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He was imprisoned for life, and his crime, which sat so lightly upon him, had been a particularly atrocious and dastardly murder for plunder a crime practically unknown in Montenegro. Imprisonment is more real here than in Cetinje. There is none of that delightful promenading up and down before the prison walls, hours pleasantly whiled away with a friendly visitor from afar over a pint of wine.
Furthermore, it is here that the Prince every Saturday, when he is in residence in Cetinje, holds public audience and receives petitions and complaints from his lowliest subjects. Every petition must be committed to writing, and in the appointed order each man or woman steps forward while the document is read aloud by the clerk.
I arrived back at Cetinje on the evening of the 15th to find it beflagged and rows of tallow candles stuck along my bedroom window for the coming illuminations. A telegram had announced the election by the Shkupstina of "our son-in-law" and his accession had already been celebrated by a service at the Monastery Church and a military parade.
If it were not for the dangerous proximity of the Albanian border, Podgorica would have been made the capital of Montenegro. Lying on a rich and fertile plain, within easy reach of the Lake of Scutari, and connected by good roads with Cetinje and Nikšić, it is within market distance, so to speak, of Kolašin and Andrijevica.
Off I went to Cetinje and told various people my plan for seeing Serbia. Rather to my surprise no one offered me introductions, but having been repeatedly told that the Montenegrins were the cream of the Serb nation, and would lead Serbia to glory I believed that the mere mention of Montenegro and my acquaintance with it would suffice to assure me a welcome.
My sister wished to travel with me, and my experiences of last year were not such as to lead me to take her to Serbia. One takes risks without hesitation when alone, into which one cannot drag a comrade. We went to Montenegro. It was hot even at Cetinje.
From 1616 to 1696 the Vladikas were elective, and under their quarrelsome rule Cetinje was twice burnt and phœnix-like rose again from its ashes. The Turkish armies, though partially victorious, usually met with disaster and ruin before reaching their own territory again; and we read of one notable occasion when Soliman Pasha, with an army of 80,000 men, had sacked Cetinje.
About five years ago a near relation of the Prince died, and was taken to the home of Petrović in Njeguši. To do honour to the dead man, the men of Cetinje and the men of Bajice a village at the further end of the valley accompanied the corpse as a guard of honour.
Danilo's prestige after this massacre was so great that the tribes of the Brda formed a defensive alliance with him against the Turks. And his fame flew further, for Russia, now for the first time, appeared in Montenegro. Peter the Great sent his Envoy Miloradovitch to Cetinje in 1711 a date of very great importance, for from it begins modern Balkan policy and the power of the Petrovitches.
Rumour said he had been on the point of affiancing another to one of the men now in prison. I decided that Cetinje was no place for me, and that I would carry out my long deferred plan of a tour in the Albanian mountains. Sofia Petrovna pressed upon me an introduction to M. Lobatcheff, the Russian Vice-Consul at Scutari, and thither I went, leaving Cetinje to stew in its own juice.
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