r
Plamenatz, however, gave all their energies to working on this
element and keeping it as discontented as possible.

Lobatcheff was very friendly to me. Being introduced by the Russians
in Cetinje, I was expected to supply and convey information. The
politics of the little consular world are funny. I found that the
fact that he--Lobatcheff--representing All the Russias, had as a
mere Vice-Consul to walk behind Petar Plamenatz, representing All
Montenegro as a Consul-General, rankled most bitterly. He, too, like
the Russian Legation at Cetinje, made no concealment of his belief
that Montenegro had taken the wrong turning, and was on the down
grade; said the Prince, after the wholesale arrests of last summer,
would never regain his position and popularity. But I would not be
attached to the Russian consulate, nor to any other party, and made
the acquaintance also of the attache to the Austrian Consulate, a
charming and cultivated Viennese, who was my very good friend.

Austria was represented by an arch-plotter, Consul-General Krai, who
worked the pro-Austrian propaganda; the same man who was in Monastir
when I was there in 1903-4, and he did not like my reappearance in
Scutari. Count Mancinelli represented Italy. France had not in 1908
begun her pro-Slav intrigues in Albania, and had but a feeble
representative, who picked quarrels with the Austrian attache over
the latter's bulldog. But as in the Near East even a consular dog is
suspected of politics, this may, for all I know, have been the first
sproutling of France's subsequent conduct.

The Austrian Consulate-General, with Krai at its head, was easily
top-dog in Scutari then. The Slavs punned on his name: "Krai hoche
bit' Kralj!" (Krai wants to be king). Especially he looked on the
mountains as an Austrian preserve, and sent parties of Austrians
there. The Turkish Government, acutely suspicious of "tourists,"
consequently forbade all strangers to travel inland--pretending
danger. Just before my arrival, an Englishman, who arrived with
letters to the Vali from our Embassy at Constantinople, had been
refused a permit to travel inland, and had gone for a tour in
Montenegro instead.

Our dear old Albanian Vice-Consul, M. Nikola Summa, however, said
that if I would go without permission the tour could be easily
managed. And so it was. The now notorious Essad Pasha, then Bey, was
head of the Scutari gendarmerie, and I dodged his patrols
successfully in the grey dawn