"What a mistake it was," remarked M. de Pollydoff, with a sigh, "my not arriving here last year until the Ethiopian Conference had come so nearly to a close, that it was quite impossible for me, with the best intentions in the world, to throw an apple of discord amid the representatives of the Great Powers, and so to form a combination by which we could have thwarted Albinia. However, it is no use crying over spilt milk. The mischief is done, and her army and her free institutions are in Ethiopia, but it is impossible that we can allow such a state of things to exist without finding our compensation somewhere. And I think we know where to look for it. From what you tell me, the Vaninians seem to be gradually finding out who are their true friends,-eh, my General?"

"They clung to Albinia as long as they could," replied the General. "She had made such fine promises about the introduction of reforms, as it was a treaty stipulation which she was bound to see enforced; and a great splash was made when a number of Albinian military consuls were sent out to Asiatic Seljukia, who were to work wonders; and questions were asked in the Albinian Parliament; and Vaninian agents went to the chief city of Albinia and agitated; and successive Albinian ambassadors have never ceased to press upon Seljukia the importance of reform in Vaninia; and the Seljukian Government has been profuse in its promises, but they have never come to anything. Until now the Vaninians are quite disheartened, and they say that when it comes to promising and not performing,

that the one is no more to be trusted than the other. So now they have turned to us, and I have promised them, that if they will rise and attack some Moslem village in such a way as to bring on a general Vaninian massacre, our imperial master engages to annex all those who have not been previously massacred, even though it involves a war with Seljukia, as it did in the case of Danubia."

"That was a very safe and proper promise to make, my General. Why don't they do it?"

"Well, your Excellency, there seems be a lack of patriotism; they have been plotting and revolting on a very small scale, but they all want to be annexed, and none of them massacred. Now as annexation without the preliminary massacre is impossible, it causes a slight temporary hitch. It is one, however, which I am taking measures to overcome."

"Do so, my dear General," responded his Excellency, "and you may be sure of my eternal gratitude and that of my imperial master. Impress upon these poor oppressed people the necessity, when great ends are to be attained, of a moderate amount of self-sacrifice. And do not delay longer than you can possibly help, for I am informed that the Gallinians are intriguing actively in Phoenicia, and have their eye upon the Land of Promise and the Holy Places, upon which, as you must be well aware, our eye has also been fixed for many years past; for is not ours the true faith, and the Gallinian religion only a bastard imitation thereof? The annexation of Vaninia is the first step to the annexation of Phoenicia, and that still more interesting region to which so many sacred promises are

attached. From which you will see, my General, that it is a pious act to allow Vaninians to be massacred, and even to arrange a massacre for them, if by so doing we are brought nearer the goal of our most holy aspirations, and are at the same time enabled to threaten the Albinian position in Ethiopia and their communications with Hind." So General Friskywitch received his instructions and returned to his post; and the result of my observations in Vaninia led me to believe that the catastrophe so ardently desired by M. de Pollydoff in the interests of his country and his religion cannot be very much longer postponed.

As I listened to the first words of the next conversation which was conveyed to my ear through my telephone, I was much struck by the fact that it opened with the same sentence as the two previous ones, and this turned out to be the case with several that I overheard occasions the speakers began by acknowledging that the difficult position in which the great Ethiopian trap had placed them was due to their own mistakes. Thus, when I turned my instrument upon M. Vircini, the Latinian Prime Minister, who was sitting in a balcony in the Pincian city, talking to one of his colleagues, I was prepared to hear him begin, "I never cease regretting that mistake we made, caro mio, in not instantly accepting Albinia's offer of joint naval and military operations in Ethiopia, after Gallinia had declined. What a position we should have been in now, with our Latinian army of occupation quartered for an indefinite time in Kahira, and our joint commissioner helping the Earl of Noduffer to invent a constitution for Ethiopia, and drawing up exhaustive reports on its affairs! The

afterwards. Upon all

fact was, that I was so mortally afraid of offending Quizmarck, that, entre nous, I was completely paralysed and so, for the matter of that, were you; but we should have remembered that the great Count to whom Latinia owes her unity did not shrink thirty years ago from a far more daring venture.'

"E vero," replied his colleague, "it was a piece of unaccountable weakness on our part; but it is useless regretting it, the question is now, What can we do to repair the mistake? What news have you from Cyrenia? What with the Gallinians holding Carthagia on one side of that province, and Ethiopia occupied by the Albinians on the other, we run the risk of being squeezed off the Barbary coast altogether, unless we act promptly. Would it not be possible to get up an outbreak of some sort, which might warrant a bombardment?"

