I finally conquered his respect by showing him that I was the sincere friend of Italy, and our relations became confidential as far as his very rigorous sense of his official limitations permitted, but not a line beyond.  I have seen in his hands the copy of the treaty of Triple Alliance, but I never drew from him the faintest hint of its provisions except that it was purely defensive and contained no stipulation for any aggressive movement under any circumstances.  I learned them from other sources, and, with the changes of ministries and the diversities of their policies, foreign as well as domestic, there is no doubt that all the powers are fully informed of the details of the treaty.  But personal intimacy, in the sense of that friendship which obtains amongst equals, could never have existed between us.  Crispi is extremely reticent and reserved in his personal relations and has very few intimate friends, and those, so far as I know, entirely amongst the faithful few who were his intimates in the days of insurrection and conspiracy; but I know him as well as any one out of that circle, and I know him to be an absolutely honest and patriotic statesman, the first of Italy since Cavour.  It is my opinion, too, that he is the ablest man not only in Italy but in Europe, since the death of Bismarck.  In 1893 he was urged to assume the dictatorship, and the King in the general panic was willing to accord it, but Crispi refused, saying, “I am an old man with few years to live, but I will not give my countrymen an example of unconstitutional government.”

But Italian politics are only the wrangle of personal ambitions and of faction intrigues.  The Chamber is a legislative anarchy from which a few honest and patriotic men occasionally emerge as ministers through a chance combination, to disappear again with the first tumult, and the influence of the chief of the state was never such as to guide it out of the chaos.  King Humbert, one of the truest gentlemen and most courteous sovereigns that ever sat on the throne of any country, never made an effort to defend the prerogatives of the crown, and accepted with the same bonhomie every ministerial combination proposed to him, whether it comprised dangerous elements or not.  At no time did he attempt to exert the enormous influence which the crown possesses in Italy for the maintenance of a consistent policy, internal or foreign.  Lord Saville told me that, when Crispi came to power in 1887, he asked the King if he was a safe head of the government, and the King replied that it was better to have him with them than against them, for at that time Crispi was regarded by all Conservatives as the devil of Italian politics.  But in the following years Crispi’s profound—­even exaggerated—­reverence for the King, and his masterly administration of the government, had laid all the apprehensions of the sovereign at rest, and gained for him the widest popularity ever possessed, in my knowledge of Italian affairs,