At heart he was furious. He had been waiting for this offer for weeks. He and his mother had talked of nothing else. But these clods from the least civilized of the Balkan States had ignored him; had actually been unaware of his existence. So, as they eagerly set out the advantages of their offer, and pressed for its instant acceptance, he smiled sardonically, and framed the words of his answer. When he delivered it, it filled them with dismay. Very quietly he expressed his sense of the honour they had done him, and of his own unworthiness for so important a post. Then he reminded them that the Powers of Europe must be consulted before he could safely accept. With remarkable cunning he made them feel that, should he accept, he would be doing them a favour. Then he dismissed them, greatly abashed. Some months later, however, they were received at the Coburg palace in Vienna, and overwhelmed with flatteries by his clever old mother. Difficulties were discussed, their power to make the offer questioned, and a great show of wealth and influence, both of which the Princess Clementine certainly possessed, was made. Eventually an arrangement was reached whereby Stoiloff should visit the Princess’s country palace at Ebenthal, bringing with him two influential Bulgarians of the mission, Vinaroff and Popoff. This last was a stern old warrior and a keen judge of men. Ferdinand received them in a gorgeous reception-room, surrounded already by the state of a reigning prince. By a writing-table near the window sat the keen-faced old woman who had spent half her life to fulfil her ambition of seating her son upon a throne. The ordeal was almost too much for Ferdinand. He stood there, affecting the ease he had acquired in his pilgrimages through the Courts of Europe. But old Popoff could smell the perfume with which he reeked, and could see the nervous trembling of his hands as he sought to evade his warrior eye. But for the inspiring presence of his mother, Ferdinand might have thrown away the chance for which his boyhood and young manhood had been spent. But he got through somehow; the offer was made and accepted, conditionally upon the consent of the Powers being given to it. Then Ferdinand entered upon an experience as strange and disheartening as that of the men who had sought him out to make him prince. He found everywhere that the proposal was received with a surprised distaste. Not all his mother’s tact and influence could make anybody look upon the choice with a favourable eye. The only encouragement he got—if it was encouragement—came from Bismarck, whose advice to his predecessor arose in his mind at this crisis in his affairs. “Take it!” said the cynical old Prussian to Alexander of Battenberg. “It will at least be a pleasant reminiscence.”