ng at Reinwein's, transacting business for his
Government, and every evening men came to see him; that man was to be
heard--he was a Neapolitan by birth--conversing fluently in Turkish,
Albanian, Serb, Greek, Italian, and French, alternately. One evening I
was trying to follow the conversation, which began in Italian, then he
wandered off into other tongues, explaining, evidently, a letter
written in Turkish. I got interested and went over to his table, and,
afterwards, he told me which languages he had been using. Besides this
little list, Reinwein spoke Russian with another man, German largely
with us, and P. and I passed remarks to each other in English, which
was the only unknown language. One evening two Hungarian tourists
arrived, and then we fled from that Babel, fearing for our reason.

An affable old Turk, seedy in appearance, but extremely entertaining,
owned to six languages, not counting others of which he had only a
smattering. Serb he didn't count as he said he could only talk on easy
subjects in that tongue. It is very humiliating, that sort of thing,
it is liable to lower the opinion of one's own intelligence. We kept
late hours, too, at Reinwein's, we couldn't help it.

But all good things must come to an end, and at last the day of our
departure arrived. Cetinje itself was quite a different place to us
than when we knew it formerly. Representative of the land in a certain
sense it rightly is, but then a fairly full knowledge of the country
must be acquired first to understand in what respects it represents
the life and customs of the people beyond. To the stranger who extends
his visit for only a week, it is sure to give manifold false
impressions, for though Montenegro is quiet and peaceable enough, the
appearance of Cetinje is rather too assuring. For here there is little
trace of vendetta and quarrelling, which, however, under the powerful
hand of the present Prince Nicolas, are surely dying out through all
the land. When the fact is taken into consideration that the
Montenegro of forty years ago was a rough and dangerous country,
inhabited by a people who knew nothing of the outside world, and lived
simply for themselves in their own land, it will be seen what
miraculous progress has been made in the path of civilisation during
the present reign. Peace and order have been established to a
wonderful degree, and the State reorganised and set on a surer basis.
With a powerful hand and not too much ex