"Why?" (Click) "First from physiognomy:" (Click) "second from the structure of their languages." "Wonderful! And you have noted points of similarity?" "I will go further than that, Holiness. I ought to say that my attention was attracted to this subject by my Lord the King, who, you know, deigned to marry a Montenegrin Princess. His Majesty used to speak much at one time on this point to me and also to the Minister of Public Instruction----" "That is Signor Cabelli?" "Surely. We examined the matter for His Majesty; and our investigations all seemed to point to the fact that the Turks, in coming from Asia, swept across the Byzantine Empire in a westerly and northerly direction. Then, examining the outlets and the fringes, we found Byzantine characteristics all along the northern boundary of Turkey, that is to say not in Bulgaria which is Slav, but in Albania, Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Montenegro; and, more, we found them along the Adriatic coast of Italy. Your Holiness will see that these places are of a contiguity which would render them likely refuges for the Christians who fled before, or were expelled by, the Muslim." "Yes." "There is one thing more. We found traces of an earlier migration than the Byzantine. We believe that in Eastern Italy from Taranto to Ortona, and also in Southern Albania, may be seen the lineal descendants of the Athenians of Perikles' day." "But Greece, Excellency?" "Holiness, the Greeks of to-day are degenerate from the dirty-knuckled Laconians crossed with the Ottoman Infidel, their conquistators." "That is splendid, Signore. And it marches with an opinion which We formed some dozen years ago, at least in regard to your Italian Greeks. We have seen those with Our Own eyes. In Apulia, for instance, the Elgin Marbles have their living counterfeits: the charcoal-burners and the fishermen look as though they had stepped out of the Frieze of the Parthenon. Once We heard a fisherman summon his boy by the word 'Páddy'--to give it an English form. An Italian would have cried 'Putto.' But 'Páddy,'--what vocative is that but 'Παιδε,' pronounced as Alkibiades would have pronounced it? Oh, We see your point. And is your Lord the King still interested in the subject?" "I believe that His Majesty is intensely interested. I hope I may venture to repeat the corroboration which Your Holiness has given me. I am sure that His Majesty----" "By all means. Of course you merely will repeat the conversation. You will not intrude Us before the King's Majesty in Our apostolic character: but merely----" "Your Holiness's wish shall be respected." "But to resume:--We agree to identify those states south of the Danube with the Byzantines in general; and Montenegro and South Albania with the Greeks in particular. What about North Albania?" (Click) "That is Turkish." "All Albania is Turkish."