nd he must
know better what one should do. This habit of stroking his beard used
to be adopted by the Prime Minister when his personal finances were
under discussion. Doubtless there were many who scented something
scandalous in the fact that he possessed half the shares in the Bor
copper mines, which had risen from 500 to 80,000 dinars apiece. He had
bought them, as anybody else might have done. "Ah well," he was wont
to say in that ultra-deep voice, "you see my wife brought them me."
And a large contribution to his wealth was made by a farmer near
Kragujevac; he persuaded Pa[vs]i['c] to buy from him for 1000
piastres--a few pounds--a meadow on which to put his horses, and
subsequently on that meadow there was found an excellent spring of
mineral water. Once for a change another political leader, whose
Christian name was also Nicholas, thought he would pull the beard of
Pa[vs]i['c], and he did so very vehemently just outside Kolarac, which
is a large restaurant in Belgrade. The Prime Minister was being
followed by a couple of detectives, but he signed to them that they
were not to interfere. "My darling old Nikky," said he, as he beamed
at his assailant and grasped him tightly round the throat, "you and I
are party leaders, so please don't let us quarrel. It creates an
unfortunate impression, my friend." And it was some weeks before this
man recovered, for Pa[vs]i['c] was then about sixty years of age and
still in the flower of his strength. But to return to the disastrous
reign of Milan.

NIKITA THE COMEDIAN

The discontented Serbs could now no longer, as in days gone by, look
hopefully towards Cetinje. Rumours and something more than rumours
were circulating as to Nikita's character. For many years that very
shrewd person was going to gull the Western world which, meeting him
on the Riviera, was enchanted by his picturesque costume. But if Queen
Victoria and Mr. Gladstone had gone to ask the Montenegrins they would
have found that he was hated, and not only in the Brda and the parts
bordering on Herzegovina but even in old Montenegro. His adherents
were chiefly to be found among the Njegu[vs]i, his own clan, and in
the family of his wife. Certain English devotees of Nikita have
actually been to Cetinje, have, as they proudly tell us, been embraced
by him and have enormously admired his alfresco audiences when he
settled all manner of problems to the perfect satisfaction of these
tourists. Some of them, with a de