She is at Berlin,
received by Bismarck; he hopes that though the great man may not
eradicate her Slavophile heresies, he may manifest the weakness of
embroiling nations on mere ethnological grounds. "Are even nearer
relationships so delightful? would you walk across the street for a
third or fourth cousin? then why for a millionth cousin?" Madame
Novikoff kindly sends to me an "Imaginary Conversation" between
herself and Gortschakoff, constructed by Kinglake during her stay
in St. Petersburg in 1879.
"G. Well--you really have done good service to your country and
your Czar by dividing and confusing these absurd English, and
getting us out of the scrape we were in in that--Balkan Peninsula.
"Miss O. Well, certainly I did my best; but I fear I have ruined
the political reputation of my English partizans, for in order to
make them 'beloved of the Slave,' I of course had to make them,
poor souls! go against their own country; and their country, stupid
as it is, has now I fear found them out.
"G. Tant pis pour eux! Entre nous, if I had been Gladstone, I
should have preferred the love of my own country to the love of
these--Slaves of yours.
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