities, are constitutionally incapacitated from realizing what are their true interests. After the stress and turmoil of the last five years at Washington, however, Constantinople must have appeared to the new ambassador almost in the agreeable light of a rest cure.
For once in a way, things were fairly quiet: there were no signs of any immediate crisis, and although the Turkish Government was involved in its habitual financial difficulties, in the autumn of 1865 the only questions which appeared likely to give rise to trouble were those relating to the Moldo-Wallachian Principalities, to Crete, and to a Firman for the Bey of Tunis. But whatever may be the internal condition of the Turkish Empire at any given period, or whatever may be its external relations, there is invariably one representative of the Great Powers at Constantinople whose _rôle_ it is to threaten, browbeat, and coerce. At the period in question this duty was discharged with zest by the French Ambassador, the Marquis de Moustier, whose mission it was to '_porter haut le drapeau de la France_'--in other words, to bully and bluster whenever opportunity permitted, and of whom the Turks and his foreign colleagues stood in deadly fear. The Russian Minister at that time was the celebrated General Ignatieff, of whom Lord Lyons subsequently expressed the opinion that 'General Ignatieff would be an admirable diplomatist if he were only a little more veracious.' And it seems odd nowadays to read that on nearly every matter the French and the Russians were in opposition to each other. In fact, General Ignatieff used to declare that his French colleague was so insupportably arrogant that it was impossible to do business with him. Each endeavoured to enlist the new British Ambassador upon his side; naturally, without success, as intrigue was essentially foreign to his nature, and he had no intention of allowing himself to become embroiled in their quarrels. Writing in November to Mr. Erskine, the British Minister at Athens, he was able to say that 'Here we are as quiet as possible; the disease with which the Turk is threatened appears to be atrophy; want of money and want of men. There are no questions of interest at this moment, nor even any particular matter for the diplomatists to quarrel about.'