The Roumanians also bewailed the loss of this noble Prince. They knew that he had followed the development of the country with the interest of a statesman, for its fate remains closely bound up in the family of Hohenzollern. Roumania is an hereditary constitutional monarchy. In the year 1866 the naturalisation of the Sigmaringen branch of the Hohenzollerns was carried out, and the question of the succession legally settled. Prince Leopold, the then hereditary Prince, stood nearest to the throne, and his second son Ferdinand was the heir-apparent of King Charles.
In 1886 this circumstance assumed a political significance. During a visit of the present Prince Leopold and his two sons, Ferdinand and Charles, a weighty affair of State was transacted. The King had nominated Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern chief of the 3rd Regiment of Grenadiers, which Prince Ferdinand now entered as a lieutenant. After his nomination had been read out in the presence of the Queen, all the Ministers, the Presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, as well as all the generals and officers, the King addressed the assembly. Touching on the entrance of Prince Ferdinand into the Roumanian army, he added—
“This is an honour for him of which I am assured he will prove himself worthy. For us it is a great cause for rejoicing and a surety for the future which the country will understand, for as a member of my family he might one day be called upon to protect my kingdom and to carry on our traditions. It is therefore a weighty moment which now unites us here, and in later times we shall often remember that the 26th of November has a deep meaning. I and my successor, to-day and in the future, will place our entire confidence in the army and rest on its sure foundations.”
Loud hurrahs often interrupted the royal speech, and the touching and important ceremony was brought to a close by the march-past of the troops, during which the Prince of Hohenzollern led his regiment, and Prince Ferdinand with deep emotion took his place in its ranks near the flag.
What feelings throbbed through the heart of the royal lady at this moment, which brought so vividly before her the bitterness of her sorrow, all she thus had to resign, and how many disappointed hopes! This great sorrow had been her constant companion during the last eighteen years—“It has added the battle with itself to the battle with life.”
“3rd March 1886.—And yet I shall never say I would rather not have lived, for my life is rich and full, and though the waves do not cease to beat, they are mighty waves on a deep sea, and the wind which whistles round my cables makes them a harp and sings songs to the world. No; life is still beautiful though it may be stormy.”
What was deeply enshrined in her heart has found an expression in songs and pictures. The Queen has quite lately raised a monument of her lost child which will outlive many a human life, for she has entrusted it to the sacred keeping of the Church.
During the government of King Charles not only the political and commercial life of the country was renewed, but he had regarded it as his duty to save the treasures of art and the ancient buildings of the country from destruction. One of the finest monuments of the Middle Ages, and a marvel of classical Byzantine, architecture, is the Cathedral of Curtea de Arges. Through the influence of the weather, fire, and neglect it had fallen into decay. King Charles sent for the famous Lecomte de Nouy, a scholar of Viollet-le-Duc, to Roumania, in order to restore the church according to the intentions of its founder, as gloriously as it stood nearly four hundred years ago.
On the 5th of March 1886 Queen Elizabeth writes to her mother:—“I have undertaken a great work for the Church of Curtea de Arges. I am inscribing the gospels on enormous sheets of vellum, from which they are then to be read every Thursday as a recollection of that Thursday on which I heard them read beside the coffin of my child. It will be a fine work, and I shall write this book with my own hands, so that it will be the best monument to little Marie. I will paint a dedication for its consecration according to the customs of the Middle Ages.
“The binding will be executed by Telge in Berlin in cloisonnet after my designs. I have just painted a background with a scarlet border. Gold letters with red in them are to appear on this blue background, and on the scarlet edge Moorish ornaments in gold with blue. You can imagine how rich this will be.