"Our consul got himself insulted by a Moslem soldier the other day, as you know, in the hope that something would come of it; but it was clumsily managed, and the Seljukian Government saw what we were driving at, and made a profuse apology, although by rights the apology should have come from

us.

After all, I should like to manage it in some other way; there is a want of originality about a third bombardment on the same coast. I hear there is a very disaffected feeling against the Seljukians among the tribes in the interior. Although they are fanatic Moslems, I am not without hope that they would consent to receive assistance from us, in order to get rid of their present rulers; the difficulty would be, in case of their success, to prevent a general massacre, in which case all our Latinian subjects would be sacrificed."

"Of course, if the annexation

of the country could be managed without the preliminary massacre, it would be far more desirable; and, in any case, the victims should be Christians of some other nationality. It has occurred to me that as Gallinia has undoubtedly designs on this province, we might work up the fanatical element in the interior against her, and assume the rôle of protectors."

"For the moment she has her hands too full to think of Cyrenia," rejoined Vircini; "but I sincerely trust that what with Phoenicia, and Nigritia, and Malagasia, and Cathay, she will soon be in a position sufficiently vulnerable to satisfy even Quizmarck, and that he will leave us with our hands a little more free than he did in this Ethiopian business. It was a poor consolation when he put us into that hole, to tell us that we might relieve our feelings by abusing the Albinians in our newspapers."

“Well, we have got the triple alliance now," rejoined the other; "but, per Bacco, I am puzzled to know whether that will have the effect, so far as France is concerned, of leaving our hands more free or tying us up more tightly."

I listened eagerly for the Latinian minister's response to this query; but from the impressive silence which followed, I have reason to believe that it was conveyed in a wink.

Hearing the Albinian ambassador announced at this moment, and feeling that it would only be a waste of time for me to listen any longer here, I now directed my telephone to the banks of the Seine, as I was curious to know what view the Gallinian Government took of their position in the great Ethiopian trap in which their predecessors had been so egregiously ensnared, and how they proposed to escape from it. I therefore

hunted up my old friend Pêle Mêle Latour, whose acquaintance I first had the honour of making some thirteen years ago, when he was in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility, and fortunately found him in his coupé, on his way to pay a private visit to his colleague, Monsieur Feerie. He was murmuring to himself in an undertone, as he rolled over the smooth asphalt; and as he heaved a deep sigh, I distinctly caught the words, "provided that I don't burn my fingers with any of them." From which allusion I gathered that he was oppressed with the reflection of the many irons he had in the fire, and the inconvenience which might result to himself therefrom. Nor was his gloom altogether dispelled by the more cheerful and sanguine manner of his colleague, who received him with a cordiality not unmixed with bluntness, which rather surprised me, considering-but I must draw a line somewhere.

"I hold in my hand," said Monsieur Pêle Mêle Latour, producing a telegram, "another proof of the mistake the Chambers made when we refused D'Effraycinay the vote for the Ethiopian expedition."

"Still harping on the old theme," interrupted Monsieur Feerie. "Remember that if they had not made it, he would have been still in office, the representative of a triumphant policy, and where should we have been? Let us at least find our consolation in this, mon cher: if France has lost in this Ethiopian business, you and I have gained by it."

"There is a good deal in that," replied Pêle Mêle, sulkily; "but we have succeeded to a heritage of troubles. Now it seems that our prestige has been so much shaken in Ethiopia, that some of the interior tribes behind Carthagia are

preparing to rise again, stimulated thereto, I have good reason to believe, by Latinian intrigues, instigated, of course, by the archfiend, Quizmarck, who, now that he has secured his triple alliance, exploiters the political situation in every corner of the globe against us, I can see his abominable hand everywhere. Do you suppose that the Portugalians would dare to assume the attitude they have taken upin Nigritia if he had not put them up to it? or that the detestable adventurer of the Dark Continent would venture to oppose a man like Brava-Bravissima, with the glorious flag of our country in one hand and a treaty in the other, and the Gallinian nation at his back, without a hint from Quizmarck? or that Queen Tolderolrivo would have the audacity to prepare her country for a war with Gallinia, if the Malagasian envoys had not received direct encouragement to do so at the Teutonic capital? or that the king of Ding Dong would venture to defy us, as my last telegrams inform me he will, without being sure of support from Cathay-or that Cathay would send an army to his defence, if it were not for the Teutonic ambassador at the Celestial City?"

