"I really believe that the principalities south of the Danube contain the descendants of those Byzantines who were pushed northward by the incursion of Turks in the fifteenth century."
"Why?"
(Click) "First from physiognomy:" (Click) "second from the structure of their languages."
"Wonderful! And you have noted points of similarity?"
"I will go further than that, Holiness. I ought to say that my attention was attracted to this subject by my Lord the King, who, you know, deigned to marry a Montenegrin Princess. His Majesty used to speak much at one time on this point to me and also to the Minister of Public Instruction——"
"That is Signor Cabelli?"
"Surely. We examined the matter for His Majesty; and our investigations all seemed to point to the fact that the Turks, in coming from Asia, swept across the Byzantine Empire in a westerly and northerly direction. Then, examining the outlets and the fringes, we found Byzantine characteristics all along the northern boundary of Turkey, that is to say not in Bulgaria which is Slav, but in Albania, Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Montenegro; and, more, we found them along the Adriatic coast of Italy. Your Holiness will see that these places are of a contiguity which would render them likely refuges for the Christians who fled before, or were expelled by, the Muslim."
"Yes."
"There is one thing more. We found traces of an earlier migration than the Byzantine. We believe that in Eastern Italy from Taranto to Ortona, and also in Southern Albania, may be seen the lineal descendants of the Athenians of Perikles' day."
"But Greece, Excellency?"