The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume IIStillman, William James
History
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II
Stillman, William James
Journalists -- Biography; Stillman, William James, 1828-1901
We reached the convent too late to get to Danilograd that night,
considering the condition of the roads, and I asked for shelter for
the night. Here, for the first time in my experience with Orthodox
convents, lodgings were refused me by the old hegumenos, and I
instantly ordered the horses to be loaded again, without attempting to
soften his surliness. A few minutes' talk with the captain who was
my escort showed him that I was a person too much in favor with the
Prince to be treated with such derision, and he came to offer me a
place to spread my mattress on a balcony exposed to the south wind and
the rain; then, having begun to relent, he went further, and offered
me a room, which I refused, and finally his own bed; but even that did
not break my inflexible resentment. When he became pathetic in his
repentance, however, I accepted a balcony whence I could look down on
the fortress of Spuz, within easy range of its sleeping batteries; and
then he offered me a supper, which I accepted, and we made peace. In
the morning he had become humanized, and he gave me breakfast and
showed me the body of St. Stephen, which is kept here in great
reverence (not the proto-martyr, but a Montenegrin of the same name).
The saint lay in state in a magnificent coffin, as if embalmed, and in
his hand was an old and time-yellowed embroidered handkerchief which
looked as if it might have been there a century or two. Remembering a
dear friend in the Orthodox church to whom the relics of its saints
were precious, I asked the hegumenos to sell me this handkerchief. He
replied that he dared not take it, but if I had the courage to do so
he would not prevent me, so I took the relic and put a twenty franc
piece in the treasury of the convent, and went my way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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