Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/271

Rh On the left, in Epirus and Albania, and as far as Ragusa, little trust could be placed in the natives, and behind these strange French citizens were the Pachas of Trawnik, Nicopolis, Widin, and Janina, who are accustomed to keep all their goods, from their cloaks to their money, in cypress wood coffers, which are not fastened to the wall. An uncertainty as to what to-morrow may bring forth is a natural condition of the lives of these Turkish potentates, who sat day after day smoking their pipes at no great distance from us. They afforded me a subject for comparison with the precarious condition of the French in the land to which I had come to seek a stone whereon to rest my head.

The flag of France was flying everywhere, and I saw the tricolour of the Republic, One and Indivisible, instead of the yellow and black flag with the Austrian Eagle, but the occupation was very recent, and our power seemed to me like a house of cards, liable to be blown down by the first ill wind,—though whether it would