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 But the Turkish barbarities, like the Bulgarian actual risings, were localized. Perhaps the Turks were ignorant of the north-Balkan complicity; perhaps they ignored it; perhaps, seeing it had come to nothing, they gave no heed to it at all. Be that as it may, in all my wayfarings, from the Lorn near to the Vid, from the Danube to the Balkans, I could neither hear of nor find human being who had suffered because of the business of last year; and I am sure I inquired sedulously enough. I found no man scored with yataghan slashes, no woman with a story of outrage, which from my later experiences I believe she would have been frank enough with if she had cause to speak. Last year's straw-stack stands in the farmyard of every Bulgarian cottager; the color of its thatch proves that his habitation is not an erection of yesterday. The two-year colt trots on the lea along with the dam and the foal. His buffaloes are mature in their ugliness; his wife's white-metal water-pails are pitted with the dints of years. And if the belongings of the rural Bulgarian furnish testimony to the hitherto stable security of his way of life, not less do the surroundings of the townspeople prove their abiding conviction of non-rmolestation. Of the vines whose leaves and tendrils spread with verdant green shade over the garden arbors of Sistova, and whose fruit clusters dangle on the brown fronts of Drenova's old oaken houses, the gnarled stems are as thick as my wrist. Pretty Maritza of Tirnova shows you proudly her blooming balsams, and tells you how she took the trouble to bespeak the seed a year in advance from a famous balsam-cultivator across the Balkans in Kesanlik. It is to be doubted now whether he will ever grow balsams more. Her mother displays the yet remaining large stock of her last autumn's preservings. And, by the way, it was of this same mother that the tale was written to England how the pasha had informed her he would hang her, and indeed had even fixed the day for the operation, on the charge of concealing some obnoxious personage. I was given to understand, indeed, that some unpleasant communications had passed between the pasha and the good lady, but how much, or little, she was perturbed thereby, may be gathered from the fact that she did not desist from her placid preparation of paprika paste — no, not on the very day named or reported to have been named for disqualifying her from the further enjoyment of that dainty.

The Turkish soldiers, when the Russians made good their footing on the southern bank of the Danube, evacuated Sistova without so much as breaking a twig on the front of a Bulgarian house. Their civilian brethren had already departed with like unanimity of harmlessness. The disorganized bands of soldiers fell back through the rural villages without so much as filching a Bulgarian goose or requisitioning a Bulgarian egg. A Turkish army abode for days around Bjela, and finally departed, its rearguard consisting of irregulars, without a jot of injury wrought on the townfolk or their property. All along the Turkish retreat from the Jantra to the Lorn, the Bulgarian experienced the same immunity. The Turkish inhabitants quitted, and the Turkish troops ran away from Tirnova without a blow or a robbery. It may, in fine, be said that the Turks departed absolutely harmlessly out of the territory from the Danube to the Balkans, of which the Russians stood possessed when their area of occupation was largest. How the Bulgarians requited this forbearance — or immunity, if the other word seems to ask too much — will have to be told later.

As the Russians have drawn in from the outskirts of that area, and the Turks have occupied the vacated territory, the immunity has ceased. It is not given to barbarians to accept with Christian resignation, or civilized phlegm, the spectacle of their dwellings wantonly razed, their crops stolen and sold, their little garden patches obliterated. They know that the miserables they find unaccountably remaining in the villages, deprived of Russian protection, were the culprits. They know that these welcomed the enemy of the Turk, acted as his guides, served him as spies, and found in him a customer for the Turkish crops. They know that these hung on the rear of the hapless retreating Turkish villagers in July, and slew them ruthlessly — men, women, and children — when the safe chance offered. So the "unspeakable" Turk lets the rough edge of his barbarism come uppermost again, and perpetrates atrocities — inflicts reprisals? Bah! what matters it about a form of words? 