“That is not good,” said Jo, and we flatly refused to go downstairs.

“If we leave this room we go altogether.”

She again patted us and begged us to consider the matter closed.  We could stick to the room.

Certainly that dog fancier was right.

There was a very old monastery which we had passed as we rode into
Ipek.

Although we are more interested in the people of the present than in ruins of the past, these old Serbian monuments leave so strange a memory of a civilization suddenly cut off at its zenith that they have an emotional appeal far apart from that of archaeology.  These little oases of culture preserved amongst a wilderness of Turk tempt the traveller with a romance which is now vanishing from Roman and Greek ruins.

The Ipek monastery is a beautiful old place with the walls half buried on one side.  The old church, orange outside, is very dark within, but contains many beautiful paintings.  Surely here is the home of Post Impressionism and of Futurism.  The decorations of the bases of the pillars are quite futuristic even orpeistic.

The pictures are Byzantine.  But the Turks have picked out the eyes, as they always do.  One enormous painting of a head which filled a semicircle over a door is particularly fine.  Most halos are round, but the painter had deemed the ears and beard worthy of extra bulges in this saint’s halo, which added to the decorative effect.

Beautiful apple trees were dotted about the big garden through which the wriggly river ran.  Ducks, geese and turkeys wandered around, so fat that they were indifferent to the meal that was being served out to them.  A boy woke up the mother of a family of young turkeys and pushed her towards the dinner with his foot.  She hurried there involuntarily and sat down for a nap with her back to the plate, the picture of outraged dignity.

We got into conversation with a priest, who insisted we should call upon the archbishop.  The Metropolitan was a cheery soul, wearing a Montenegrin pork-pie hat very much on one side, and black riding breeches which showed as his long robes fluttered during his many gesticulations.

While with him we lost the impression that we were living in the unreal times of the Rose and the Ring.  He was intensely civilized, spoke French excellently, and had many a good story of his life in Constantinople and other places.  For the English he had great affection.  The last Englishman in Ipek, a king’s messenger, had flown to the monastery to escape from the Hotel Europe and its bugs.  The next morning he would not get up.  The archbishop went to his room to remonstrate.

“No, no,” said he; “I spent two nights under a ceiling which rained bugs upon me, and I know a good bed when I’ve got it.”

Coffee and cigarettes came in, of the best, and the rakia was a thing apart from the acrid stuff we were accustomed to.

He admitted its superiority.  The plums came from his own estate, and were distilled by the monks.  The great difficulty was to prevent him from giving us too much.