Dinner was instantly announced, and we proceeded to the dining-hall, a room of good size and well-furnished. The dinner, a German one, was good, the wines better. The attendance consisted of two men in black and four in native costume. The Princess, who speaks French fluently, did the honours with most winning grace; and the Prince, by his affability, at once put every one at his ease. At dinner I sat on his left, his mother being on his right, with the Russian Consul _vis-à-vis_, principally, I suppose, to facilitate her enjoyment of the conversation, as she speaks only Slave.
During the repast His Highness constantly asked me questions, sometimes about my impressions of Montenegro, which were easily enough answered, as I had nothing to recount of myself but enjoyment since I had entered his territory, having met with nothing but the most unbounded kindness and hospitality. But in his anxiety for knowledge, he often put questions which I found it difficult enough to reply to, and sometimes questions which I could not answer at all. Having spoken with admiration of the gorgeous costume of the Montenegrins, and how it set off their fine figures, he replied:
"Yes, it is very fine; but I should be delighted to abolish it, if it were possible; they spend a great deal too much money on it."
Being simply horrified at the idea of doing away with national dress, I could not avoid expressing myself unreservedly, and I said at once that depriving a country of its costume would be simply to destroy it.
"Ah!" replied the Prince sharply, "you look upon us only from a picturesque point of view; in fact, you would like to keep us here like a sort of menagerie of wild beasts, to come and look at us occasionally for your amusement."
The Prince was almost angry; but fortunately I had an analogous example to place before him, in our own Scottish Highlanders, who cling to their costume with such tenacity. I told him of our Highlanders, of our splendid Highland regiments, of how our Scottish nobility held by the national dress, and of how our precious Queen dressed all her boys in Highland costume; and yet we did not go to look at them as we would go to look at wild beasts in a zoological garden, but we regarded it with admiration, as an ancient national costume, associated in our minds with devoted loyalty, stirring times, and valiant deeds; as their own costume was also, which, I trusted, I should never live to see exchanged for a bad imitation of the present universally adopted French fashion, ending by saying that I was convinced that the supplanting of national costumes with imitations taken from our neighbours, was decidedly a backward step in civilization.