The extracts from his book and the notes from his diary,
brought as charges against him, were only discovered several weeks
_after_ many cruelties had been inflicted upon him. But I
believe that many small, apparently trifling, incidents combined
to make him the first European victim of the Abyssinian monarch.
The Emperor could not endure the thought that Europeans in his
country should do aught else but work for him. On his first interview
with Mr. Stern, after this gentleman's return to Abyssinia, Theodore,
on being informed as to the motives of Mr. Stern's journey, said,
in an angry mood, "I have enough of your Bibles." Theodore also
believed that by ill-using Mr. Stern he would please his "Gaffat
children," therefore, immediately after Mr. Stern's imprisonment,
he wrote to them saying, "I have chained your enemy and mine."
That the crisis was at last brought on by malicious representations
to his Majesty of trifling incidents, was proved to us quite
accidentally on our way down. At Antalo I had a few friends at
dinner, amongst them Mr. Stern, when, in the evening, Peter Beru,
an Abyssinian who had received his education at Malta and had been
one of the interpreters of Mr. Stern's book at the famous public
trial at Gondar, came into the tent, and, being a little excited,
told Mr. Stern that three things had called down upon him the King's
displeasure: first, the enmity of the Gaffat people against him;
secondly, his (Mr.
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