Love of country, like religious faith, is a respectable mainspring of action. But Ferdinand has been credited with neither. Whithersoever he moves one looks in vain for the guiding light of large ideas. Deeper than conscious volition lies the stored-up instinct of barren pettifogging egotism to which a fine moral atmosphere is deadly. Insincerity is second nature to him. He once boasted in my presence that he was a born actor, and it is fair to say that he played his roles--repellent for the most part--as behoves a mummer. The astonishing thing is that he should have got influential politicians to take him seriously. While assuring the French deputy, M. Joseph Reinach, of his attachment to France and signing himself the European, he was writing to Professor Walter of Budapest offering "all the sympathies of the Bulgarian nation" to Hungary.[57] I have read ecstatic communications of his penned in hours of exaltation, when visions of Constantine's city, the mosque of Aya Sofia towering aloft, warmed his fancy and the sheen of Byzantine brocades and the quaint paraphernalia of bygone days inspired his apocalyptic words. His language in those telegrams and letters was highfaluting and bombastic. And I read other communications of his--mostly abject appeals for help--devoid of dignity and manliness, when the gloom of dissipated illusions was made unbearable by fear of dethronement and death. And the figure cut by the Tsarlet, who addressed those humble prayers--mostly to influential ladies--was despicable. [57] In September 1914. See _Morning Post_, September 4, 1914. Ferdinand was swayed by ingrained hatred of Russia which was almost as potent as his contempt for the Bulgars. And he never made a secret of either. For the Turkish pasha who was responsible for the Bulgarian atrocities, which aroused Gladstone's indignation, Ferdinand's professed admiration took the form of a subscription.[58] But high above all motives that turned upon his feelings towards others were those that centred entirely in himself. [58] The Batak massacre of Bulgarians by order of Abdul Kerim Pasha had called forth Gladstone's pamphlet: _Bulgarian Atrocities_, and aroused the horror of civilized men. But the Hungarian aristocracy sympathized with the mass murderer, and presented him with a golden hilted sabre. The list of subscribers for this mark of aversion to the Bulgarian people can still be viewed in the Museum at Budapest. The third name on that list--Princess Clementine--is followed immediately by that of her son Prince Ferdinand of Coburg, who gave one hundred florins as a token of his admiration for the exterminator of his future subjects! It need hardly be added that he was not yet Prince of Bulgaria.