m. The husband returned, asked for his wife and
succeeded in obtaining her, but after two months he was assassinated,
and the widow thought she might as well allow the bishop to console
her. The outcry was enormous; no one doubted that it was Meletios who
had given orders for the crime. A deputation of thirty went to lay
this case and numerous other transgressions before the Patriarch at
Constantinople. He would only receive five delegates, who read their
document in a plenary sitting of the Holy Synod. After they had
recited the afore-mentioned episode, one of the bishops who was
present lost patience and, "Is it really worth our while to listen to
such tales?" he asked. "If Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman, why
should not a simple bishop hold converse with a woman also?" "At last
the moment has come!" said the delegates. They departed, and at the
door they shook the dust from their feet. The Patriarch himself ran
after them. "Come back, my children!" he cried. But they were deaf to
his voice.

About forty years after the reign of Meletios there was still a Greek
bishop at Ochrida, but--this was in 1912, after the first Balkan
War--the town had also a Bulgarian and also a Serbian bishop. The
Greek ecclesiastic did not profess to administer a very large
flock--it consisted of about twelve families--but he explained that
his presence was made necessary by the ancient Greek culture. He was
there to watch over it. The local church of St. Clement and the
monasteries of SS. Zaim and Naoum are dedicated to disciples of Cyril
and Methodus, the two brothers who introduced Christianity to these
parts. They may well have recruited their disciples among the Slavs,
whose language they had learned before they set out. But whether the
old stones which the Greek bishop was guarding in 1912 are Greek or
Slav, he was better employed than most of his predecessors.

THE AFFAIR OF KUKU[vS]

One of the first Macedonian villages to take an independent attitude
had been Kuku[vs]. When it heard that some French priests were
operating at Salonica, and that if it were converted to Catholicism it
would be given a national clergy and the protection of France, the
temptation was so great that it succumbed. One of the Bulgarian
democrats at Constantinople, Dragan Tzankoff, identified himself with
this idea, not through religious motives but in order that the Porte
should no longer fear that the independence of the Catholic Bulgarian
nation