The following year was marked by the accession of Crispi to the direction of the government of Italy.  So many fables have accumulated regarding Crispi, and such bitterness of prejudice against him even in England, that as one of the very few disinterested witnesses of his conduct from that day until his second fall after Adowah, and supposed to be in his confidence, I am disposed to put briefly on record my impressions of him.  His popularity at that date (1887) was incontestably greater than that of any other Italian statesman, but the animosity entertained for him by the Radicals was intense, owing to his most vigorous repression of all anti-dynastic tendencies, and the bitterer for his having once been himself a Radical leader; but, what was at first sight inexplicable, the hostility to him of the Conservatives was scarcely less bitter than that of the Republicans,—­the former because he had once been a Republican, and the latter because he had ceased to be one.  The leading chiefs of groups among the politicians were afraid of him on account of his strength, and the court had the most cordial hatred of him, partly because he had never tried to conciliate it or to conceal his distrust of it, and partly because Signora Crispi was an object of aversion to all the society of Rome.  This aversion was intensified by the fact that, as the wife of a member of the order of the Annunciata, she was entitled to precedence over all the Italian nobility not so honored.

A Knight of the Annunciata is technically the cousin of the King, and at the receptions of the Queen, Signora Crispi, who was really an antipathetic person, had her seat in the royal circle, where she sat as completely ignored by all present as if she were a statue of Aversion.  I am convinced that the larger part of the animosity shown for Crispi by the better classes in Rome was due to her.  One of Crispi’s oldest and most constant friends told me of a visit he once made to his house with General——­, one of the Mille of Marsala, when, as they left the house, the general said mournfully, “Poor Crispi, he has not a friend in the world.”  “Nonsense, he has thousands,” replied the other.  “No,” returned the general, “if he had one he would kill that woman.”  In the latter part of Crispi’s first ministry we were on friendly terms, though our first intercourse was anything but kindly; but I avoided going needlessly to his house to the end of my term of residence in Rome, except when the service demanded it, because I did not like to meet his wife.

Crispi and I were never intimate, and the supposed confidence between us never extended beyond the communication of political matter which he thought should be made public, and which could be made public without violation of official secrecy.  He had far too high an estimate of his position as the head of the government of one of the powers of Europe to enter into intimacy with a correspondent of even the “Times,” a journal of which, nevertheless, he always spoke with