The early collapse of the Servian defense led, after some negotiations, to a truce, and diplomacy took up the matter, and in September I went home again.  The “Times” correspondence had given the Montenegrin question serious importance in England, and during the winter I had several opportunities to discuss it with men of influence, amongst whom were Gladstone and the Marquis of Bath, who invited me to pass some days at Longleat to inform him more completely on it.  During my last stay in Montenegro I had been informed by Miss Irby—­one of the women who distinguish their English race by their angelic charity and works for humanity, and who, being engaged in benevolent work in Bosnia, became one of my firm allies—­that reports had been put in circulation in London against my probity and the trustworthiness of my correspondence, imputing to me indeed a conduct which would have excluded me from honorable society.  This was the work of the pro-Turkish party, enraged by the sympathy evoked by my correspondence on behalf of the Montenegrins, and Sir Henry Elliott had made himself the mouthpiece of it.  Mr. Gladstone, having become warmly interested in the little mountain principality by my correspondence, had taken its case up in a strong review article, and had persuaded Tennyson to devote a sonnet to it.  He was, as he himself informed me, warned by Sir Henry Elliott not to trust to my letters or to employ them as authority for his work, for Sir Henry said that I was considered in the Levant, where I was well known, to be an infamous and untrustworthy character.  Mr. Gladstone, therefore, though he used my facts, referred them to the authority of a second-hand version.  Fortunately for me and my work, Professor Freeman had heard the reports in question, and knowing me personally, and taking the passionate interest he did in the war against the Turks, applied himself to the investigation of the tales, and satisfied himself and Gladstone that they were simple libels, without a shadow of foundation, and even had never been heard of until they were promulgated in London.  They were the coinage of political passion.

Gladstone sent me word through Freeman that he wished me to call on him to receive personally his apologies for having believed and been influenced by them, and I went to see him as he requested for that purpose.  He told me at the same time that though he did not usually read the “Times,” he had taken it to read my letters.  He asked me many questions about the principality, showing his great interest, as well as his political acumen, and amongst the questions was one which, at the time, gave me great thought, and still retains its significance.  It was, “Have the Montenegrins any institutions on which a national future can be built?” He was desirous of knowing if Montenegro could be made the nucleus of a great south Slavonic organization.  I was unable to give him any assurance of the existence of anything beyond the primitive and patriarchal state which fitted