1909] General Gallifet 253 



me, still influences the Foreign Office and was put to sit next to Mukhtar 

 at a dinner given to the Marshal. 



" yd July. — We had our Arab sale to-day. Bidders few, but the 

 financial result not unsatisfactory. 



" A most important thing has happened in connection with India. 

 Sir Curzon Wyllie has been assassinated by a young Indian at the 

 Imperial Institute. The ' Manchester Guardian ' and other Liberal 

 papers are endeavouring to persuade themselves that the assassination 

 is not political ; but this is nonsense. It has quite obviously been 

 planned as part of a new departure and almost certainly by Krishna- 

 varna, whose ' Indian Sociologist ' of last week contains clear indica- 

 tions of what might be expected. The whole English Press is united 

 in its religious horror at the crime, forgetting how it applauded exactly 

 such crimes in Italy fifty years ago, and in Russia the other day. 

 Krishnavarna's position is precisely the same as Mazzini's then was, 

 whom we all now justify since his plan of assassination led to the liber- 

 ation of Italy, and if ever people had excuse for means of this kind it 

 is the people of India. 



" 8th July. — Gallifet is dead. I remember him well in Paris in the 

 sixties when he used to play tennis at the court in the Tuileries Gardens, 

 a good looking sabrcur, with an irresponsible tongue. His wife was 

 one of the pretty women of the second Empire, but he had no respect 

 for her, and I have heard him crack his garrison jokes about her with- 

 out reticence. She had her lovers, and he his mistresses, but made no 

 concealment of his contempt for her. All the same he was a gallant 

 fellow and has died in deservedly high repute with his fellow-country- 

 men, for what he was, a true French aristocrat of the old-fashioned 

 fighting and love-making eighteenth century days. 



" I went to a party at Button's house at Fulham where his sister Eva 

 was entertaining, a garden party with tea out of doors. Button has 

 made a very beautiful place of it with his marble columns and gate- 

 ways and well-heads, like a villa at Pompeii. What especially helps 

 the effect is that there are broad walks crossing each other covered with 

 paving stones, the squares enclosed by them being of grass. If I were 

 a millionaire I would certainly buy the whole en bloc. Most of the 

 Wyndham clan were there. 



" gth July. — To an evening party at Stafford House, a really charm- 

 ing entertainment of, perhaps, 200 people, which in those immense 

 rooms looked like a family party, where I met a number of people I 

 had not seen for years, with a few foreign guests, among them Pierre 

 Loti. The last is a diminutive dapper little Frenchman, very correct 

 in his get up, with scarves and decorations, and a rather aggressive 

 pose. Remembering his joint letter of two years ago written to me, 



