In
the morning he had become humanized, and he gave me breakfast and
showed me the body of St. Stephen, which is kept here in great
reverence (not the proto-martyr, but a Montenegrin of the same name).
The saint lay in state in a magnificent coffin, as if embalmed, and in
his hand was an old and time-yellowed embroidered handkerchief which
looked as if it might have been there a century or two. Remembering a
dear friend in the Orthodox church to whom the relics of its saints
were precious, I asked the hegumenos to sell me this handkerchief. He
replied that he dared not take it, but if I had the courage to do so
he would not prevent me, so I took the relic and put a twenty franc
piece in the treasury of the convent, and went my way.
I found the Prince in his villa at Orealuk, contemplating new
movements in a distant future, and, there being evidently nothing to
keep me there, I decided to go back to Cettinje and await what was
evidently the operation in view,--the movement on Antivari. My
poor little pony like myself, only half fed for days, was not in a
condition for rapid travel, and, though we pushed on in the rain,
which began again, as well as we could, when we reached Rieka it was
nearly sunset. Finding no preparation in the little house, our usual
shelter there, for any guest, after giving the horse what small ration
the village afforded, I resumed the journey at sunset.
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