Among the dishonest plotting toadies he attached to his person was the man Natchevitch, who goes down in Bulgarian history under the well-earned designation of Beelzebub. A bankrupt merchant, he attached himself to Ferdinand by reason of his lack of scruple and his capacity for eating dirt. He was soon installed at the Court as one of the chief among the useful toadies the Prince maintained around him.
Among his intimates were three brothers named Tufektschieff, all of whom were implicated in that attempt to murder Stambuloff, which ended in the death of his friend Beltcheff. One of them was arrested, but the other two escaped. The arrested man was handled by Stambuloff’s agents in such a manner that he died in prison—in plain English he died under torture rather than betray his associates. I have said, I think, that the customs of Bulgaria were those of the Middle Ages.
Another brother was concerned in the murder of Dr. Vulkovitch at Constantinople, where he was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour for the crime. He fled back to Sofia and remained in hiding till the fall of Stambuloff, when he moved openly about the city under the protection of Natchevitch, who had now become Minister of Foreign Affairs. In equal security lived a number of other men, whose complicity in both these murders was a matter of notoriety.
Stambuloff, after his quarrel with Ferdinand and his imprisonment in his own house, gave an interview to the Frankfurter Zeitung, in which the character of Ferdinand was delineated with scathing accuracy. When Ferdinand read it the story of Henry II and Thomas à Becket rose to his mind. The ready tool Natchevitch was present, and throwing down the paper he cried, “Will no one rid me of this gutter-snipe?”
Henry, when his sinister order was carried out, confessed his sin in the sight of the English people by a penance more remarkable than any made by a monarch in the pages of history. His barefoot pilgrimage to the tomb of the murdered Archbishop was probably made in genuine sorrow for a petulant wish, repented before its suggestion had been carried into effect. It is like Ferdinand to repeat the crime and to omit the atonement.
The creatures he employed to perpetrate his crimes remain unpunished to this day. They were permitted to organize bands to desecrate the grave of Stambuloff, while yet it was lying open to receive the mangled body of the statesman. And Ferdinand, from the safety of Carlsbad, dared to send expressions of sympathy and a wreath to the bereaved woman, who had lived for months in the shadow of the impending crime.
His creatures lived to murder Stambuloff’s friend Petkoff. They lived to wax fat in idleness in the cafés of Sofia; some of them are alive at this day. Their deeds are known and they make no concealment of them. For Ferdinand is on their side. Well has he kept his wise vow to be on the side of the assassins.
Not that he would stoop to assassination himself. He is always absent in Carlsbad when any of this vile work is in train. He himself has a sensitive disposition that revolts at all deeds of violence and bloodshed. As we shall see, he cannot even bear to see a dumb animal suffer.
FERDINAND THE FEMININE