And it was only after a long
acquaintance, and when I had become in a way naturalized, that I was
able to provoke confidence in any Montenegrin. The generations
of isolation, surrounded only by enemies whom it was a duty to
mislead,--four hundred years of a national existence of combat and
ruse, always at war, with no friend except far-off Russia,--had
developed the natural Slav indifference to the truth into a fine and
singularly subtle habit of communicating nothings to any inquiring
outsider, which never failed even the most humble clansman. I was,
however, pushed on from hand to hand by casual suggestions until I
reached the Prince, who gave us audience under the famous tree where
he heard appeals of all kinds, from petitions for help to the last
recourse from the judgments of the tribunals, a final appeal to which
every Montenegrin was entitled, and without which none submitted to an
unfavorable judgment.
The moment was critical, for communications had been passing between
Servia and Montenegro for an alliance and a declaration of war against
the Sultan, for which the entire population of the principality was
impatient, and when I arrived the rumor had begun to spread that
Servia had yielded to diplomatic pressure and would decline the
alliance. The young Montenegrins were chafing, and the old men
complaining that the young ones were growing up without fighting and
would be nerveless.
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