But Prince Nicholas, unluckily for himself, married his eldest daughter to a certain Prince Peter Karageorgevitch. This lady died many years ago, and in the course of time Prince Peter was called from his haunts in Switzerland to take the Crown of Servia from the hands of the regicides. Whether he knew anything of their evil plans beforehand need not be discussed here; but, at any rate, ever since the day he entered Belgrade he has been their tool, and as wax in the hands of the ringleaders. Nevertheless, people were astonished when it was discovered last October that bombs were being smuggled over the Turkish frontier, coming from Servia. A plot was discovered to blow up the whole of the Montenegrin Royal House--not only the Prince and his two sons, but the Princess and her two daughters, her daughters-in-law, and even the poor little grandchildren, so that the entire family might be exterminated root and branch! [Illustration: THE EXTERIOR OF THE COURT-HOUSE, SHOWING SENTINEL ON GUARD. _From a Photograph._] The affair was engineered in Belgrade, and the bombs were manufactured by a Servian officer at the State Arsenal of Kragujevats. It was also rumoured by those who might be expected to know that the dreams of the blood-stained authorities in Belgrade are to unite Montenegro, a Slav nation speaking the Servian language, with Servia, and the idea was that if there were no member of the House of Petrovitch left alive the throne might possibly fall to the share of a Prince Karageorgevitch, one of the sons of Prince Nicholas’s eldest daughter. The Crown Prince George of Servia is not exactly one’s ideal of a model ruler. This young gentleman, whose hobby is said to be to bury cats in the ground up to their necks and then stamp them to death, is more one’s idea of a youthful Nero or Caligula, and Heaven help the nation delivered over to his tender mercies. Before the trial, however, rumours were all that one heard; so everyone was on tiptoe with expectation, wondering what sensational revelations would come to light. By great good luck we happened to arrive in Montenegro just a week before the trial began. We steamed in one of the excellent boats of the Austrian Lloyd past the grey mountains of Istria and through the wonderful fjords of the Bocche di Cattaro till we cast anchor under the peak of Lovcen. In a victoria drawn by two tough little Dalmatian horses we climbed the mountain side in zigzags, persevering up the vast rocky wall till we found ourselves some four thousand feet above the sea below. I have neither time nor words to describe the view, a task which needs the pen of a poet like Prince Nicholas himself, but must dash on, like our game little horses, to Cetinje, down the steep sides of silver mountains, which gleam in the tropical sun without a vestige of green to relieve their Quaker-like hues.