One wonders this week whether by any chance there can
be any foundation for the strange rumour that the young Emperor of Russia is afflicted with melancholia. The story is most improbable, and rests upon nothing more solid than his seclusion, and the descent of a kind of veil as to his movements, for which there may be a hundred reasons, a momentary recrudescence, for example, of active Nihilism. M. de Blowitz, however, publishes in the Times of Wednesday a narrative of an interview with the Russian Foreign Minister, Prince Lobanoff, which is a curiosity of literature. Born a subject of Russia, M. de Blowitz, who has been talking to Princes all his life, seems to have been wholly overcome by the greatness of his interlocutor, and put his question, " Will the Czar visit France P" with a reluctance which suggests the impossible thought that he might, under stress of circum- stances, be modest. The reply of the Prince was a discus- sion on the dynastic consequences of the Empress's expected accouchement ! It was an event of bewildering importance.
There was, owing to the illness of the Cesarewitch, uncertainty as to the succession ; and the Czar and Russia were therefore wholly employed in watching the young bride. As the Czar is not thirty, and his present heir, after the dying Cesarewitch, is a healthy Grand-Duke named Michael, this anxiety would seem to be antedated by at least thirty years. What is Russia afraid of, that her great agent in France should venture even to think that there are, till a child is born, doubts as to the succession ?
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