we slid through the
phosphorescent sea. Of Ghika and his doings he was well informed.
All Ghikas, he said, suffered badly from the same incurable
complaint--a hole in the pocket--a disease, alas, common to many
other honest men! At any rate Albert Ghika's claim to the Albanian
throne had obtained him a rich bride, which was always something.
That he really expected to mount that throne was in the highest
degree improbable, for he was no fool. "How much has the lady?" I
could not enlighten him. "How the English journals accepted him
amazes me! But they gave him a reclame enorme. And he had not a sou.
Now he has some gold. But no one in Albania knows him, and he has no
party there." Followed tales of another "celebrity," Lazarevitch,
who claimed descent from Tsar Lazar of Kosovo fame and was,
according to "the Egyptian," the finest intriguer in Europe: "not a
plot has happened in which he has not had, if not his index, his
little finger. He played a large part in the Dreyfus case. And, like
Ghika, he has married a rich wife, Only once has he been taken in,
and that was by Shaban. You know Shaban? Shaban was really called
Dossi. He was employed by Cook in Egypt as a dragoman, and dismissed
from that service doubtless for good reasons. He dressed himself in
a Gheg costume, got an introduction to Lazarevitch, and said he was
an Albanian Bey who wanted to make a Serbo-Albanian alliance against
Bulgar pretensions. Lazarevitch jumped at this. The first time he
was ever taken in. He gave Shaban several hundred pounds. Shaban had
a friend who was a tailor. Faik Bey, who was in London, saw Shaban
and denounced him as an impostor. The tailor ran away to Greece with
all the money, and was at once arrested there. So Shaban got
nothing. Why did the Greeks arrest the tailor? Because of the
English gold of course. Probably he was guilty of something or other
too. But they would not have troubled about it but for the gold.
They got that." He out-Antonied Hope and made Phroso tame compared
to the real Balkans. Much more he told and much proved true. But he
was obviously a dangerous travelling companion, and when he told me
he proposed passing some days with me in the Bocche di Cattaro, I
abruptly changed my plan of staying there, hailed a Montenegrin
carriage which was waiting on the quay at Cattaro and drove straight
to Cetinje.

Later, I received from Paris a gilt-edged letter with a Royal crown
upon it from Aladri Kastrioti, the elde