"This isn't the point. The point is, what exactly are the Austrians trying to do?"
Reshid Pasha shook his head. He couldn't begin to guess what the Austrians wanted.
"Perhaps they want to use their numerical advantage to force us to accept their demands?"
Viscount Stratford quickly dismissed Reshid Pasha's guess.
"What good is having more people? This isn't a democratic vote. Those small countries have no right to speak on Near Eastern affairs."
Silence fell again. No one could come up with a reasonable guess, so they could only assume for the time being that Austria intended to use its numerical advantage to push through its demands.
But even under that broad assumption, the question of what the Austrian Empire actually wanted remained baffling. After all, Austria didn't seem to have taken any major action against the Ottoman Empire, nor did it have any reason to make such a show of force.
Viscount Stratford had imagined all sorts of wild possibilities. He even suspected Austria might simply declare the Ottoman Empire an international condominium, since the Austrians had done that sort of thing before.
One outrageous, insane idea after another nearly drove him mad. At last, the day of the conference arrived. Viscount Stratford had been so worn down by insomnia that he was haggard in both body and mind, his face gaunt and withered.
For the sake of the country's image, the British delegation's makeup artist had to pull out all the stops just to restore some of Viscount Stratford's former color.
The British delegation's only gain in recent days had been discovering that the French were actually on their side. The two parties had even reached an agreement on the ownership of Cyprus Island before the conference began.
But such an agreement had to be enshrined in