How widespread this poison was, and how effectively Ferdinand had broken all ties that should have bound Bulgaria to the great Mother of the Slav races was recognized in Russia. The fact provoked an outburst from the Russian poet Andreef, which might well have shamed a less cynical people to some revolt against a king so monstrously treacherous. “The Slav world is stricken with shame, and turns its eyes earthward whenever the name Bulgarian is mentioned, in the same way as an honourable family is ashamed of the unworthy member. You Bulgars have a Slav heart but German brains, and your tongue, like that of the snake, is split in twain.... If the Germans keep you fastened like sheep within the fold while your brothers’ blood is being spilled, or if your shepherds lead you along the pathway of treachery and you, like other belligerents, commence to banish the Russians from Bulgaria, then first of all, take from your midst the monument of Alexander’s tomb—he who freed you—for he also was a Russian.” M. Joseph Reinach, who was first introduced to Ferdinand by King Edward VII, and who maintained a correspondence with him, has declared that when the time comes for the final publication of the documents relative to the Bulgarian treachery, they will furnish an example of disloyalty and treachery unexampled in the records of the chancellery. “I am very sure,” adds this authority, “that if the Russians, instead of being conquered in Poland and Galicia, had won, the Czar of the Bulgarians would have treated with the Triple Alliance instead of betraying his past and his honour in selling his armies to the Germans.” “Russia was trusting, and I myself was deceived into believing with Shakespeare, that there is no such thing as an utterly bad man. The Serbians have a proverb which explains Russia’s blind faith in the Shoddy Czar. ‘A woman who has wet-nursed a calf loves it like her own child.’ So Russia loved Bulgaria, a circumstance which makes Bulgaria’s crime more detestable still.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FERDINAND THE HUN “_There is nothing I detest as much as a German._”—THE PRINCESS CLEMENTINE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVIII FERDINAND THE HUN When Ferdinand first rode through the streets of Sofia in a carriage, wearing the uniform of a Bulgarian general, there was an ominous murmur in the Bulgarian crowd that rose and swelled to a hoarse cry of “Schwaba.” It was as if a French crowd had cried “Boche” or an English mob had roared “Hun.” Austrian rank and French pretence did not blind the Bulgarians at the very outset; they knew they had to do with one of the detested Schwaba, a Hun of the Huns.