her wishing that he wouldn't, and that his
servant had said that he was not at home. In common with most of the
Christian rulers of Albania this gentleman seemed to have spent most of
his time in exile.

Returning to the hotel Jan found that Jo had been purchasing, and he
dragged her and Miss Brindley off to see the archbishop. The cathedral
still carries the scars of the first bombardment. The archbishop, a
large flat man, gave us each a hand as though he expected us to kiss it;
he had a huge archiepispocal ring and a lot of imperiosity. He seemed
more political than bishopy, though most of the Churchmen are; and there
is the tale of one who said, "I would rather people went to drill than
to church." There were a lot of wealthy looking Albanians sitting round
and being respectable. The archbishop spoke no French nor German, only
Italian. But Jan, with the help of a lot of old musical terms, and an
imperfectly forgotten Spanish, managed to convey to him some
intelligible compliments and sentences. We got out at last, and his
eminence accompanied us to the top of the stairs and gave us the
difficult problem of bowing backwards as we went down. This visit was
necessary, as we might have had to get a "Besa" from him if we meant to
go through to Durazzo.

The Serbian captain who had been on the Turkish gunboat met us in the
street. He dragged us into a cafe and began to order beer by the
half-dozen. He presented Jo with a small Turkish gold coin, which was
valued at five shillings, as a bribe to allow him to join our party. As
he already had permission it seemed superfluous.

Some of our party were still pretty seedy. Two had gone to a shop in
search of castor oil. A very old and withered chemist, who spoke bad
French, invited them in and asked for an account of their adventures,
interrupting them with explosions of "Ah poves, poves, poves, poves."
"Ah, poves, poves, poves, poves," between every incident and also at the
final request for the medicine. He showed them to the door and suddenly
burst into unexpected English.

"Good naite, vairey good. I am your poppa."

In the hotel cafe we found two French aeroplanists, for four had arrived
that day, sailing down over the city, to the great terror of the
inhabitants. They seemed to be afflicted with the same idea as "Quel
Pays."

"Ah, monsieur et dame," said they, "quel pays."

We asked them how things were.

"We have just come from Prizren. The Serbs are in a dreadf