We soon learned that a telegram from Cettinje, based on a report from Albania, had reported my being beheaded in the interior of Albania.

I was honored by a question in the House of Commons, and obituary notices were general in the American papers.

The official Montenegrin journal went into mourning.

Several kind-hearted ladies waited on my wife in Florence to condole with her, but as I had telegraphed her on receipt of the telegram from her father that I was well, and the Italian papers with the news of my death had not frightened her, for she never read them, the condolence was discounted and the condoling friends went away, their object unexplained and their equanimity upset by the information that she had received a telegram from me that morning.

There was a small compensation in the reading of my obituary notices, a satisfaction that can rarely be given a man..