"Come with me," he said; "we will leave this assembly together," and taking his arm, he left the room.
Half an hour later he quitted the camp with a small guard, leaving the rest of his retinue to follow as quickly as they could get ready. But the news of his departure and the reason for it spread like wildfire through Trikorpha, and the men, who still regarded him, partly because of the marked favor he showed to Petrobey, partly from the prestige of the revolutionary Hetairia which he represented, as their champion, were wildly indignant with the primates. A riot nearly ensued, and had not Petrobey and other commanders, notably Nicholas himself, had them guarded in a place of safety, it is not improbable that some would have been murdered. Germanos, however, who, whatever his faults were, was perfectly fearless, refused all protection, and when one of the Mainats passing near him, spit at him, the archbishop dealt the man a blow which knocked him off his feet, and passed on without hurry or discomposure, though he was in the middle of the clan. But the Mainats, who were without a particle of reverence for him, but had a deep respect for personal pluck, appreciated the act fully and made no attempt to stop him, though a minute before it was very doubtful whether he would have reached his quarters alive.
All day the feeling in the camp against the primates rose higher and higher, for, from the soldiers' point of view, the prince was their protector not only against them, but their own commanders, who, as the primates had told them, rousing suspicion if not belief in their minds, were employed in making private arrangements with the Turks, promising them their lives in exchange for their property. No one, it is true, had breathed a suspicion about either Petrobey or Nicholas, for they stood beyond any shadow of scandal, and for the time the ugly thoughts the primates had suggested were cast aside in the fierce indignation excited by the immediate cause of the withdrawal of the prince, for which the primates alone were to be thanked. A knot of angry men assembled outside the building where primates and muskets were stored, demanding that they should be given up to be dealt with as they deserved; and, indeed, such a fate was not unmerited, and it would have saved a world of trouble to Petrobey. For they were responsible for all this doubt and division; they were traitors in the camp, and in time of war a traitor is worse than a regiment of foes. Next day there was no abatement of popular feeling, and in the afternoon the whole body of commanders and captains went to Petrobey, after exacting a promise from their men of quietude in their absence, asking that the prince might be petitioned to return, for his absence could but end in one thing, the death of all the primates, either with the authority of the commanders, or, in default of that, by mutiny.
Petrobey readily consented to go in person, for things were at an absolute impasse, and without the prince's co-operation and presence he was really afraid that the worst might happen, and in the name of the entire army, and with the earnest appeals of the primates, he waited upon him at Leondari, a revolted town not far from Megalopolis. The prince at first hesitated, or seemed to hesitate, but privately he was very much gratified at what seemed so universal a mark of confidence; for on thinking his action over, it had appeared to him that he must cut but a sorry figure if he returned to the Hetairia, saying that the army disregarded his authority and met his commands with insolence, while if he came back, his withdrawal assumed the aspect of a most successful piece of diplomacy. Accordingly, at the end of the week he returned amid the welcoming acclamations of the army, and was pleased to accept—having insisted on the same—the apology of Germanos, which was bitter herbs to that proud man, but to Nicholas as sweet as honey in the mouth.
Throughout July, but waning with the moon, continued the reign of that incompetent, but honest man, Prince Demetrius. His indecision amounted to a disease of the mind; he seemed morally incapable of acting, or, through his pretentious viceregal claims, of letting others act for him; a creature afflicted with acute paralysis of will. Inside Tripoli there was still no famine of food or water, and though Achmet Bey saw that escape was impossible, for the weakness of the troops inside would have rendered an attempt to cut through the occupations on the hills quite hopeless, yet he was in no mind to surrender when no attempts were made to induce him to do so. There were provisions in the camp which would last three months more, for the harvest had been got in before the occupation of Valtetzi; the ravages of the Greeks had destroyed only the villages and the winter crops, and Mehemet Salik remarked one morning that one seemed safer in Tripoli than anywhere else.
And the hot month throbbed by, while to the Greeks every day's close saw another day lost.