by any minister.  The King said to me that he had the most absolute confidence in his devotion, integrity, and abilities.  Yet, when in 1891 an artificial crisis in the Chamber gave Crispi his first defeat on a question of so little constitutional import that his successors adopted his measure and passed it, the King accepted with the same equanimity a ministry composed of the most discordant elements, ignoring all the constitutional proprieties.  At a later epoch, that of 1893, when Crispi saved Italy from menacing chaos, the King repeated to me his expression of confidence in Crispi and his very low opinion of his only possible alternative, Rudiní, but in the succeeding crisis accepted Rudiní with the same cheerfulness he had shown when Crispi saved the position in 1893.

Nothing could exceed the devotion of the King to his subjects and their personal welfare, but he allowed the ship of state to drift into the breakers because he would not maintain the highest prerogative of the crown, that of insisting on a ministry which possessed and deserved his confidence.  Knowing, as he did, that parliamentary government in Italy had become a mere farce and the derision of the country, he never attempted to insist on exercising any influence on the composition of the ministry, which represented his authority as well as the popular will, and in 1896 he yielded the dissolution of the Chamber to the pressure of a court favorite against the advice of all his constitutional advisers.  Personally I was a warm admirer of the man, but I regard his reign as a long disaster to the kingdom of Italy, the greater because his personal qualities gave him such a hold on the population that he might safely have assumed any initiative beneficial to the state.  He might have abolished the Chamber—­he allowed it to abolish him.

The return of the summer heats bringing on a recurrence of the malady acquired at Athens, I was obliged to leave Italy for the summer and I returned to England.  On my arrival the “Times” manager proposed to me a trip to America in quest of evidence connected with the Parnell case.  A professional detective sent out some time before had failed to get hold of the threads of the question, and MacDonald, thinking that as an American I might succeed where the professional had failed, desired me to try my luck.  Of the general history of that case the public has long ago learned all that it cares to know.  I had nothing to do with that and am not here concerned with it; but I had a curious and interesting experience in my visit, the object of which was the obtaining of documents that would confirm the connection of Mr. Parnell with secret and illegal acts in Ireland, with which the Irish conspirators in America were probably connected, it being hoped that some of the latter might be induced to give up documents in confirmation.