The tradition that great monarchs are many-sided men has no warmer adherent than Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who is ever ready to exemplify it in his own person. To those who are familiar with his pursuits and amusements, his method of spending his days constitutes a most cruel parody upon the thousand different avocations of his “glorious ally” the Kaiser. But the Kaiser, as I have had occasion to show elsewhere, is in many respects a remarkable and successful man, who makes practical use of his wide store of information. Ferdinand’s alleged serious occupations are a daily round of sheer futilities. For instance, some portion of the Kaiser’s day was always spent in reading a selection of Press cuttings carefully chosen for him, and by this means he was able to keep abreast with current news, commerce, inventions, and art. Ferdinand is also a close student of newspapers, which he studies with the sole object of reading what is written about himself. When he finds anything that displeases him, he tears up the offending news-sheet into little pieces, swearing most savagely. When he first went to Bulgaria, there was great destruction of newspapers by him, for it was hard to find a paper that could say anything good about him. Indeed, it is recorded that his mother, Princess Clementine, wept tears of pure joy when for the first time she saw an appreciative account of her darling in an important French daily. Stambuloff annoyed the Prince beyond all forgiveness by his early comments on this weakness. “Do not read so many papers,” he used to say, “but study public affairs. Get a French or English colonel to teach you the elements of military knowledge, so that you may be able to understand your War Minister.” But Ferdinand’s egotism caused this excellent if blunt counsel to be rejected; and to this day he is unable really to understand his War Minister. After a time he evolved a fine method of seeing nice things about himself in the papers. Any one can do it, especially a reigning Prince. The art lies in being very kind to journalists—of a certain type. Once Ferdinand had mastered this art; which is colloquially known as “squaring the Press”—no Prince got so many favourable notices as he. He was just as confidential and communicative to a foreign journalist as he was reticent and baffling to a Bulgarian notable. Yet Ferdinand, among other qualifications, is the easiest monarch to interview in all Europe, and is almost as accessible as some of the dusky princes of Afric’s sunny interior. The scene is usually _mon fumoir_, and begins with the exhibition of a sketch of the Czar’s predecessor, Prince Alexander of Battenberg—“Bulgaria’s hero,” says Ferdinand with becoming emotion.