In a letter to the Czar Ferdinand announced his intention of re-baptizing little Boris in the Orthodox faith, and the Czar, having negotiated the matter through Clement, graciously consented to be the godfather of the infant apostate. “For the Czar’s condescension the Prince will submit to any humiliation,” said Stambuloff once, and this event proved how rightly he had estimated the Prince whom he had created. In a proclamation to the Bulgarian people, that is terrible in its terms of slavery, he announced that the Czar had not only graciously consented to become the godfather to the heir, but that he had “manifested his goodwill to our nation by renewing with it the political relations that had been interrupted.” Then he organized a great national raree-show at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria, where the re-christening took place on February 26. Tirnovo was crowded with Russians of all degrees for the occasion, and for their benefit were organized the throngs of Bulgarian peasants in national costume who paraded the streets singing the old Bulgarian folk-songs, and displaying the entwined banners of the two countries. These good folk danced the old Bulgarian dances, which they had just learned with an immensity of labour, in the market-place of the ancient city, and then sang the Russian National Anthem in conjunction with their own. The ceremony in Tirnovo Cathedral was a pitiful business. The poor little heir to the throne, not yet three years of age, was torn from the arms of his mother, who protested with all the force of which her character was capable, and dressed all in white for the baptism. He stood all alone at the altar, a pathetic, uncomprehending little figure, and was made to renounce the faith in which he had been christened. So Ferdinand committed apostasy by proxy. The official representative of the Czar-godfather, who was accorded royal honours in Tirnovo that day, afterwards described the ceremony as “a blasphemous mockery and an exhibition of political legerdemain.” But Ferdinand cared little for what was said of him. The Sobranje voted to the heir to the throne a sum of £20,000, and the old accusation that he was leading the nation from Orthodoxy to Catholicism was for ever stilled. Having appeased Russia and confirmed the ancient religion of his subjects in the person of the heir to the throne, Ferdinand was to reap the benefit of his perjury by receiving the long-awaited recognition of his sovereign Lord Abdul the Damned. The Red Sultan issued a firman, recognizing him as Prince of Bulgaria, with the title of Royal Highness, and as Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia.