But Tricoupi was right when he said that
the blockade was a mistake, and that the powers should have allowed
the Greeks to take their own course and learn their lesson.
Undiscriminating Philhellenism has been the worst enemy of Greece.
The flurry over and quiet restored, the heat, the excitement, and the
hard and unremitting work and anxiety of that month of May told on
me, and I broke down with an attack of nervous prostration and acute
dyspepsia, by which I was quite incapacitated from movement. Taking
the first steamer to Naples, I passed the rest of the summer at Rome,
disabled, until the heats had passed, for any considerable exertion.
But, contrary to the general superstition regarding Rome, it is a
city where one may pass the summer months most agreeably if not very
actively. The English ambassador of that time, Sir John Saville
Lumley, afterwards Lord Saville of Burford, to whom I owe many
delightful hours in that and subsequent years, used to say that he
knew no city where one could pass the year so delightfully as in Rome.
By strict diet and an activity limited to the hours of the early
morning and afternoon I weathered the summer, but each return of the
heats during the succeeding six years brought me a relapse, so that
on the whole I paid a long penalty for my participation in Greek
politics.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CRISPI--A SECRET-SERVICE MISSION--MONTENEGRO REVISITED
The following year was marked by the accession of Crispi to the
direction of the government of Italy.
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