"A few days afterwards I returned to London and received a message that Lord Salisbury wished to see me. When I presented myself to him he said at once, "What can you tell me about Gordon?" Remembering what I had just heard in Paris and knowing my Foreign Office friends, I said, "I am sure they have told you that Gordon is mad"; at which Lord Salisbury smiled and I saw that I was right. "Well," I continued, "I should never recommend your lordship to send Gordon on a delicate diplomatic mission to Paris, or Vienna, or Berlin: but if you want some out-of-the-way piece of work to be done in an unknown and barbarous country, Gordon would be your man. If you told him to capture Cetewayo, for instance, he would get to Africa, mount on a pony with a stick in his hand, and ask the nearest way to Cetewayo's kraal, and when he got there he would sit down and have a talk with him!""