The flower gardens he has installed at his Palaces of Varna and Euxinograd are veritable wonders. Trees and plants from every clime have been acclimatized under the warm sun and in the virgin soil of rude Bulgaria. In his Japanese garden he has reproduced the ponds and terraces of the Orient, and by a miracle of care has bred the butterflies of far Japan in the same environment, so that they hover among the Japanese blooms and complete the resemblance. This is only one among the thousand wonders he has contrived with birds, beasts and insects. He is at his best when showing these beauties with unaffected enthusiasm. It is then he tells his visitors how, when his compeers were deep in the drill-book and the practice of arms, he devoted his hours to the study of natural history and botany, and the cultivation of a sensitive soul. Ruder monarchs have played coarse jests upon that sensitive spirit, and have merited a well-earned and long-treasured resentment. For instance, at a time of great anxiety to Ferdinand, when the world looked very black, and a kind word meant so much, he was greatly cheered by the announcement that his sovereign lord, the Sultan of Turkey, was sending him a royal present as a mark of goodwill. Ferdinand waited anxiously for the present, but it came not. Instead there came the announcement that the Red Sultan was ransacking his Empire for a steed worthy of such a Prince. Ferdinand winced, for his horses had to be chosen with some care. His personal preference was for the little native ponies of Bulgaria; when he was mounted on one of these he had not so far to fall. Still, a present was a present, and he waited with eager expectation. At the end of five weary months, the envoy from Yildiz was announced. With every show of pomp he had the present conducted to the royal mews, where it was received by Ferdinand in person with all the ceremony which he knew how to initiate. The wrappings were removed from the present, and there stood the most wretched old screw that ever disgraced a Constantinople cab. Casting one glance of fury at the brute, Ferdinand fled, and next day the Sultan’s present was sent to the Zoo. Even a more hideous outrage upon Ferdinand’s delicacy of mind was perpetrated by the Kaiser, who has none of that commodity to spare, and is given to practical jokes of the kind that Captain Marryat describes as being usual in the Navy a century ago. Ferdinand and the Kaiser were both guests at Brunswick Castle, when the incident occurred. The time was spring, and it was a delicious moonlight evening. In the grounds of the castle the nightingales were singing voluptuously, and Ferdinand was wearing for the first time a pair of white silk smalls which became him to perfection. He leaned out of the castle window, surveyed the moonlit beauty, and listened to the raptures of the bird of spring. All the young girl in him rose to the surface, and he abandoned himself to the moment and its romance.