‘I received orders,’ says Danevitch, ‘to proceed without delay to the official residence in St. Petersburg of Prince Ignatof,1 who was then Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had the reputation of being one of the most powerful Ministers who had ever held the position in Russia. It was said of him, as it used to be said of Bismarck, that he was a man of blood and iron. He was dead to emotion; he had no nerves; he was pitiless; he was anti-everything that wasn’t Russian; but he was also a born diplomatist—clever, brilliant, unscrupulous, far-seeing, polished as a rapier, and as deadly as a rapier when occasion called for it.
‘Such was the common report about him, and no doubt it was, in the main, true. He was a widower, with one grown-up daughter. There was a deadly feud, however, between the
