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Then he was carried to the hospital in Cetinje and lay six weeks recovering. When he was well again, his thoughts were occupied with revenge, and in this scheme he was greatly assisted by his relations. "Thou wilt be killed, of course," they said, "but thine and our honour must be avenged. Who are the men of Bajice to beat one of us and go unpunished?"
The land is magnificently adapted for guerilla warfare, where every foot can be contested. Little patches of earth, washed down the hillsides, lie in every hollow, and have been utilised by the careful peasant to grow his tiny crops. After about seven hours' driving, Cetinje appears in sight, at the end of a long valley, and completely surrounded by the characteristic naked and rugged rocks.
Literature, always in olden times in advance of the surrounding lands, is fostered by the Prince, himself a scholar and a poet of no mean order. Two weekly papers in Cetinje and Nikšić have a large circulation. Under Prince Nicolas' fatherly care the country improves in a wonderful manner from year to year.
The plot against the Prince had been planned by wicked enemies from outside. What did I intend writing to the papers on the subject? I had been but a few hours in Cetinje, but perceived the affair was a bad one, and as I knew people on both sides it would be hard to avoid being dragged into it.
And its representative, all unaware of what political fever in the Balkans is, saw the bazar, had tea at the Austrian Consulate, and went back again to Cetinje, escorted to the boat by a Turkish guard. Then the storm broke! What did Great Britain mean? Scutari was amazed, perplexed, bewildered; wild rumours flew. An Anglo-Austrian Alliance a break with Russia a slap in the face for the Turks.
I will add here only a few notes on some of the events of the next few years which concerned the lands we have been considering. First, I ascertained that in Cetinje the Archduke's murder was accepted unhesitatingly as Serb work. None even suggested that any one else had been responsible, and it was thought rather a good way of showing patriotism.
The King told Petar to remain, too, but it bored him, and he came away afterwards. Mon Dieu, but the King was angry with him. You know our Montenegrins. They are funny dogs. When those at Antivari heard that the Austrians had arrived in Cetinje, they pillaged the palace of Prince Danilo. But before the house of the Austrian consul they put a guard. A good fellow this consul, is he not?
But no road connects it with the mainland, and travellers from Cetinje or Podgorica must take the steamer from either Rijeka or Plavnica to Virpazar, and from thence a good road leads over the Sutormann Pass to Antivari. A road which is being built between Virpazar and Rijeka will supply a long-felt want.
At present dangerous lunatics are confined in the common prison, but an asylum is rapidly nearing completion. The government is autocratic. A senate, composed of the different ministers, exists in Cetinje, but all powers are jealously held by the Prince. He appoints the ministers and all the higher officials of the land, and only recently have the people been granted the right to elect the kmets.
But the ballads of Grand Voyvoda Mirko King Nikola of Montenegro's father gloating over slaughter, telling of the piles of severed heads, of the triumph with which they were carried home on stakes and set around the village, and the best reserved as an offering to Nikola himself for the adornment of Cetinje; and the stripping and mutilating of the dead foe, give us a vivid picture of life resembling rather that of Dahomey, than Europe in 1860.
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