CHAPTER XI
BETRAYED
The next few days were crowded ones for me. The organisation of our conspirators went forward with astonishing success—the fruit, of course, of the previous efforts of Zoiloff and those working with him; and when we held our first big meeting to inaugurate our new “Club,” we had nearly three hundred splendid young fellows zealous to pledge themselves to the finger-tips in the cause of the Princess Christina.
Each of them had been presented privately to me, and each promised unreservedly to follow my leadership. All were animated by the most patriotic enthusiasm, and many of them were in a position to influence considerable numbers of their compatriots.
The scheme of the Gymnasium Club evoked great praise, and I was surprised by the ardour with which they threw themselves into the task of athletic training. All the details of this were managed by Zoiloff and a few carefully chosen men under him; and after the first meeting these leaders supped with me, and many were the exuberant anticipations of success that found expression. Zoiloff himself threw aside his customary reserve, and led on the rest to praise me.
“It is the finest movement ever started in Bulgaria, Count,” he said to me when Spernow and he and I were alone. “And it will spread like a heath on fire, from here to every town and centre in the country. 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 exclaimed, infected by their enthusiasm, and thinking of the Princess.
“A toast!” cried Zoiloff, jumping to his feet, his eyes flashing, and his rough, rugged features aglow, as he raised his glass on high. “May the hand that holds this glass blight and rot if it ever falters or turns from the righteous cause—In the Name of a Woman.”