Comoundouros is buying up all the
correspondents he can, and one of his emissaries told me two or three
days ago that if I would help him out I could pocket 20,000 francs."
To this offer I replied by a letter to the "Times" attacking the
ministry savagely, and when it was printed and reached Athens, and I
saw the minister again, he remarked with his imperturbable good-humor,
which indeed never failed him, "How you did give it to us to-day!" As
I recall the old man, running over the twenty odd years during which
I had known him more or less with long interruptions, I retain my
impression of his genuine patriotism and personal integrity; but he
was surrounded by people who did profit by their relation to him. He
was singularly like Depretis in manner and character; and of Depretis
it was said that he would not steal himself, but he did not care how
much his friends stole; but I think that the Greek was the abler man
by much. Comoundouros mitigated the rancors usual in the politics of
Greece (as in those of Italy of to-day) by his unvarying good-nature,
never permitting his antagonisms to degenerate to animosities. In the
years when I first knew him, during the Cretan insurrection of 1866,
he was at his best in power and in patriotism; but during the years
which followed, full of the base intrigues which had their birth in
the influences surrounding the court, he got more or less demoralized,
for patriotism and honesty were no passports to power, and he was
ambitious before all things.
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