The following, written by N. Alexander, was taken from the February 1927 (volume CXLIX, number 752) issue of the Catholic British magazine The Month, from the section entitled "Miscellanea. I. Critical and Historical Notes." The Month was published by Longmans, Green, and Co. Ltd. of London, New York, Toronto, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, with editorial offices (in 1927) at 31 Farm Street, Berkeley Square, London, W. 1.

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THE July sun blazed down on Cettinje, the little village capital of Montenegro, as we bade a friendly farewell to our armed escort (for brigandage is still a more or less flourishing profession), and set out to look for a night's lodging. The proprietress of the Inn where we had stopped on a previous occasion threw up her hands in deprecatory amazement at such a request.

"A room?" she echoed. "For to-night? But don't you know that to-morrow is Petrov-dan?"

We had indeed duly noted that fact flaming out in scarlet painted letters across the roads, but it had conveyed no meaning to our minds.

"To think of expecting a room the day before Petrov-dan!" she ejaculated again, scorn, tinged with pity in her still lovely eyes. For she was old as age goes among Montenegrin women.

"We must sleep out then," I suggested doubtfully, for though more than once we had been contented enough with a starry roof, yet nights on Bosnian plains, or by the Adriatic shores, are very different to nights on the mountain heights of Montenegro. But even this last resource was promptly quashed.

"You won't find a spare corner to do that anywhere in Cettinje to-night," we were assured. "Why, everyone comes for Petrov-dan?"

"What is Petrov-dan?" I enquired, and it is to be feared that English prestige, so potent in Jugoslavia, suffered a sudden eclipse at this display of almost unbelievable ignorance.

"You don't know about Petrov-dan? Why, of course, it is Peter, our Bishop-King, whose shrine is in the chapel yonder. Surely you have seen that? He is the Saint of Montenegro, and his flesh never dies. To-morrow the tomb will be opened, that the sick may kiss his face and be healed."

"Is the body embalmed?" put in my Protestant friend, and was met with a withering denial.

"What need has he of such things? His flesh is incorruptible because he was a saint. He is in the Calendar, for people have proved his power, and the Church has acknowledged his claim."

This was decidedly interesting information, and we determined to visit the shrine in the early morning, before the "poshta" took us on our way. But the immediate prospect was not very cheerful, because, in Montenegro, when you are in a place, you are in, "well in," as the Mad Hatter observed. From Cettinje your only choice lies between a 40-mile tramp down a precipice-bordered road to Kotor, or a 30-mile ditto in the other direction to Rijeka, with absolutely nowhere to put up on the way. So it ended in our kindly hostess volunteering to slip a bed into the restaurant room late at night.

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Till that time we wandered round and watched Montenegro en fête, and a wonderful sight it was. For of all the many beautiful national costumes of Jugoslavia, that of the Montenegrins is perhaps the most beautiful and the most artistically satisfying, just as the men and the women who wear it are, for the most part, beauty and grace personified.

With the quiet moon above and the gleaming lights below, they eat and drank, and danced and sang beneath the shadowing trees, swaying by in all the colours of the rainbow, in their own inimitable national dances, to their own weird and haunting music. Yet withal, it was strangely reticent and dignified rejoicing, innocent of all excess, for though wine and talk flowed freely, there was neither ribaldry nor drunkenness. The latter is indeed, in Montenegrin eyes, the unforgivable sin, and, as in all primitive communities, any disgrace incurred by one member of a family is necessarily shared by all. Hence, at the first sign of any overstepping of the boundary, the culprit is seized upon by his family, hustled away, and securely locked up. And the aftermath is not, one imagines, pleasant for him.

But the moon saw other things than merriment, for within sound of it, in the houses and along the roads, lay the lame and the halt, the sick and the suffering, who, although they could not take an active part in it, yet were buoyed up by hope as they waited for sunrise, and the magic touch of a dead hand that should bring healing in its train.

Early in the morning we wended our way towards the Greek monastery, along paths crowded with these derelicts, begging alms from the passers-by to aid them on their return journey. For many had come long and weary distances, in a mountainous country, destitute of railways. And many, maybe, would never return, for there were faces among them on which Death had laid his seal clear for all to read.

The monastery itself, the first building put up in Cettinje, is mostly in ruins, but the cloisters in which lie buried the kings and bishops, abbots and monks, and the chapel itself, are still intact. The latter is very small, and was already full to overflowing, while outside crowds patiently awaited their turn for entry. But at the whispered information that we had to catch the "poshta," way was made for us. At the right of the ikons before the High Altar, the lid of the shrine, lined in silver-studded blue velvet, had been opened, and we watched the long procession of petitioners move slowly towards it, one by one, doing homage, while the priests chanted unceasingly -- in Serbian. For Serbia is the only country in Europe where Mass and all other Divine Offices are said in the national tongue.

Each suppliant lifted and kissed a Crucifix lying across the feet of the saint, then a second, resting on his hands, and finally,

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after reverently crossing themselves, stooped to kiss his face. Many prostrations followed, first to rest the lips on the hallowed ground on which the tomb stood, then upon each of the three lower ikons veiling the High Altar and the chanting priests. And so out from the cool darkness of the little four-square chapel to the light and warmth of a summer's day.

As our escort was due to leave in a few minutes we only had time for a glance over many shoulders into the tomb itself. The saint lay wrapped about in his Pontifical robes of scarlet and gold, but only the vague outline of the veiled face was visible.

It was impossible to collect genuine evidence of cures, for the dreamy Slav soul shrinks instinctively from Western objectivity. One imagines that to the Montenegrin the Medical Council at Lourdes would seem little short of sacrilegious.

"Cures?" they told us, "of course there are cures -- hundreds of cures. Is our Bishop-King not a saint? Did he not love his country and his countrymen, and help and pity them in life? Shall he not now love and help and pity them the more since now his power is greater?"

One thing is certain: whether his flesh "lives" or no, in the heart of his people the memory of this Bishop-Saint-Soldier-King lies enshrined for all time.

N. ALEXANDER