Then Ferdinand entered upon an experience as strange and disheartening as that of the men who had sought him out to make him prince. He found everywhere that the proposal was received with a surprised distaste. Not all his mother’s tact and influence could make anybody look upon the choice with a favourable eye. The only encouragement he got—if it was encouragement—came from Bismarck, whose advice to his predecessor arose in his mind at this crisis in his affairs.
“Take it!” said the cynical old Prussian to Alexander of Battenberg. “It will at least be a pleasant reminiscence.”
Three weeks passed, and Stambuloff began to demand his prince most urgently. The argument about waiting for the consent of the Powers was ignored by the Statesman. Ferdinand was warned in unmistakable terms that the offer was only open for a few more days. He must come now, or never. Then, forgetting all his protestations that he would only accept if the Powers endorsed the choice of Bulgaria, Ferdinand went.
He went with a cant phrase in his mouth; he has spouted miles of such stuff in the quarter-century and more that has since elapsed. But this first piece of cant that fell from the lips of the new prince caused the Courts of Europe to smile and the Chancelleries to chuckle.
“I regard it as my sacred duty to set foot at the earliest possible moment on the soil of my new country.”
Thus the Pot-house Prince, who bargained for a principality in a beer garden, and who was introduced to the first of his new subjects in a billiard-room through the mediation of a Jewish moneylender and a needy Austrian man-about-town.
But Ferdinand did not care; he had got the job which had been dangled before his eyes since first he could remember. He had fulfilled his mother’s dearest wish, and got his foot in among the Rulers of Europe.
THE TRAINING OF A TRAITOR
“He lived in an atmosphere of womanly luxury, so that sweet perfumes and pretty flowers became necessaries of life to him.”