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i9is] MADAME KARAVELOV 165
with the sole exception of M. P. N. Miliukoff, who
upheld my point of view that a treaty is a treaty and that
the Serbians would be better advised to desist from
their new claims in Macedonia than to provoke
sentiments of hatred in the Bulgarians by which all the
enemies of the Slav cause would immediately profit.
It was easy to write from St. Petersburg: "Try to
persuade the Bulgarians of the necessity to yield and to
make concessions to the Serbians," but it was difficult
to do it on the spot!
I remember a scene I witnessed in the large
Bulgarian military hospital which had been set up during
the war in the huge building of the Military School
of Sofia. From the beginning the head of this
hospital was Madame Karavelov, widow of the celebrated
Petko Karavelov; on the death of her husband she
had remained the recognised leader of the Radical
party, M. Malinov only taking a second place. In the
early eighties I had been well acquainted with both
M. Karavelov and his wife, who was young, beautiful,
and intelligent. Both of them Russian students, both
fiery enthusiasts for liberty, they gave one the impression
of having come to life out of the pages of Turgeneff’s
celebrated novel, " On the Eve." 1 Years had gone by
since then: Petko Karavelov having incurred the
persecution of Stamboulov, was shut up in the " Black
Mosque" of Sofia, underwent real tortures, and, his
health being completely ruined in this hell, died soon
after his release. But his widow—guardian of the creed
of her martyred husband—had remained the same
enthusiast, the same political woman full of energy.
From our arrival in Sofia my wife and I had kept up
relations of mutual sympathy with Madame Karavelov.
But since the beginning of the war we only saw each
other at rare intervals; the reason being that this
1 The hero of this novel, the imaginary Bulgarian Insarov, has done
more to make the Bulgarian name and cause popular in Russia than all
his fellow-countrymen who really existed and who one met at this period
i n our country ; liabent sua fata libclli.
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