" There were a lot of wealthy looking Albanians sitting round
and being respectable. The archbishop spoke no French nor German, only
Italian. But Jan, with the help of a lot of old musical terms, and an
imperfectly forgotten Spanish, managed to convey to him some
intelligible compliments and sentences. We got out at last, and his
eminence accompanied us to the top of the stairs and gave us the
difficult problem of bowing backwards as we went down. This visit was
necessary, as we might have had to get a "Besa" from him if we meant to
go through to Durazzo.
The Serbian captain who had been on the Turkish gunboat met us in the
street. He dragged us into a cafe and began to order beer by the
half-dozen. He presented Jo with a small Turkish gold coin, which was
valued at five shillings, as a bribe to allow him to join our party. As
he already had permission it seemed superfluous.
Some of our party were still pretty seedy. Two had gone to a shop in
search of castor oil. A very old and withered chemist, who spoke bad
French, invited them in and asked for an account of their adventures,
interrupting them with explosions of "Ah poves, poves, poves, poves.
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