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An English statesman who had to deal with Tricoupi in regard to official matters said to me once that he found him apparently open and business-like, but that when they came to the transaction of matters at issue he proved to be as slippery and dishonest as any of his countrymen.
On the heels of that came another from my father-in-law, "If you are safe, telegraph to Marie," one to Tricoupi, then prime minister, to ask news of me, one to the English legation from the Foreign Office demanding information of my whereabouts, and another to the same from the "Times" to all which I could get no explanation nor could anybody in Athens conjecture the why of the querying.
Tricoupi had sent imperative orders to cease hostilities, but the telegraph had been cut, probably by some one who wanted the war to ensue, and when I found Tricoupi at the telegraph in the afternoon in conversation with Sapunzaki over the wire, he turned to me with an expression of intense distress, exclaiming, "They are fighting again all along the line, and if it cannot be stopped at once we are lost."
Tricoupi recognized in Russie's lameness the beginning of hip disease, and, returning to Athens, I had a council on him, when it was placed beyond doubt that that deadly disease was established, aided largely by the false diagnosis that substituted severe exercise for the absolute quiet which the malady required. He was at once put in plaster bandages and we were ordered home. Home! But how?
I ran to the British legation, fortunately found Baring there, and explained the position, saying that Tricoupi, in the absence of any diplomatic relation between them, had begged me to present myself personally to urge intervention.
Tricoupi alone of all those who had a policy was of the opinion that the powers should not have interfered, but should have let the Greeks have their way and learn their lesson. It was his opinion that the political education of the Greeks was thwarted by this continual intermeddling of the powers, which made their independence a fiction.
Tricoupi, who was the chief of the opposition at the time, was an abler man, and a statesman of wider views, on the whole, the greatest statesman of modern Greece, me judice; but in intrigue and Odyssean craft, which is necessary in the Levant, Comoundouros was his master.
As it was, he waited not to hear the funeral oration, delivered by Spiridion Tricoupi; but was on the deck of the vessel that was to bear him homewards, and shed tears of mingled grief, admiration, and gratitude, as thirty-seven minute guns, fired from the battery, told Greece and Carl Obers, that they had lost Byron, their best friend. Carl reached Germany, a wiser man than when he left it.
Baring was convinced that Tricoupi, as well as the late premier, was bent on war, and would not at first believe that his request was sincere, but finally, overpersuaded, did telegraph to London.
One made the usual bow and received the usual glance of civility; then passed on to Lady Palmerston, who was always kind in manner, but who wasted no remarks; and so to Lady Jocelyn with her daughter, who commonly had something friendly to say; then went through the diplomatic corps, Brunnow, Musurus, Azeglio, Apponyi, Van de Weyer, Bille, Tricoupi, and the rest, finally dropping into the hands of some literary accident as strange there as one's self.
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