Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

By Henry Harland 45interesting history of that country, u fall into three rigidly separatedcastes : the nobility, a bare handful of tall, fair-haired, purebloodedSlavs; the merchants and manufacturers, almost exclusivelyJews and Germans ; and the peasantry, the populace—a short,thick-set, swarthy race, of Slavic origin, no doubt, and speaking aSlavic tongue, but with most of the Slavic characteristics obliteratedby admixture with the Turk. . . . Your true Slav peasant, withhis mild blue eyes, and his trustful spirit, is as meek and as longsufferingas a dumb beast of burden. But your black-browedMonterossan, your Tchermnogorets, is fierce, lawless, resentful,and vindictive, a Turk's grandson, the Turk's first cousin:though no one detests the Turk more cordially than he."Well, at Vescova, and, with diminishing force, throughout allMonterosso, Queen Aneli is entirely misunderstood and sullenlymisliked. Her husband cannot be called precisely the idol of hispeople, either ; but he is regarded with indulgence, even withhopefulness ; he is a Monterossan, a Pavelovitch : he may turnout well yet. Aneli, on the contrary, is an alien, a German, aNiemkasbka. The feeling against her begins with the nobility.Save the half-dozen who are about her person, almost everymother's son or daughter of them fancies that he or she has beenrudely treated by her, and quite frankly hates her. I am afraid,indeed, they have some real cause of grievance ; for they are mostof them rather tedious, and provincial, and narrow-minded ; andthey bore her terribly when they come to Court; and when she isbored, as we have seen, she is likely to show it pretty plainly. Sothey say she gives herself airs. They pretend that when she isn'tabsent-minded and monosyllabic, she is positively snappish. Theydenounce her as vain, shallow-pated, and extravagant. Theytwist and torture every word she speaks, and everything shedoes, into subject-matter for unfriendly criticism ; and they quoteas