And while his shoulders were heaving with true Coburg emotion and love of nature, there crept behind him the Kaiser. The broad back and the roll of fat on the neck were irresistible. Down came the mailed fist with a resounding thwack, and with something hardly distinguishable from a scream Ferdinand faced his tormentor. Furious and scarlet with passion he grasped the identity of his assailant. He summoned to the occasion all the dignity of the Bourbons. “I pray Your Majesty to refrain from practical jokes,” he said, and withdrew, refusing to be conciliated. The pair next met in London at the funeral of King Edward, but the Bulgarian monarch refused either to forgive or forget. The very sight of William caused him to growl like a sullen bear, though the Kaiser persistently ignored his resentment. The twain are now “glorious allies,” but the Kaiser may live to learn that a Bourbon “forgets nothing.” Of course Ferdinand is as kind to animals as the average village butcher. His British biographer remarks that “certain forms of so-called ‘sport’ still tolerated in this country would horrify him. He has a constitutional horror of anything savouring of cruelty.” For instance, a Turkish fisherman not far from his Euxinograd Palace captured a Black Sea seal, and exhibited it at so much a head in the Port of Varna. Ferdinand heard the news with a disgust he did not attempt to conceal. For a day he brooded over the sufferings of the poor sea creature, and his birds and flowers did not suffice to soothe his ruffled sensitiveness to pain inflicted on a dumb creature. Finally he ordered his car and drove down to the port, where he purchased the captive for £24, and ordered it to be set free in the sea. Then he returned to Euxinograd and recovered his equanimity by smelling violets and gazing at cyclamens. One can well imagine that such a king would shrink from the sight of bloodshed. It is recorded that, at the beginning of the first Balkan war, it was his sad duty to look upon the first Bulgarian wounded as they came into Stara Zagora. The sight reduced him to bitter tears, and on his bended knees he implored Heaven to spare him any further sight of battle. It is only fair to state that he has not since tempted Providence, but has held studiously aloof from all scenes of carnage, though unhappily at the head of an army in the field. And when the sights of war have come unpleasantly near him, with true maidenly sensibility he has invariably turned away his head. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FERDINAND AND THE BULGARIANS “_I am the rock, against which the waves beat in vain; I am as the oak in the forest._”—FERDINAND OF BULGARIA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIII FERDINAND AND THE BULGARIANS