Of course, the whole of the odium of this execution attached itself to Stambuloff. This enabled Ferdinand to gather round him many of the men who were spared, and who hated Stambuloff, both for the death of Panitza, and for the derision with which he treated them as unsuccessful plotters. With true Machiavellian craft, Ferdinand represented to these men that the whole blame for the severe repressive measures taken lay with Stambuloff. 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.