Author.  “Poor follow.  I knew him as well as any man can know another in a few days.  He made a most favourable impression on me:  it seems as it were but yesternight that I toasted him in a bumper, and wished him long life, which, like many other wishes of mine, was not destined to be fulfilled.  How little we think of the frail plank that separates us from the ocean of eternity!”

Natchalnik.  “I was once, myself, very near the other world, having entered as a volunteer in the Russian army that crossed the Balkan in 1828.  I burned a mosque in defiance of the orders of Marshal Diebitch; the consequence was that I was tried by a court-martial, and condemned to be shot:  but on putting in a petition, and stating that I had done so through ignorance, and in accomplishment of a vow of vengeance, my father and brother having been killed by the Turks in the war of liberation, seven of our houses[15] having been burned at the same time, Marshal Diebitch on reading the petition pardoned me.”

The doctor of the place now entered; a very little man with a pale complexion, and a black braided surtout.  He informed me that he had been for many years a Surgeon in the Austrian navy.  On my asking him how he liked that service, he answered, “Very well; for we rarely go out to the Mediterranean; our home-ports, Venice and Trieste, are agreeable, and our usual station in the Levant is Smyrna, which is equally pleasant.  The Austrian vessels being generally frigates of moderate size, the officers live in a more friendly and comfortable way than if they were of heavier metal.  But were I not a surgeon, I should prefer the wider sphere of distinction which colonial and trans-oceanic life and incident opens to the British naval officer; for I, myself, once made a voyage to the Brazils.”

We now went to see the handsome new bridge in course of construction over the Morava.  The architect, a certain Baron Cordon, who had been bred a military engineer, happened to be there at the time, and obligingly explained the details.  At every step I see the immense advantages which this country derives from its vicinity to Austria in a material point of view; and yet the Austrian and Servian governments seem perpetually involved in the most inexplicable squabbles.  A gang of poor fellows who had been compromised in the unsuccessful attempts of last year by the Obrenovitch party, were working in chains, macadamizing the road.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 15:  Houses or horses; my notes having been written with rapidity, the word is indistinct.]

CHAPTER XXII.

Visit to Ravanitza.—­Jovial party.—­Servian and Austrian jurisdiction.—­Convent described.—­Eagles reversed.—­Bulgarian festivities.