These religious disputes between Greek and Bulgar were agreeable to the Porte, which encouraged the Bulgars to persevere with the Catholic plan. Russia continued to be very embarrassed, not wishing to make a permanent enemy either of the Greek Church or of the Bulgarian people. Finally the Bulgarian efforts to secure a national Church met with reward. The Turkish authorities--Fuad Pasha, the Grand Vizier, being an enlightened man--did not persist in the impracticable plan that this Church should be in communion with Rome. One of the consequences of the establishment of their autocephalous Church was that many of the Bulgarian Catholics at Constantinople and Kukuš abandoned that religion. The Vatican complained--and not unreasonably--that it had been fooled. The Russians are generally given much credit for this Bulgarian success, but although they participated in the negotiations--and their Ambassador, the resourceful Count Ignatieff,[50] would make it seem that they were gratified with the result--their situation was so delicate that they preferred to play for safety. When the news was brought to Serbia it gave rise to great rejoicings, for the Exarchate was the charter of liberty for the Macedonian Slavs. No one dreamed at this time that, on account of Macedonia, Serbs and Bulgars would be some day flying at each other's throat. 1867: AUSTRIA DELIVERS THE SLAVS TO THE MAGYARS The Southern Slavs had recently been shown that if they waited in the hope that others would assist them to improve their fortunes they would have to have a monumental patience. When Austria, after her defeat at the hand of the Prussians, was flung out of the German federation, she availed herself of the services of a German, Count Frederick Beust, to put her house in order. His negotiations with Hungary produced the compromise, the _Ausgleich_, of 1867. This Constitution, which made them independent of each other as regards internal matters, bade their Slavs prepare themselves to lose all shreds of independence. The Serbs of the Banat and Bačka, as well as the Roumanians of Transylvania and the Slovaks, were delivered to the Magyars without any guarantee that their language or their nationality would be respected. "Look!" said the Magyars in after years, when travellers came to see what they had done, "we have a language law, evolved by Deak, which lays down that everybody in the law courts has the right to use his mother-tongue." The traveller had been wondering what unusual people lived in Hungary, for he had seen a peasant choose precisely that time when a train was due to come and quarrel about something with the booking clerk. How was the traveller to learn that the non-Magyar peasant wished to buy a ticket for his native village, whose name had just been Magyarized, and that the clerk refused to sell a ticket except the peasant used a name he did not know? And when the peasant had walked home he might see in the