In a month we shall have such power and influence as never before was wielded by anyone here;" and Spernow was equally enthusiastic.
"I am astonished, I think, by what I have seen to-night," I said.
"Ah, you don't know my countrymen," exclaimed Zoiloff, whose eyes shone and sparkled with the fire of feeling. "They have been crushed under the curse of the Crescent; they have groaned under the oppression till the fire of patriotism has flickered low indeed, for there seemed no gleam of hope; they have suffered, God alone knows how bitterly and drearily, till the iron was like to enter their souls and corrode every generous instinct and fervour; but, thanks be to God, those instincts are not dead, and we shall rouse them into an activity that will startle Europe and save the Balkan States. We have done much in the past few years, as you know; but that is nothing to what we shall yet achieve. Were the Prince other than he is, the hand of Russia weighing less heavily on him, and their dastardly work of suborning and sapping the truth and honour of the prominent men of the country less deadly, we should not now be cowering and cringing under the talons of the Eagles. Think what it has been to work always under leaders whom we doubted and distrusted for traitors. But that is changed at last. We will have no more of the old leaders. It is the age of young men; and, by the God that made us all, we'll never stay nor falter now till the glorious end is reached."
"Good!" said Spernow, in a rousing tone of concentrated earnestness. "Good, and true, every word of it."
"No looking back, that is the spirit I honour!" I
