I mentioned above that the first sight of Budapest nearly took my breath away. The first view of Prague filled me with a strange religious fervor. The ancient gates, surmounted by towers with wonderful stone carvings and inscriptions; the lofty domes, crowning mediæval cathedrals, the portals of which were bristling with beautiful images of saints; the historic public buildings, each of which told a story of the old glories of Bohemia’s kingdom; the ancient stone bridge across the Moldava River, supporting statues of Christian martyrs; the royal palace on the hill of Hradchin, which seemed to rise way up above the clouds—all these, and many other wonderful things, made me feel that it was places like Prague which St. Sava visited when he deserted his royal parents and went to the end of the world to seek new knowledge. I saw then why the protoyeray of Panchevo had suggested that I go to Prague; I even began to suspect that he expected the influence of Prague to turn my attention to theology. I think now that it would have done so if it had not been for that unpleasant goose incident at Karlovci. Besides, there was another influence at Prague, which was more powerful than any other influence in the Austrian Empire at that time.
The sights of Prague interested me more than its famous schools, which I was to enter and delayed entering. But finally I was enrolled, and the boys in the school scrutinized me with a puzzled expression, as if they could not make out what country or clime I came from. When they found out that I hailed from the Serb military frontier, all uncertainty vanished, and I knew exactly where I stood. The German boys became very cold, the Czech boys greeted me in their own tongue and hugged me when by my Serbian answer I proved not only that I understood them but also that I expected them to understand my Serbian greeting. They were all nationalists to the core and did their best to make me join their ranks, which, after some reluctance, I finally did. I showed them then two letters from protoyeray Zhivkovich introducing me to Rieger and to Palacky, the great apostles of Panslavism and of nationalism in Bohemia. From that day on I was one of their young revolutionary set, and henceforth school lessons looked tame and lost most of their charm to me.
The German victory in France two years prior to that time, resulting as it did in the creation of a united Germany, had encouraged Teutonism to run riot wherever it met a current opposing it, as it did in Prague. Nationalism in Bohemia was a reaction against Austrian Teutonism in those days, just as it was a reaction against Magyarism in Voyvodina and in the military frontier. Hardly a day passed without serious clashes between the Czech nationalist boys and their German classmates. That which made my stay in Panchevo impossible met me in Prague in an even more violent form. Loyal to the traditions of the Serbian military frontiersmen, I liked nothing better than a good fight, and I had the physique and the practice, gained in the pasturelands of Idvor, to lick any German boy of my age or even older. The German pupils feared me, and the German teachers condemned what they called my revolutionary tendencies, and threatened to send me back to Idvor. As time went on, I began to wish that they would expel me and give me a good excuse to return to Idvor. I missed the wide horizon of the plains of Banat in the narrow streets of Prague. My little bedroom in a garret, the only living quarters that I could afford, was a sad contrast to my mode of life on the endless plains of Banat, where for six weeks each summer I had lived under the wide canopy of heaven, watching the grazing oxen, gazing upon the countless stars at night, and listening to the sweet strains of the Serbian flute. The people I met on the streets were puffed up with Teutonic pride or with official arrogance; they had none of the gentle manliness and friendliness of the military frontiersmen. The teachers looked to me more like Austrian gendarmes than like sympathetic friends. They cared more for my sentiments toward the emperor and for my ideas about nationalism than for my ideas relating to God and his beautiful world of life and light. Not one of them reminded me of Kos, the Slovenian, or of protoyeray Zhivkovich in Panchevo. Race antagonism was at that time the ruling passion. If it had not been for the affectionate regard which the Czech boys and their parents had for me I should have felt most lonesome; from Banat to Prague was too sudden a change for me.
Another circumstance I must mention now which helped to brace me up. I delivered, after many months of delay, my letters of introduction to Rieger and to Palacky. I saw their pictures, I read about them, and finally I heard them address huge nationalist meetings. They were great men, I thought, and I could not screw up sufficient courage to call on them, as the protoyeray wished me to do, and waste their precious time on my account. But when I received a letter from the protoyeray in Panchevo asking why I had not delivered the letters of introduction he had given me, I made the calls. Rieger looked like my father: dark, stern, reserved, powerful of physique, with a wonderful luminosity in his eyes. He gave me coffee and cake, consuming a generous supply of them himself. When I kissed his hand, bidding him good-by, he gave me a florin for pocket-money, patted me on the cheek, and assured me that I could easily come up to the protoyeray’s expectations and surprise my teachers if I would only spend more time on my books and less on my nationalist chums. This suggestion and indirect advice made me very thoughtful. Palacky was a gentle, smooth-faced, old gentleman, who looked to me then as if he knew everything that men had ever known, and that much study had made him pale and delicate. He was much interested in my description of the life and customs of my native village, and when I mentioned St. Sava, he drew a parallel between this saint and Yan Huss, the great Czech patriot and divine, who was burned at the stake in 1415 at Constance because he demanded a national democratic church in Bohemia. He gave me a book in which I could read all about Huss and the Hussite wars and about the one-eyed Zhizhka, the great Hussite general. He gave me no coffee nor cake, probably because his health did not permit him to indulge in eatables between meals, but assured me of assistance if I should ever need it. I eagerly read the book about Yan Huss and the Hussite wars, and became a more enthusiastic nationalist than ever before. I felt that Rieger’s influence pulled me in one direction, and that Palacky encouraged me to persist in the opposite direction which I had selected under the influence of the spirit of Czech nationalism.
In my letters to my elder sisters, which they read to father and mother, I described with much detail the beauties and wonders of Prague, my receptions and talks with Rieger and Palacky, and elaborated much the parallel between St. Sava and Yan Huss to which Palacky had drawn my attention, and which I expected would please my mother; but I never mentioned Rieger’s advice that I stick to books and leave the nationalist propaganda of the boys alone. I never during my whole year’s stay in Prague sent a report home on my school work, because I never did more than just enough to prevent my dropping to the lower grade. My mother and the protoyeray in Panchevo expected immeasurably more. Hence, I never complained about the smallness of the allowance which my parents could give me, and, therefore, they did not appeal to my Panchevo friends for the additional help which they had promised. I felt that I had no right to make such an appeal, because I did not devote myself entirely to the work for which I was sent to Prague.