"From all which it would appear that we may have four wars of greater or less dimensions on our hands before the close of the year," said Monsieur Feerie, "and that does not include anything that may happen in Phoenicia. Considering that we are a Government opposed to a policy of adventure,' it appears to me we shall have our hands pretty full in the Chamber, when the pot begins to boil over."

"It is all the fault of this Ethiopian fiasco," replied the other. "We found ourselves placed in a false position, and had to satisfy the national amour propre at the

expense of Albinia in some way. Our final compensation must lie, however, not in these remote corners of the world, but in Phoenicia and the Land of Promise."

"We have got rid of the 'old man of the mountain,' who has stood in our way for the last ten years; but after proposing almost every Christian in his service, the Mogul managed to appoint his own candidate, and not ours, in the end. Do you know anything of this Worser Pasha?" asked Monsieur Feerie.

"Chiefly as a representative of the new Pelasgian nationality, which is no qualification at all. What I am chiefly concerned about is the depth of his religious convictions. Gallinian interests in Phonicia require on the part of the instrument who is to promote them, a profound devotion to the Church."

"It is only just," said Monsieur Feerie, turning his eyes to heaven, and clasping his hands in an attitude of prayer, and then winking slily, "that we, who are compelled, in obedience to the dictates of our consciences, to expel priests from their monasteries on the soil of Gallinia, should jealously protect them in their monasteries on the soil of Phoenicia, even if it should lead to war and massacre. Don't you think, mon ami, that the highest interests of the Church in Phoenicia, to which we are both so attached, require a little massacre? We have not had one in the Mountain of the Cedars since 1860, and we made rather a good business of it then."

"That is a matter for the bishops and priests on the spot to decide: it is indeed a most fortunate circumstance that the enlightened unbelief of Gallinia can thus profit in its political aspirations by the religious bigotry of the Church, and that the cause of priestly in

tolerance can find its best interests served by the diplomacy of infidelity. If ever there was a holy alliance it is to be found in this union of superstition with incredulity, of clericalism with atheism. I assure you I visit any neglect on the part of our consular agents in Phoenicia of their religious observances with the utmost severity."

"Quite right," assented Monsieur Feerie. "They should also be instructed to foster in every way the religious education of the masses, and to lose no opportunity of fomenting quarrels between the Maronians and the Hakimites."

"We have just increased by 50,000 francs our annual subsidies to the Maronian monasteries, and instructions have been given in the case of disputes between the Maronians and the Hakimites to impress upon Worser Pasha the necessity, unless he would forfeit his high position, of never deciding any cause in favour of the Hakimites. The two remaining non-Christian sects, numbering some 400,000 souls, have secretly applied for our protection, which has been granted them. We have appointed two new consuls, and I am making arrangements with the holy fathers inhabiting monasteries of the Latin Church to extend the number of holy places in the Land of Promise, and invent new ones if necessary. We protect over forty religious establishments there as it is, and there is nothing which increases our popularity among the Christian populations so much as multiplying holy places and covering them with our protection. They are also a fertile source of dispute, and I am not without hope that a serious quarrel may be provoked upon religious grounds, which will afford Gallinia the excuse for the intervention which may ultimately lead to a permanent mili

tary occupation of the country. The public mind in Phoenicia, thanks to the activity of our agents in that country, is now so thoroughly prepared for it, that it would be a pity to disappoint it.”

"It is the only really good card left us," mused Monsieur Feerie. "It would unite all parties in Gallinia, the religious party on the ground of la foi, and the rest of the nation on the ground of la gloire; and it would be the best slap in the face we could give to Albinia in return for the one we received from her in Ethiopia. Fortunately she has her eyes tight shut in that direction, and we have only to make the same kind of promises to Mr Sadstone that he did to us in the case of Ethiopia, to keep them so. Besides, she is too anxious to be left alone in Ethiopia, to interfere with our designs in Phoenicia."

"Muscovia is a good deal more wide-awake," remarked Pêle Mêle Latour; "it is there that the real danger lies. When she has annexed Vaninia, it will be a race between us for the Holy City of the ridiculous people who believe in any God at all. Meantime we can use some of them as our political allies; and sufficient, as they would say, to the day is the evil thereof."

As my time was limited, and I had several more interesting conversations to eavesdrop, I could not linger longer with Monsieur Feerie and Pêle Mêle Latour, much as I should have wished to do so, for there was an engaging frankness in their mode of expression which interested me exceedingly ; so I turned my instrument on Prince Quizmarck, who was walking in a garden at his country-house with Count Felthat, smoking a cigar, from which he blew great clouds with much apparent enjoyment.