Do what he might, Ferdinand could not lift the reproach among the race he chooses to call his adopted people. To them, now as ever, he is the Hun. In normal times they turn away their heads as the Schwaba drives by; when he has done anything special to annoy them they gather under his palace windows and yell, “Down with the modern Nero.” No wonder Ferdinand prefers to spend the major portion of his time in the country at Euxinograd, or on the Coburg-Cohen estates in Hungary, where, as the Count of Murany, he is fond of assuring his visitors that he is now in his “second Fatherland.” When he dismissed Stambuloff, he remarked, “Henceforth I mean to govern as well as to rule.” It was much what the Kaiser said when he got rid of Bismarck, but Ferdinand had a counsellor of greater experience than any of those who were called to the assistance of William II when Bismarck had been humiliated. He had always his wise old mother at his elbow, the shrewdest and most disinterested adviser that any princeling was ever blessed with. And, by following the advice of his mother, he contrived to convert his very temporary occupation of the Bulgarian throne into a permanency unexpected in any of the European Chancelleries. Ferdinand was aided in his scheme of governing Bulgaria by the very mixed state of the political parties in that country. Of these parties there are no less than ten, a circumstance which in itself is most favourable to the underhand methods which are a second nature to the man who calls himself the Czar of the Bulgarians. But the foreign policy of this parvenu principality involved the exercise of an immensity of tact and discretion, and Ferdinand found the experience, the ability and the connexions of his mother more than invaluable; they were indispensable. It must be said for him that he followed implicitly the instructions of this counsellor in petticoats, even in the matter of his marriage. She enabled him to play off the influence of Russia against the growing pretensions of Austria, and to keep Bulgaria in a position to benefit, whatever the differences between the pair might be. But princesses cannot live for ever, not even such fine and wise old ladies as the Princess Clementine. In 1907 she died, and among the many mourners who gathered at her graveside there was no one who had such good cause to regret her loss as the son whom she had put on a throne, and kept there in the face of the most discouraging circumstances.