Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

66 THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. well. Everyone was sweetly affable and polite; but when young Austria was safe in his office at the consulate that Police Commissary returned. He was brave and commanding; he saw my passport, stamped it, charged the usual fee, and asked all the usual questions about my sisters, and cousins, and aunts. 'Is that only a consulate you are building? It looks large enough for a Governor's palace,' I once remarked. 'Then it will be very useful to us in a few years' time,' said a cheerful Austrian 'sportsman.' Russian representatives, too, are very pleasant to meet-very cultured, very polite, but they usually ask questions and do not answer them. When one whose discretion I had admired told me suddenly that the British relief work in Macedonia was a great pleasure to 'us,' for it showed that there was a party in England on 'our' side, I felt grieved that he had so far forgotten his diplomatic self. When in the 'Russian sphere,' however, he is apt to forget himself, and think the place is really his. There was one I was told of who thought he was in Russia. You may do almost anything you like in the Sultan's territories (provided, of course, that you are a foreigner), but there is one thing you had better not: you should not strike an Albanian if you wish to preserve a whole skin. As a Consul of another nationality once said to me, 'Absolument il ne faut pas cravacher ces gens-la! ' The Russian Consul
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 66
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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