M. Catacazy is evidently quite unaware that anybody except President
Grant can condemn him, and is evidently, too, a very adroit person. At a dinner given to the Grand Duke Alexis at Boston on 9th December, he made a flowery speech in honour of the American Minister at St. Petersburg, and told his audience how in the crisis of the Civil War that " great man " Prince Gortschakoff had said to him :—" I pity those who believe that a Divine Providence would have erected the magnificent American structure for crushing it to pieces in a few years. America will come out of the flames of civil war like the phoenix, more radiant, more brilliant, more strong than ever,"—a sentence which, being put in the mouth of a cynical man of the world, a man, as it were, annealed by European society, is delicious. Prince Gorts- chakoff, it would seem, supports his protégé, for he has written to Mr. Curtin that he will take M. Catacazy's conduct into serious consideration, that M. Catacazy formally denies many complaints, and that he "regrets to perceive that the respect due to M. Cats- cazy, the Minister of Russia, has not been sufficiently consulted." Well, that is true. Lord Granville's " great gentleman," whatever else he was in that despatch, certainly was not respectful to M. Catacazy.
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