The Paris correspondent of the Times has given his readers
a sensation. He states, on authority which he has frequently found accurate, that the real motive of M. Delcasse's hurried visit to St. Petersburg is to prevent the abdication of the Czar. The Russian Emperor, says his informant, has long been tired of the throne, is disgusted by the futility of his efforts to stop corruption, is convinced that he will have no son, and that an old prophecy about a sonless Emperor who will be succeeded by a Czar named Michael applies to himself and his brother ; and is sore at the failure of the Conference, which he considers a rebuff. He has therefore decided to abdicate in favour of his brother, the Grand Doke Michael, who will be twenty-one in November, and will carry out this resolution during his approaching visit to Darmstadt. The story has not been confirmed, but there seems an absence of the kind of denial which such a story would have received if there had been nothing in it. The probable truth is that the Czar, who inherits a tendency to melancholy, who has had many disappointments, and who feels acutely the wide gap between his responsibilities and his capacity to meet them, has expressed a wish such as M. de Blowitz reports, as the only road out of many troubles. He probably will not carry it out, for his holiday will relieve him, and Sovereigns, though they think of abdication, seldom abdicate. At the last moment the descent seems too steep. Still he may, the final resolve probably depending on the condition of his health, about which, of coarse, the world will hear nothing beyond stereotyped assurances.
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