The Purple of the Balkan Kings

Luitpold Wolkenstein, financier and diplomat on a small, obtrusive, self- important scale, sat in his favoured cafe in the world-wise Habsburg capital, confronted with the _Neue Freie Presse_ and the cup of cream- topped coffee and attendant glass of water that a sleek-headed piccolo had just brought him. For years longer than a dog's lifetime sleek-headed piccolos had placed the _Neue Freie Presse_ and a cup of cream-topped coffee on his table; for years he had sat at the same spot, under the dust-coated, stuffed eagle, that had once been a living, soaring bird on the Styrian mountains, and was now made monstrous and symbolical with a second head grafted on to its neck and a gilt crown planted on either dusty skull. To-day Luitpold Wolkenstein read no more than the first article in his paper, but read it again and again.

"The Turkish fortress of Kirk Kilisseh has fallen. The Serbs, it is officially announced, have taken Kumanovo. The fortress of Kirk Kilisseh lost, Kumanovo taken by the Serbs, these are tiding for Constantinople resembling something out of Shakspeare's tragedies of the kings. The neighbourhood of Adrianople and the Eastern region, where the great battle is now in progress, will not reveal merely the future of Turkey, but also what position and what influence the Balkan States are to have in the world."