coration or so and with memories of
dinners and shoots, have written books that are a song of praise; and
if Nikita's subjects tell these gentlemen and others, including
members of the British Parliament, who have not been to Cetinje--but
who know just as much as the travelled ones about Montenegro--if they
tell them that Nikita is a ruffian, the answer will probably be that
he who says such things must have a grievance, and that those
foreigners who have criticized him, Miss Edith Durham, Baron
d'Estournelles de Constant and Mr. Nevinson, are altogether mistaken.
I do not propose to make a long and dreary catalogue of his
iniquities, but only to mention a few items.... It was in Montenegro a
matter of common knowledge that the wheat which Russia sent in large
quantities for his famine-threatened people was not given but was sold
to them by Nikita, the proceeds being shared by himself and four or
five privileged families, the Petrovi['c], Vukoti['c], Martinovi['c]
and Jabu[vc]ani. A member of one of these families became so affluent
that he built himself a house, and a gentleman who still survives,
Tomo Oraovac by name, wrote on this in the year 1878 a rather humorous
poem which he called "The Red House." Oraovac was at the time an
official, the intendant of the Montenegrin army at Kotor, and he
naturally had to resign his post. The Tzar sent a certain General
Ritter to examine the charges and, as one result, a Russian decoration
was conferred upon Oraovac; according to etiquette it was transmitted
through Nikita, and that personage gave it to a friend of his, a Turk
at Podgorica. Nikita is apt to disarm one by the quaintness of his
ways. Later on, Oraovac, who was one of Montenegro's earliest
schoolmasters, organized the _intelligentsia_ for the purpose of
obtaining a Constitution. Nikita was not yet ready to grant such a
thing, and his representative who attended one of Oraovac's meetings
at Podgorica inflicted upon him two grave wounds. The reformer was
then expelled--the powerful intervention of one of Nikita's cousins
saved his life--his mother and both his brothers, _more Montenegrino_,
were likewise expelled and his house was bestowed upon a certain
Kru[vs]a, who lived in it for forty years. One must add, with respect
to the Russian wheat, that Nikita did not sell it for cash--the wars
of that period had left the land in such distress that no cash was
available. And so the wheat was delivered in exchange for bonds