In the present case, where notice was brought to the police of facts that had happened, and aid was requested, steps had to be taken to secure the person of the offender, and, therefore, to have Radonic arrested at once for manslaughter.
Friends, however, came at once to inform Radonic of what had taken place, advising him to take flight, and put at once the border mountains of Montenegro between himself and the Austrian police.
The officials gave themselves and, what was far worse, everybody else no end of trouble and annoyance with Vranic's case. They went about arresting wrong persons, as a well-regulated police sometimes does, and then, after much bother and many cross-examinations, everyone was set free, and the whole affair dropped.
Milena, who was slowly recovering from her long illness, was the first to be summoned to answer about her husband's crime. Bellacic was after that accused of sheltering the murderer, and threatened with fines, confiscation, imprisonment and other such penalties; then he was also set free. The twenty-four men of the jury were next summoned; but, as they had only acted as peacemakers on behalf of Vranic, they, too, were reprimanded, and then sent about their business.
After this Vranic's partisans dwindled every day, till at last he found himself shunned by everyone. Even his customers began to forsake him, and to have their clothes made by a more fortunate competitor. At last he could not go out in the streets without having the children scream out after him:
"Spy! spy! Austrian spy!"
The clergy belonging to the Orthodox faith looked upon the new law against the karvarina as an encroachment on their privileges. A tithe of the price of blood-money always went to the Church; sundry candles had to be lighted to propitiate, not God or Christ, but some of the lower deities and mediators of the Christian creed. The law, which took from them all interference in temporal matters, was a blow to their authority and to their purses. Even if they were not begged to act as arbitrators, they were usually invited as guests to the feast, so that some pickings and perquisites were always to be got.
Vranic obtained no satisfaction from the police, to whom he had applied; he was only treated as a cur by the whole population, was nearly excommunicated by the Church, and looked upon as an apostate from the saintly customs of the Iugo Slavs.
Taunted by his own family with having made a muddle of the whole affair, treated with scornful disdain by friends and foes, the poor tailor, who had never been very good-tempered, had got to look upon all mankind as his enemies.
Thus it happened, one day, that Bellacic was at the coffee-house with
Markovic and some other friends, when Vranic came in to get shaved.